Plan of (non-botulism) Attack

Food preserving is all about keeping food safe for longer. And one of the main points of the food preservation competitions at the State Fair is to help educate people about appropriate canning procedures. To that end, all entries must meet USDA standards as outlined by one of three sources: 1) USDA Guide to Home Canning, 2) Ball Blue Book, or 3) So Easy to Preserve.

We bought ourselves the first two, plus the ATK cookbook (Foolproof Preserving), and figured we'd be good to go. The USDA guide definitely has the basics of what and how to do it, but I prefer the Ball Blue Book. In addition to step by step directions of how to process a wide variety of items, it includes recipes of how to use the items you preserve. I really like this addition because I think it's easy to can a lot of things and then never use them because you're saving them for "food storage for the apocalypse" or something. We decided early on in this adventure that we're not going to can anything we wouldn't eat, and are trying to use them - though perhaps judicially - as part of our everyday pantry.