#000439
Keeping the Harvest: Preserving Your Fruits, Vegetables & Herbs
Nancy Chioffi & Gretchen Mead
*Keeping the Harvest* is one of those quietly authoritative kitchen manuals that earns a permanent shelf spot. Written by the Vermonters Nancy Chioffi and Gretchen Mead—seasoned gardeners and cooks—and published by Storey, it lays out the whole vocabulary of putting food by: freezing, water-bath and pressure canning, drying, pickling, curing, and making jams, jellies, and even sauerkraut. What makes it trustworthy is its plainness. It explains the why of safe preservation as well as the how, walks through each fruit and vegetable in turn, and doesn't assume you already know a thing. There are recipes too, but the heart of the book is technique. For anyone with a productive garden, a farmers'-market habit, or simply the urge to waste less and store more, it remains a clear, practical, and genuinely useful guide that has stayed in print for decades on merit.
more…less ▴
The authors
Nancy Chioffi and Gretchen Mead are Vermonters with deep hands-on experience as gardeners and cooks—the kind of practical experts food-preservation books depend on. They write from the standpoint of people who actually grow and put up their own food, which lends the instructions a reassuring, tested authority.
The book
Published by Storey (a house long associated with country living and self-sufficiency), Keeping the Harvest is a comprehensive primer covering freezing, canning, pressure canning, drying, pickling, curing, and jam- and jelly-making, plus newer shortcuts like microwave-drying herbs. It proceeds methodically, giving both the underlying principles of safe preservation and step-by-step methods for individual fruits, vegetables, and herbs, alongside a good stock of recipes.
How to read it
Treat it as a reference to keep by the stove, not a book to read through. Its virtue is thoroughness and clarity: it is careful about safety—especially the pressure-canning that low-acid foods require—and it never talks down to a beginner. Decades in print testify to how well it works.
For more context
It complements the Ball Blue Book of canning and the broader Storey library on gardening and homesteading.
Sources - Storey / Hachette - Internet Archive
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Nancy Chioffi & Gretchen Mead
- Publisher
- Storey Publishing
- Place of publication
- Pownal, Vermont
- Year
- 1991
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Craft & How-to
- Location
- Colorado