The Amish Canning Cookbook

Varozza, Georgia. The Amish Canning Cookbook: Plain and Simple Living at Its Homemade Best. Eugene, Ore.: Harvest House Publishers, 2013.

In simple language, the author tells newcomers to canning how to get started canning fruits, vegetables, and meats and provides recipes for users to follow. There are introductory chapters giving an overview and providing lists of tools needed to begin canning as well as chapters dealing with the canning of specific product types. She includes waterbath canning as well as pressure canning. The author includes information on adjusting times and pressures based on altitude. She also provides useful information to those who may not keep up with FDA recommendations. Apparently it is not always safe to do what your mother or grandmother did because certain techniques used in the past are no longer FDA approved. For example, an additional acid such as lemon juice or vinegar may need to be added when canning tomatoes. The word "Amish" in this title appears to be more of a marketing ploy than authenticity since many of the recipes have been altered to conform to FDA recommendations. While the author makes a statement late in the book about having a simple background, there are no statements that lead me to believe any of these recipes came from an Amish person's home. I received an advance "for review purposes only" e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley. I am unable to comment on photographs because they were unavailable to me.