Meals in a Jar: Quick and Easy, Just-Add-Water, Homemade Recipes Author: Julie Languille | Language: English | ISBN:
1612431631 | Format: PDF
Meals in a Jar: Quick and Easy, Just-Add-Water, Homemade Recipes Description
About the Author
Julie Languille is passionate about both food and preparedness. She owns a dinner planning website with thousands of recipes compiled to make dinner planning, shopping and cooking easy for families. She teaches workshops on preparedness and long term food storage and regularly hosts food packaging parties where families gather to make pre-packaged meal kits to build their own food storage as well as bless families in need. Julie lives with her husband and family on lovely Whidbey Island, in the Puget Sound near Seattle, and when not cooking loves to read, sail and kayak in the waters near her home.
- Paperback: 160 pages
- Publisher: Ulysses Press (March 19, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1612431631
- ISBN-13: 978-1612431635
- Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 0.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Even though I purchased this book at an introductory price, I feel it was $8.35 wasted. It falls far short of my expectations. If I could give it zero stars, I would.
One: The book is called "Meals in a Jar," and yet the preferred technique to prepare this food for long term storage uses something called a "retort pouch." So it's not about storing dry food in a container packed with an oxygen absorber; it's a book about pressure canning wet/cooked foods. Even the cover photo features dry ingredients stored in JARS. This book should have been entitled, "Meals in a Retort Pouch." Of course, if it had been, I never would've purchased it.
Two: There's no resources section in the front or back of the book for finding the products mentioned, like the retort pouches. The one link that appears in the book doesn't carry them (I checked this last night. They have mylar bags, but they don't have retort pouches of any size.). So good luck even finding them anywhere, since Amazon doesn't currently have them available.
Three: Her method makes MASSIVE amounts of food. I mean, putting together recipes with ingredient lists involving 16 cups of rice. If you're preparing for a small family or couple, the recipes are less than useless, since many of them make enough food for eight meals that feed six or eight EACH.
Four: Pressure canning is not "quick and easy," as this method is described on the cover. As one reviewer here said, "If you are a beginner and want to use this book, please be aware that you should learn to pressure can, and gather up the proper equipment." Guess how many hundreds of dollars and many hours you'll spend learning all that, before you can even BEGIN to use this book.
This book, Meals in a Jar, has inaccurate information. There is NO properly tested process times for retort pouches of food at home. If this author has paid for thermal process authority development, then fine, but she does not indicate that anywhere in this book. Instead she lists USDA processing times to be used with retort pouches and this is NOT SAFE. USDA process times are intended only for use in the jars or cans listed on the National Center for Home Food Preservation website, recent Cooperative Extension Service publications and in the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning.
The process time is an issue as a cold spot (slowest heating spot) would have to be determined to measure adequate heating during the process time. In a jar or can, in a "still" canning situation like a home canner, the container sits still inside the heating medium of water or steam. Heat penetrates throughout the container in a predictable pattern.
The size and shape of a container and then placement inside a water bath or pressure canner makes a difference to the heating pattern and ultimately the process time for a food. You cannot just transfer a canning process from a jar to a pouch of similar size.
Certainly the product dimensions would suggest that retort pouches could be processed in home canners, but in order for heat transfer to be effective specialized equipment is needed to maintain package integrity. Additionally, the pressure in this type of pressurized canner is higher than in a home canner; thus the temperature used for processing is higher.
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