Coolest Book Ever …

I saw this in a garden catalog and had to have it: Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation By The Gardeners and Farmers of Centre Terre Vivante

The Centre Terre Vivante is an “ecological research and education center” locate in Southeastern France. They publish a magazine, Les Quatre Saisons du jardin bio and apparently, this book resulted when they asked their readership to send in recipes and techniques for traditional food preservation. There are intros by Deborah Madison and Eliot Coleman, and I can’t wait to try some of these methods. I see a big stoneware pickling crock in my future and I’m particularly interested in some of the lactobacilic preserving techniques for various root vegetables. The section on root cellaring is fabulous and has given me a bunch of ideas for what to do next year. Carrots for example, growing your own carrots will ruin you for store carrots, and I’ve had trouble preserving them in the past. There’s a method that involves packing them in damp sand that I might try next year … There are instructions for drying various fruits and vegetables, as well as a fascinating method of preserving apples in dried elderberry flowers! Apparently it makes them taste like pineapple? It sounds so romantic that I might just have to try it …