Product Description

More than just a cookbook, this encyclopedic guide seeks to teach methods of applying the many concepts of cooking to our everyday lives. From pickles and relishes to chutneys and sauces, the process of food preservation is thoroughly demonstrated.

Educating each person on how to safely preserve their own foodstuffs at home is the foundation of "Pickles to Relish." Using this model, hundreds of easy-to-follow recipes, techniques, and tips for the home canner are presented. Also featured are in-depth explanations on how home-preservation can offer economic, social, and health benefits.

Its ease of use and wide array of information lends itself to a broad audience. From novice to professional chef, this guide is designed for use by anyone. Recipes that teach how to make pickles in plastic baggies for a single serving are alongside recipes with detailed pH instructions for the more difficult applications.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61830 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-03
• Released on: 2008-04-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

From the Inside Flap
"This cookbook puts a dazzling array of foods often thought of as mere condiments front and center, within reach of even those home cooks with basic skills, limited time, and access to simple ingredients." --%iMcHenry County Woman Newspaper%r Specifically designed for ease of use, this informative manual presents a variety of delectibly homemade pickles, chutneys, sauces, and relishes. Recipes such as the mouth-watering Hot Indian Apple Chutney and Honey Sweet Eggplant Nuggets are amongst need-to-know instructions. Valuable tips and tricks every preserver should know are also found throughout the book. Learning to use the pickling processes documented, the reader learns that food preservation has greatly impacted human survival by extending the shelf life of the foods we eat. This idea is explored through a wide array of subjects, such as chemistry, history, and horticulture. Each chapter contains discussions of various methods of processing, including the popular rolling-water bath and low-temperature pasteurization. Also offered are easy-to-follow definitions and comparisons of various preservative techniques such as pickling, fermenting, and agro-processing. Information covering the all-important aspects of pH levels in foods and how to measure them is also incorporated into this well-written and researched encyclopedic guide. [BACK FLAP] Beverly Ellen Schoonmaker Alfeld is a scientist, chef, artist, and ethnobotanist who has completed the school of instruction in food processing prescribed by the Food and Drug Administration. She writes a regular column for %iFruit and Gardener Magazine.%r Alfeld has more than two decades of experience in elementary, high-school, university, and junior-college classrooms. She is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the founder of the Donald L. Schoonmaker Scholarship Fund. She also works as an advocate for special-needs children. Alfeld is the author of %b%iThe Jamlady Cookbook,%r also published by Pelican.

From the Back Cover
"I have been a lifelong connoisseur of fruits and vegetables that have become condiments, food that has evolved into another form of itself over time. Bev Alfeld shows her reader how to add pizazz to food, as pickling enhances the essence of an ingredient. This book offers a myriad of exciting concepts--food preservation, the history of self-survival through fermentation, the field of culinology, and of course, healthy food education. Bev Alfeld, also known as the "Jamlady," offers essential information for the gardener, professional chef, nutritionist, food historian, farmer, food scientist, and "pickler" in all of us. This book reveals an ancient culinary art %iand%r contemporary techniques. Everyone needs a copy of %b%iPickles to Relish.%r" --Charlie Trotter, owner, Charlie Trotter's Restaurant

About the Author
Beverly Ellen Schoonmaker Alfeld, also known as "Jamlady," grew up in a commercial-nursery/greenhouse family in Accord, New York. Her early interest in horticulture and cooking were a tremendous influence on her later innovations in canning.

Alfeld is dedicated to educating home cooks on how to can safely. Her creativity and extensive research has led her to assemble innovative recipes. Jamlady's methods dispel the mysterious aura around home canning and debunk the myth that canning is only for those with extensive leisure time.

Alfeld began her post-secondary education by earning a B.A. in art from the State University of New York. She went on to teach elementary school art and spent much of her free time studying plants. She returned to her formal education, earning a M.A. in theoretical and applied design and a M.F.A. in art and textile chemistry from Northern Illinois University. She also completed advanced coursework in the fields of education, administration, and school law.

After twenty years of teaching art, science, and consumer education to elementary, high-school, college, and special-needs students, Alfeld retired from the classroom. She explored her entrepreneurial side as she ran a thirteen-acre organic farm and opened a farmers' market in Crystal Lake, Illinois. During this time, she completed the school of instruction in food processing prescribed by the Food and Drug Administration.

Alfeld then founded her company, Cook, Seal, and Process: Purveyors of Fine Preserves and Condiments, and began marketing Jamlady products. She later authored "The Jamlady Cookbook," a resource cookbook for the canner, gardener, gourmet chef, and health-conscious person. The book features more than four hundred recipes for jellies, jams, preserves, butters, and other homemade products. Most recently, Alfred wrote "Pickles to Relish", an encyclopedic cookbook with an ethnobotanical approach to cooking, canning, and living.

Alfeld is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and is the founder of the Donald L. Schoonmaker Scholarship Fund. She is a judge at the annual International Pickle Festival in Rosendale, New York, and is a contributing editor and columnist for Fruit Gardener magazine. Her column, "Jamming with Jamlady," can be found in each issue. Alfeld is also a reader for Corwin Press, an education publisher.

She also works as an advocate for special-needs children and divides her time between Crystal Lake, Illinois; Accord, New York; and Chokoloskee Island, Florida. Her two children, Tim and Kim Alfeld, are actively involved in her business operation.

Customer Reviews

Something for everyone in this amazing book!
Pickles to Relish
If you are an adult or a kid or ever eaten a pickle or wanted a relish, chutney, etc. to add zest to your food and enhance your life, don't waste any time in reading this multi-faceted book. As the author Beverly Ellen Schoonmaker Alfeld notes, "not all the recipes are canning recipes." You can also refrigerate and freeze the many tasty delights. What could be better than a "pickled green walnut on a filet mignon", to "Hot Crocodile Chutney" or "Hot Beekeepr's Relish to zip up your life, health and make you feel good! You'll get insight to a better way of life if you read this book and adopt some of the "Jam Lady's sage advice on everything from one's lifestyle to instructing your kids to give them a more meaningful existence on how and where our food comes from! You will be instructed on how to make a simple pickle, relish, chutney, sauce and a whole lot more. You will be given the history of many foods. There is valuable data included throughout the book. There is verything from the pH of foods, instructions on proper labeling, listings of stores, pickle events, proper canning techniques, safeguards, and how you can modify a recipe like corn relish and make it "extra hot to "not so hot". Information is given about the myriad of sweetners that can be selected for the recipes. There are recipes that don't need any sweetener for people that are intolerant. There is extensive information throughout the book in the form of pictures,charts and appendixes. I highly recommend the "Jam Lady's PICKLES To RELISH book. You will be enriched.

Delicious fun
I bought this book because I love pickles. Now I sure I will start to love relishes and chutney just as much. This book is so much fun, you want to put it down and run into the kitchen and start cooking. I am not much of a chef, but this book is so easy to understand, I am sure I will make some great foods for my family and friends. Many thanks to the author, this is a fabulous book.

A Strong Start
Ms. Schoonmaker Alfeld is scientist enough to learn you (as distinct from "teach you", but more about this slant later) all you need to know about getting started in this broad and ancient realm.

We need not preserve food. We do it now because we like the effects. Time was when summer milk soon spoils while the hunger of winter awaits grimly. Cheese fools the grim reaper. But now we often prefer cheese to milk on any given meal. So too with vegetables to some lesser extent, most notably cucumber.

This book is about pickling vegetables and some fruit and a bit more in the use of herbs and spice. She asks you to read the whole book before doing anything. At under two hundred well illustrated pages, this is no hard task, and mostly true to her advice.

If you have any serious intent as a beginner or so, you should have this book. She is, shall I say, a most difficult writer. Not for lack of direction or clarity -- quite the opposite. But she tells you the simple truth, and I dare say, rather more.

You get a good dose of her moral brine. She tells you to involve your young children. Again, she learns you to learn them, rather than just teach by text or example. I did this learning with my daughter and she can now make a better pie crust than I can, for example. And just this year, we are starting on pickles. And she has formal chemistry teaching. But pickling is bringing it to bear in her personal life.

Ms. Schoonmaker Alfield also mentions the possible concerns with genetic engineering of seeds. She has good treatment of poisons and toxic conditions. But she is teacher enough to be fun. If you want to work in this area, there is no better place to start, and it certainly takes prior place to all my less technical books. which are all now more useful to me than before!