Customer Reviews

Canning & Preserving without Sugar, 4th

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As the wife of a diabetic with a sweet tooth, this book was a wonderful find and is a treasure! The recipes are easy, ingedients are usually ones you have on hand and the results are wonderful. Ball Co. makes a no sugar pectin which is a low methoxy pectin this book refers to quite a bit. It is easy to use in these recipes. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is diabetic or just likes the natural flavor of fruits and vegetables rather than the sugary recipes in regular cookbooks.

thankyou so much for this terrific book. All sorts of information for diabetic safe canning, and exchange information. It is wonderful.We now know how to preserve our harvest since our 5 year old grandson just got diabetes.

This is a good cookbook and offers some good canning recipes. However, many of the sugar substitutes that are used are not easily available (at the grocery store) and must be purchased through a health food store.

I gave it four stars because it gives a lot of ideas that can be built upon to create your own sugarless recipe, and sugarless sweeteners that hold up under heat CAN be substituted in some cases. I'm sorry it is out of print, because it is helpful. Well worth purchasing a used copy if you can find one!

If not, the Ball books Ball Blue Book of Preserving and Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving both contain excellent resources as well! I have both in my library and have enjoyed recipes from both!

*** Much later post - The FDA has recently approved Stevia (the sweetener used in this text) as a sweetener, and it is NOW available at the grocery store along with the artificial sweeteners. Since Stevia can be heated safely without a change in taste, it is the sweetener of choice for the author. I DO recommend that you do some "taste-testing" before you invest in the recipes, since stevia is tasted by some as "bitter."

I was seriously disappointed when I got my cookbook and read the Recipe section. If you're looking for low sugar/ low carb recipes, this is not the cookbook for you.
There is some good general canning info in the book, BUT while true to the title, Without Sugar, it is not suitable for diabetics or those on low/no carb diets. All the recipes are sweetened with either Honey or full sugar fruit juices. For a diabetic, honey and fruit juices are just as bad as Sugar. I drink fruit juice to bring up my sugars if I experience a serious drop in my blood sugar. Don't be confused. While it does have diabetic diet point system information, these recipes are not what a diabetic cook is looking for.

This book is good for a first time canner. It has good method descriptions and some good recipes. I bought this book for my daughter in law who will be canning for the first year. The only fault with this book was that it predates all of the new sugar free canning options like Splenda, Sweet N Low.

Although there's plenty of good information in this book, I was quite disappointed to find that the recipes are not "without sugar" - they simply substitute an alternative sugar such as fruit juice or a honey syrup. While both of those options are better than white sugar, for someone trying to reduce their sugar intake (especially because of diabetes or sugar sensitivity) they're only marginally helpful. It's also worth noting that using such substitutes could quickly become prohibitively expensive. I recommend checking your library for this before investing in your own copy to see how well it will actually fit your needs.

Excellent book; although, I would have liked to see more Splenda used as a sugar substitute.