Putting Food By

I have an old book called Putting Food By, and I see that a fifth edition is still available on Amazon.com. I'm not surprised; this is a very useful book that was written in those back-to-nature days of the 70's. It covers canning, freezing, salting, pickling, drying and other techniques of preservation. I don't have a root cellar but if I did, the author would tell me how to manage it. Her tone is a bit bossy, but food safety is a serious topic, and I think her original audience was mostly hippies. I have a first edition from 1973 and it's all splattered and sticky from messy use.
It has a few recipes I use fairly often, like dilly beans and tomato pear chutney. Mostly it's just handy for looking up stuff I can't remember how to do from year-to-year, like making a syrup for plain canned fruit.

I went out picked all the plums last week. I was determined to beat the raccoons at their own game when I realized the devils were sitting up there taking tiny bites and throwing them wastefully on the ground.
Canning plums and peaches with the "raw pack" method is actually pretty simple. And with plums, you don't even have the trouble of peeling them. I washed them carefully (coons!) and then cut and pulled out the pits. This is the wonderful and versatile Italian prune variety. They look green, but are sweet and soft when ripe.
The halves are stacked fairly tightly in hot sterilized jars. My bowl of plums filled 7 pint jars, which is exactly one canner full. THAT doesn't happen very often.
Next, you pour the boiling syrup over the plums. I made it very "light" since no one should have much sugar these days.
Then, into the boiling water canner for a 20 minute processing...
And they all sealed. These should be good on yogurt, or just plain. And I know a little sugar plum who might like them on her vanilla ice cream this winter.
(If her mommy lets her have it, of course :-)