Customer Reviews

Putting It Up With Honey: A Natural Foods Canning and Preserving Cookbook

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This book is a guide to preserving fruits and vegetables while avoiding processed sugar. Although the book refers to honey in the title, not all the recipes use honey, but they all seek to preserve food in natural ways, without sugar or other questionable additives. The book begins with a short introduction describing canning methods and equipment. Then there are chapters on jams, preserves, butters and conserves, canned fruits, pickling, and dried foods. An appendix contains useful charts with amounts of food to be grown and canned for a family of six, a calendar showing which produce items are likely to be in season when, and some tips for canning. Specific canning tips for different techniques are also included in each of the chapters. There is an index.

I've tried several of the recipes in this book and found them to be straightforward to follow, and the end results have been tasty. Geiskopf includes a nice selection of berry recipes and some for rhubarb as well. Her recipes for dips to be used with dried foods as alternatives to sulfur preservation are particularly useful. However, the introductory material about canning can be a bit confusing. The explanations and instructions are a little hard to follow. Fortunately, clear descriptions of canning methods can be found in numerous other books, so if you use this book just for the recipes and get your canning information elsewhere, you should have no problems.

This is one of the best guides I've found in using honey as a replacement in canning and food preservation. The Ball Blue Canning Book #21400 only goes so far and doesn't get into the level of recipes that Geiskopf does. She has a wide variety of recipes. She also gets into pickles, relishes, dried foods and some dips which don't all require honey.

I am so happy with this book! I needed something that didn't include sugar in everything, honey being okay. Well, this book covers the sugar problem like a charm & even has jam type recipes with no pectin! Simply perfect for the SCDiet! We do a lot of canning & since having to go on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, I didn't know what to do! I can't even eat my canned goods. Now I can preserve safely, enjoying my hard work! There are many variations depending on your needs. The variety of recipes is great. This book is going to get A LOT of use! This will easily become my number one canning book!

We keep bees, so honey is something we have as local produce. For canning we use the bible - the Ball Blue Book. I was disappointed to see that most recipes for putting up fruit require sugar and wanted to substitute honey. Someone on a forum recommended this title. I was not disappointed. The first recipe we tried was minted pears. A neighbor brought over six sacks of pears and we set about using these recipes. I still think it's good to have the Ball Blue Book just to refer to, but this book was worth the price. Fruits, preserves, butters and conserves are the food types that one would expect with sweeteners. Surprisingly, the book also addresses pickling and dehydrating.

If you have access to honey or would prefer finding an alternative to sugar, this book is worth checking out.

We're on the Specific Crabohydrate Diet in our household. It's a great diet for those with Crohn's disease and autism. Of the 207 recipes in this book, I was thrilled that about 90 percent were SCD legal. There's so much in here: Jams, Jellies, fruit butters, marmalades, pickled everything, tomato paste, tomato sauce, ketchup, chutneys, relishes and other canned and dried foods. I would highly recomment this book to anyone on a real food diet.

A great little book loaded with clear, concise information about canning,jams/preserves, pickling and drying fruits and veggies using honey instead of sugar. Covers everything from equipment and conversions, to amounts of food needed for a typical family of six. Best of all, the author does not assume the reader has prior knowledge of the process and explains each step.

This book is awesome. I got this book after someone told me she used honey to can peaches. I think this book is going to be a great asset to my collection. I love canning and always trying to find better ways to can with less sugar. This book is it many more natural ways to can. It has everything in it... I think you will love it too...

My family and I use honey only and found this book. It has been a very good resource for putting up foods.