Meals in a Jar: Quick and Easy, Just-Add-Water, Homemade Recipes Kindle Edition

I purchased this book after it was featured in a Mother Earth newsletter. After reading the book description, I had visions of filling the pantry with canning jars full of ready prepared meals.I am disappointed that most of the recipes either call for a dehydrator, pressure canner or vacuum sealer. I have wanted a dehydrator for years; however, for my family it is a big financial investment. I have a vacuum sealer, but it creates plastic waste. I liked the idea of canning jars because they are reusable.If you already own a dehydrator, pressure canner and vacuum sealer, I would recommend this book to you. If not, I would probably recommend another book.

I used this book for ideas for making meals in bags featured on our YouTube Channel: RoseRed Homestead. While many of the ingredient lists in the book feature huge amounts, if you know basic math, it is easy to reduce them to more reasonable amounts. The recipes are very good when made up, although I often substitute ingredients for those we prefer. All in all, a very good book if you want to prepare meals ahead and store them for use later. Great for emergency preparedness.

I love this book.! Several reasons I purchased this book. I've always had an interest in easy to prepare food. I have trouble "cooking small" after many years of cooking for a family. By halving the recipes and canning them in pints jars, I can pull out something, use the side kit and salad... meal complete. The food is good.!! So far only made the chicken and beef chipotle, but the flavor is lovely. Again, side kits make match-ups easy... meal complete. There are so many recipes, I can hardly wait to try them all. Company comes over, put however much I need off the shelf... again meal complete. And I would actually have time to visit. Win-win. Ideas are even suggested how to start stocking your pantry. Seems a bit simplistic, but you'd be surprised. The nebulous ideas that this is a possibility becomes more concrete and doable. Again you'd think that someone with half a brain should be able to figure this out... and you'd be right. However, some of us... and I include myself in that group... just need a little shove in the right direction. This book does just that. Very grateful. I am in the area where Hurricane Harvey hit this year. I didn't have much done yet as I'd just gotten this book. But between what I had done and the side kit ideas for what I had on hand, those 4 days without electric and a single camp burner, I ate well. I made flour tortillas with the ghee and some grilled cheese sandwiches. I don't think I will use regular shortening if I don't need to... heaven. So thanks again for the book. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to stock a pantry and lessen dependence on refrigeration and freezer.

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. Like I said, this option is neither quick, easy, nor cheap. I've made meals in jars using dry food and that process is very simple AND quick to prepare the food when needed. This process is very convoluted and difficult in contrast. And I don't know that the end-result is worth all the extra cost and work when dry food and an O2 absorber in a mason jar works far better and can make very tasty food.Five: The brief how-to section on "canning" with a retort pouch didn't give much information. She makes it seem like you can use a household iron to seal the pouches and then pressure can them. This doesn't seem like an effective or safe way of sealing the pouches. The industry-standard equipment to process these retort pouches -- chamber vacuum sealers -- cost hundreds or even THOUSANDS of dollars. Do you really think your consumer iron and pressure canner will be sufficient to safely process your food? I don't.Six: There's no information in the recipes giving shelf-life of the processed meals. "How long will this be good or safe to eat" is a pretty important piece of information which is completely overlooked. How can I know how long these meals will be good for, when she doesn't include that information? I'm not risking my family's safety on this, thanks.I should have been wary when in the blurb about the author, it mentions she has a "dinner planning website," but the URL isn't given. When I did a web search on the author's name, I couldn't even find this alleged website. Why wouldn't she provide a URL in her bio? She hiding something?Don't waste your time or money on this book; it isn't what you want. There's plenty of good and free information and recipes available on the web for storing meals in jars or mylar bags; this isn't a good resource for such information. Chef Tess the Bakeresse is far more helpful. I have her book, too, and even though some of it is disappointing, it's far more useful than this one will ever be.

It's a good book for dry foods, I was expecting something different in this book.My husband works out of state so I can a lot of meals for him to eat. With this book, I was thinking it would be were you put everything needed for a meal in the jar and then just add water to the jar, heat in the microwave and it's ready type of book, but it's where you store the dry ingredients and then add the several wet ingredients needed and cook in a pot.So for me I was disappointed.It's a great ideal for making meal and baked goods and attaching a recipe card to it.I also like cookbooks with pictures :-)

The title and picture are deceiving - and I think it should be renamed and re marketed...That stated, it was actually some of the more negative reviews that finally sold me on this book.It's actually exactly what I was looking for. I do already own a pressure canner and most equipment needed. I was looking for something to help me turn meat into ready made meals. I was sick of canning one thing at a time. I wanted a pantry of "fast Food" that was healthy, harvested by us - be it elk or veggies - and some new ideas besides my elk stew to use.It's awesome. Not for beginners. But all in all this book is great!!

It would have been helpful o me to have listed somewhere in the write up for this book that it focuses on pressure canning and vacuum sealing above all, NOT on meals in standard jars which is what it's made out to be.As such, I can't really use this book because although pressure canning equipment in the USA can be quite cheap, it is NOT cheap here in the uk and is therefore unfeasible.

Disappointing, it just tells how to fill jars ! no one with any common sense needs to buy a book to be told that ! don't waste your money, the best part is the pretty front cover, open it up though, and you'll be bored !!

This book has got me thinking in putting stuff up for use later in the month suited to this country's ingredients. I am going to enjoy the playing.Thank you for a different take on things.

I don’t have a vacuum sealer and am not buying one just to use this book. Some recipes use ziploc bags of items but there are few of them

I like to preserve thing - especially from my garden. But then there are those meals that you would like to just have ready to go after work but do you really want something with a pile of ingredients that you can't pronounce? This book had great ideas for jars of food that compliment all of my other preserves and I can change it up however I like! I really enjoy this book.