Canning Book confusion

[kimba]

Ok - I was looking in Amazon and I found these two books:

 

Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving by Judi Kingry

 

and

 

Ball Blue Book of Preserving Alltrista Consumer Products; 100th Anniversary Edition edition (June 2004)

 

Which do I want?? LOL! I'm a beginning canner and I'm looking for a good well rounded guide.

 

Thanks in Advance!!

 

[Cat]

The very best guide for the most up-to-date information is the latest version of the Ball Blue Book. Any other books should be compared against that one and adjusted accordingly.

 

Violet and Crazy4Canning are both our very best *online* resources here, and they are VERY gracious about helping us figure out any discrepancies in recipes.

 

 

 

(Check your private messages)

 

 

 

[Canned Nerd]

The current Ball Blue Book is the "Guide To Preserving" with Peaches on the cover. It's also their anniversary edition. The previous Book is "of Preserving" with a Blueberry cover and is still valid. There is also a Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving with an additional 400 recipes.

 

There are many good books out there, but the most important consideration is that they are (re)published after about 1994.

 

[Violet]

The Ball Blue Book is the basic book and a very good resource. You always want to keep current with them, so that is right, the one with the peaches on front is the newest.

The Ball Complete is a Canadian publication, which is also very good, but it has more "gourmet" type things added. It is good for additional recipes.

For a beginner, I suggest the regular Ball Blue Book. Normally it is about $6 or so. The Ball Complete was more, about $20 or $25, I don't remember which.

I don't want you to get overwhelmed by all of this. I think everyone should have a current Ball Blue Book. Some of the older ones will have outdated information, so always get a new one.

[kimba]

Thanks so much for your help!!

 

And a special thanks to Cat

[Crazy4Canning]

I have both of these and I use the regular Ball Blue Book all the time. The newest edition is yellowish in color and is an anniversary edition. I love the new edition because it really goes into depth regarding WHY we do what we do when we can safely. It also has really great photos.