A resource cookbook for the canner, gardener, gourmet chef, baker, and beginning home cook. More than 400 recipes for jellies, jams, butters, and preserves, with recipes for cooking with delicious homemade potables. A resource cookbook for the canner, gardener, gourmet chef, baker, and beginning home cook. More than 400 recipes for jellies, jams, butters, and preserves, with recipes for cooking with delicious homemade potables. "Jamlady is at your side every step of the way, with history, cautions . . . and a sense of good taste." --from the foreword More than a cookbook, this food-preparation reference guide is a superbly informative read, with useful information on everything from the cultivation of plants and new techniques in jamming to liqueurs and cordials. While many people believe they lack the hobby time to can preserves, Jamlady demonstrates techniques and ingredients adaptable to busy households. For years, visitors to Chicagoland farmers' markets have counted on Jamlady's impressive selection of jams and jellies to add excitement to meals. 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. More advanced recipes and methods teach more experienced canners the savory and sweet secrets to creating their own fine preserves. The extensive baking section and serving suggestions offer ideas on how to best showcase these preserved and enhanced flavors. Jamlady's decades of research and experimentation have culminated in this impressive volume, destined to become a dog-eared classic in the pantheon of cooking manuals. The Jamlady Cookbook is a resource guide for the canner, gardener, gourmet chef, and health-conscious person and features more than four hundred recipes for jellies, jams, preserves, butters, and other homemade products. Jamlady is dedicated to educating home cooks on how to can safely. Her creativity and extensive research in the field have led her to assemble innovative recipes, with methods that often dispel the mysterious aura around home canning and debunk the myth that it is only for people with extensive hobby time. Jamlady is dedicated to educating home cooks on how to can safely. Her creativity and extensive research in the field have led her to assemble innovative recipes, with methods that often dispel the mysterious aura around home canning and debunk the myth that it is only for people with extensive hobby time. Beverly Ellen Schoonmaker Alfeld 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. Ms. 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 leisure time studying plants both within the United States and abroad. She returned to her formal education, earning an M.A. in theoretical and applied design and an 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-school, high- school, and college students, including special-needs students, Ms. Alfeld retired from full-time classroom teaching to run a thirteen-acre organic farm and open a farmersí market in Crystal Lake, Illinois. During this time, she studied to receive a certificate in food science from the Food and Drug Administration. In 1995, Ms. Alfeld founded her company, Cook, Seal, and Process: Purveyors of Fine Preserves and Condiments, and began marketing Jamlady products. She wrote The Jamlady Cookbook, a resource cookbook for the canner, gardener, gourmet chef, and health-conscious person that features more than four hundred recipes for jellies, jams, preserves, butters, and other homemade products. Ms. Alfeld is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and is the founder of the Donald L. Schoonmaker Scholarship Fund. 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. The Jamlady Cookbook PELICAN PUBLISHING