I cannot live without the new edition of the Ball Blue Book because I know all the recipes in it are tested and government-approved for safety. (It amazes me how picky, picky, picky they've become! I'd rather be safe than sorry though.) I believe this edition was new last year, and I think my older one was about 10 years old, so it was time for me to get the newer one. Usually Wal-Mart has it on the canning shelf, and I even saw it with the canning displays/equipment at Lowe's last year, but I am not sure if I've seen it in the stores yet this year. It has a yellow, green and blue cover with a gorgeous peach pie and jars of peaches on the front cover and is the 100th Anniversary Edition of the Ball Blue Book.

Another favorite of mine since I love making pickles is "The Joy of Pickling, 2nd Edition" by Linda Ziedrich. It is almost 400 pages of recipes for pickling everything under the sun from standard garden veggies to duck eggs to Kimchi and other cabbage pickles to freezer pickles to fermented pickles....I could try 10 or 20 new recipes a year and never get around to trying everything in this book.

I also use "The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving" by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard. Its recipes were tested and deemed safe at the time it was published in 2007 amd it was in its fourth printing by 2009 so clearly it is selling well. Many of these recipes make small batches of 2, 3 or 4 pints and I like that because I can try many new things without making a whole lot of any given one. It has recipes for pickles, jams and jellies (including low-sugar ones), sauces, salsas and even flavored oils.

So, there's my three recommendations (because you knew I couldn't recommend only one).

I also lurk at the Harvest Forum in the summer looking for new recipes, and frequent the website of the National Center for Home Food Preservation (where most all of our safety-approved recipes originate any more, it seems, or at least are tested and approved there). If you can't find a recipe at the NHCFP website, then something is wrong because they have them all.

Dawn

I bought "The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving" by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard which seems perfect for my little bitty/teeny tiny garden. I can't wait to start trying some of the recipes. I just need my veggies to hurry up ~ perhaps I should go outside and say something nice and encouraging to them.

Lynn

Lynn,

Just sweet talk the plants and promise them anything if only they'll produce.

Since we have had plentiful rain in the last week to ten days, and now we're going to have sun and heat, I would think the veggies will be deliriously happy as long as you're not in one of the areas where flooding is now a concern. (I'm not.)

Dawn

LOL - I read Lynn's message this morning and thought, just say nice things because they have had enough harshness in their lives already. I didn't have time to post and was running off to take my computer to the shop for the second time this week. eek!!

We are in the flood warning area, but for me that will just mean that the lake level will be higher and the lake will be filled with trash. I drove down to the dock this afternoon and one of my neighbors said that he had watched the lake come up about 6 inches today and it was still rising. It has been many feet higher in the past so there is nothing to worry about here, but I still have a soggy garden.

Carol,

We're very soggy too, but in a odd way it is better (only slightly) than being bone dry. The Red River is up and running a bit fast, but that's OK because Lake Texoma was a tiny bit lower than usual.

Because it is May and May is weather hell here, there's severe Tstorms and tornadic weather in and around Dallas, so I'm doing some minor storm watching since DH and DS both work there. So far, there's nothing there compared to what OK has endured the last two weeks but a tornadic rotation has been visable a long time and it is moving towards the Waxahatchie area....all I can think about is all those big, grand restored homes that are around 100 years old or older and I sure hope they don't get hit.

Dawn