Jam eBook Sale

Thanks to all of you who have looked at my ebook over the past year!

A Simple Jar of Jam is a collection of more than 180 jam, jelly, marmalade, glaze and chutney recipes and variations from this blog.   The vast majority of them use low sugar pectin. Click here for a preview to see the table of contents, a few recipes and the index. The ebook is an interactive pdf, best viewed using Adobe or iBook.  

To celebrate the beginning of jam season this year,  we are lowering the price from $7.95 to $4.99 for the next few weeks.  [That's a 37% savings.]  Tell your friends - Spread the news!

You don't need a coupon code or anything, just go to Rurification's Etsy Shop and buy it. 

Thank you so much for reading the blog and buying the ebook.  Every purchase goes a long way to help support this blog.  

Soap Book Reviews

I've been making soap for years using a cold process method.  There were just a few books on the market when we started making soap but there are several new books out there now and I realized it was time to check them out.  So much fun to read through a pile of new soap books!  I liked these two the best.  Soap Crafting, and Handcrafted Soap. 

For those of you new to soap making, let me answer a couple of questions first.

'Melt and pour' is when you buy pre-made soap, usually clear glycerine soap, at your local craft store and then all you have to do is melt it, add some color and scent and pour it into fun molds.  Easy.   These books aren't about that.  They are about making cold process and hot process soap.

Hot process and cold process soap making start the same way:  with oils and lye.   You start by mixing the lye into water and cooling it to under 120 degrees.  You melt your oils together and cool them to the same temp as the lye solution.   Then you mix them together to make your soap mixture. 

Cold process is when you pour the new soap mixture into a mold and let it cure slowly on its own.   You can unmold it after a couple of days, but saponification occurs slowly over the next few weeks.

Hot process is when you pour the new soap mixture into a slow cooker or pot and heat it up to quickly finish the saponification process in an hour or so.  

Soap Crafting: Step-by-Step Techniques for Making 31 Unique Cold-Process Soaps is a new book on cold process soap making that takes you through the basics and then shows a bunch of beautiful techniques for how to mix colors and make your soaps fancier. It was written by Anne-Marie Faiola, the Soap Queen, who has a terrific blog and who owns Brambleberry, an excellent (if pricey) source for soapmaking supplies.  The book is clear, beautiful and excellent for beginning and intermediate soap makers.  There's a good list of ingredients and a troubleshooting section.  It's got a spiral binding that allows you to open the book and keep it open while you're working.  I love it!  I've put this book on my book widget [See BOOKS tab above], too, if you need to find it later.

The second book Handcrafted Soap is all about hot process soap making, something that I had never tried. This book is by Delores Boone, who has done a great job of introducing soapmaking for beginners who want to finish it quickly by heating it at the end. There's a good description of oils, the basic process and the finishing processes. A great book for people who want to use the hot process method. Only one problem. The book is now out of print and it is way too expensive. I include the link here only so you know what book I'm talking about and so you can keep your eye open for it at used book places. It's definitely worth a few bucks to put in your how-to library, but not more than that.  The process is EASY.   I tried it right away and will give you a report tomorrow.

Emergency Kit First Aid Book

I got this book for us for Christmas to add to our Bug Out Bags. It is full of fantastic information and exactly what I needed to keep in our emergency first aid kit. 

It is spiral bound and all of the pages are plastic coated so the book can be used in the wet without falling apart or spoiling.   I love that!

 Check out those tabs along the bottom. There are sections on:

• safety
• cpr
• medical [e.g. childbirth and allergies]
• injury [including stitches]
• environmental dangers [e.g. altitude sickness and hypothermia]
• poison
• disaster
• survival

The dimensions are 3"x6" including the binding.  It's an ideal collection of information to keep with emergency packs.  

The only thing I don't like about it is the spiral binding, which I assumed would be along the side [no biggie that it's on the top], and which is made out of plastic.  [Seriously, guys??]   I'll find a sturdier case to keep it in so it doesn't get destroyed in the pack.

Here's the link to the Amazon page:

 

Jam Book Giveaway!

This is the Big Birthday Week and to celebrate, I'm giving away 3 copies of this terrific ebook all about making jam with low sugar pectin.

You might recognize it.  I wrote it myself!  [It's a really good book!]

It's a collection of the jam recipes [and marmalade recipes, and sauce recipes and marinade recipes and glaze recipes...] from the first couple of years of the blog.  Plus, there are sections on troubleshooting runny jam to firm it up, lists of high pectin and low pectin fruit, a whole section on why low-sugar pectin is my pectin of choice [including comparisons of different brands of pectin, etc.], and even a section on how to get that sugar burn off your nice Le Creuset pot.

It's an ebook - 7.7M interactive PDF file, which means you can click on stuff in the Table of Contents and Index and go right to that page in the book.   Handy!!   Plus, you can add your own bookmarks to make it even easier to zip around to your favorite recipes.

You can access the book in Adobe, iBook, and Kindle.  It works best in Adobe and iBook, so you can use it on your phone, or ipad, or laptop, or desktop computers. [Kindle lets you read PDFs, but they are not interactive.]

I know you'll want to look inside so take a look at the preview!  Check out that Table of Contents and then skim on over to the Tips list in the Index.    You need this book. 

To win a copy of A Simple Jar of Jam, leave a comment on the blog or facebook, or Google +, or Twitter telling me what your favorite kind of jam is. 

Giveaway ends at midnight EDT on Sunday, July 21, 2013.   Watch the blog next week to claim your prize.  I'll email you the file as soon as I get your email address.

Cherry Vanilla Jam

It's the cheery cherry time of year.   If you're lucky enough to score some sour pie cherries, then try this jam.   It's really excellent with whipped cream cheese over pancakes. 

Cherry Vanilla Jam
www.rurification.com

4 cups pitted cherries
1 cup water or juice
4 Tablespoons low-sugar pectin [such as Ball or Dutch All Natural Lite]
2 cups sugar
2 Tablespoons vanilla extract

Combine the cherries, water/juice and pectin.    Bring to hard boil.  [A hard boil is one you can't stir down.]   Stir constantly and boil hard for 1 minute.    Add sugar and vanilla.   Stir well and return to a hard boil.   Stir constantly and boil hard for 1 minute.    Ladle into jars.  Cap with clean lids and rings.

For this recipe and more than 180 others, check out my ebook  A Simple Jar of Jam.  You can preview it by clicking the preview link on my sidebar. 

July Jam Book Launch Party!

As part of my Big Birthday Month Celebration, I'm celebrating the launch of my new ebook - A Simple Jar of Jam: 180+ recipes & variations for jam using low sugar pectin.  It's all about making jam with low-sugar pectin.  Simple jam!  Plus lots and lots of recipes and variations. [More than 180 - that's a lot of jam!]

Feedback on the book so far has been fantastic.  Here's a review from Growing, Writing, Creating:

"...gorgeous new jam e-book ... called "A Simple Jar of Jam" and it's as much a work of art as it is a how-to-make-jam book. ... If you like to make jam, you should add "A Simple Jar of Jam" to your library (or e-library). "

Most of the recipes call for low sugar pectin, but there are a few in there that don't require any pectin at all.  Plus, there are plenty of Jam 101 basics for those of you just getting started on your jam-making adventures.   I've simplified things and collected all the great information from this blog into one handy ebook full of tips and tricks and troubleshooting ideas and wonderful recipes.

There's a link on my sidebar that will take you to a preview of the book so you can see the Table of Contents, a few recipes and the index.   When you're ready to buy, just hop on over to Etsy** and in a few clicks, it's yours!

To celebrate the launch of the book and because I love you all, I'm giving my blog readers a Jam Book Launch discount code to use in the Rurification Etsy Shop  on Friday, July 5, 2013.   It will let you buy A Simple Jar of Jam for only $1.99.  Just enter this coupon code [below] when you check out:

 JamBookLaunchParty

Also,  I'm on Goodreads now!  [Can't believe it took me so long....]  Look me up and friend me [Robin Edmundson].   And if any of you are Goodreads librarians, would you be willing to add my book to the database?  It's been weeks now but it won't recognize the isbn [978-0-9895089-0-2], so it'll have to be added manually.  

Thanks so much!  I hope your summer is lovely and full of delicious jam!

**Why Etsy?   Etsy allows authors to sell ebooks as beautiful interactive PDF docs.   Amazon doesn't.  Amazon's self publishing company is all about publishing ebooks for the Kindle.   Kindles are great, but they don't support interactive PDF docs.  You can access and read them on a Kindle, but they aren't interactive. Since Amazon is heavily invested in that device, they only allow Kindle files.   Kindle files aren't interactive, and they make for unattractive books - they were designed for text only books, not cookbooks and picture books.  So... until Amazon feels the pressure to allow PDF publishing for things like cookbooks, I'll be selling my books on Etsy.  Spread the word.

Book Review: Winter Harvest

We have a cold frame that allows us to grow a 12 month garden.   It's a miracle.   See the search bar on the right sidebar?  --->   Do a search for cold frame and you can see what we've been doing with them for the past few years.

Because I want to increase our winter harvest, I picked up a couple of extra books to read up this winter.    I found a real gem!

The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses by Eliot Coleman  [photo from Amazon].

Did you read the part in the subtitle about unheated greenhouses?

Un. Heated. Greenhouses.

Since our electric bill almost doubled due to federal regulations [we live in a coal state], we're all over the unheated thing.   Which is why you're seeing a lot of posts about wood burning stoves, cold frames and unheated greenhouses.

The author, Eliot Coleman, operates a 12 month organic vegetable garden/farm in Maine.    They use a lot of horse poop and careful cultivation to keep the weeds down and they use low tech greenhouses to keep things going all winter long.

The trick is double covering the vegetables all winter, knowing what the sun is doing at your latitude, and knowing which vegetables to sow when.

The book describes in detail how to cover your beds and how to build inexpensive structures to do the job.    He describes in detail how to compost and what to use.    He describes in detail how to figure out what the winter sun is doing in your area  and how to use that to your advantage to figure out both fall planting/winter harvesting and early spring planting schedules.   

What I loved best is the whole discussion of when to plant things.   I had used my cold frames to grow things in the winter.    The problem is that there isn't enough sun for things to grow during Dec and Jan, and so things I planted in December [after the first harvest] weren't growing.    He explains that what you have to do is plant early so you can harvest all winter.    You're not growing things in deep winter, you're holding them stable for harvest all winter.   Which means I have to re-think how I plant in the fall and that I can plant a lot earlier than I thought in the spring - as long as things are under cover.   

I do know that the radishes we're eating this month are a whole different creature from the same radishes grown with the same seed planted in April.  And those carrots that tasted like trees in August - will taste a lot better in December.   Next year's winter garden will be a lot better.

If you are at all interested in 12 month gardening and harvesting, read this book.  

Natural Yeast

A friend of mine has just published a book on making your own natural yeast.    It'll be out soon!

He sent us a start of his to get us started.   Here it is, all bubbly and awesome.  We're playing with now, figuring out how it works - this is NOT the synthetic fast rise yeast that you buy at the store.


We'll keep you posted.

Here's a link to The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast by Caleb Warnock and Melissa Richardson.   You can pre-order it now.  It's due out August 14th.