The Meals in a Jar Handbook: Gourmet Food Storage Made Easy Hardcover – January 14, 2014

There are some great recipes in this cookbook! Buyers should be aware that the recipes use Honeyville freeze dried foods rather than grocery staples. That being said, its a great resource for preparing meals with long shelf life (just add water to prepare!), and you could easily sub more "ordinary" ingredients from these ideas if you are not concerned with long-term preparedness.

I'm not a survivalist preparing for total economic collapse. I'm a backpacker in search of better tasting, less expensive, and easy to prepare trail food as an alternative to the various MRE-style offerings on the market. After discovering the meals in a jar concept on YouTube and doing some further research on "Chef Tess", I bought this book pre-production because I wanted to adapt the emergency meals concept to my outdoor expeditions.First, as the Honeyville corporate chef, the author makes it quite clear that the purpose of the book is to promote the purchase and exclusive use of Honeyville food products and nearly every ingredient listed has the Honeyville or Chef Tess name on it. OK, fair enough, since that proviso is clearly stated up front. However, some of the ingredients, like dehydrated minced onions, have close cousins that can be found in local mega-food stores. My thoughts follow:Pros:* The book is hard cover with a sturdy spiral ring binding that allows it to lay open flat; a big plus.* The book is well organized.* The photography is gorgeous.* The recipes are very clearly laid out; it would seem to be nearly impossible to screw anything up.* The author does a good job of warning readers to take special care when packaging the real meat products, something that could be overlooked when most of the other ingredients don't require the same level of care in packaging.* The book is faithful to its premise; every recipe presented is a meal in a jar.Cons:* The book is printed in China :-(* The book has a few technical errors. For example, on page 4 the author recommends "5.0 millimeter" mylar storage bags, which would be 1/5 inch thick! Most likely the recommendation should have been for 5 mil storage bags; mil is a standard term for thousandths of an inch, so 5 mil bags would be only 5 thousandths of an inch thick, which is about the thickness of a sheet of notebook paper. Also, the narrative grammar is occasionally awkward or clunky. Fire the editor.* There is no nutritional information on any of the recipes. Many of the recipes are very high in sugar, butter, cheese, sour cream, and pasta, which is OK for short term emergency situations, but the lack of nutritional information makes it difficult for those who have chronic health conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, etc., to select meals for preparation that will best help them maintain their health. With nearly every American over the age of 45 suffering from one or more of these conditions, I would like to encourage the development of some recipes more friendly to their control.* The Honeyville ingredients are not inexpensive; don't confuse this book with those that promise to help you lower your food budget.Where this book shines - This book is what you need to prepare "emergency" meals that have a long shelf life. Such provisions are smart provision for natural disasters such as hurricanes (like Andrew in south Florida or Katrina in New Orleans), earthquakes, severe weather (like Sandy in New York), or short term food supply disruptions (like being snowed in). They would also be great when Mommy is under the weather; any kid that can boil water can make one of this meals.These recipes are pretty good, but obviously don't taste quite as good as using 100% fresh ingredients. And in small quantities for one person they don't meet my less expensive than pre-prepared alternatives goal for backpacking. However, if you're making that comparison you're missing the point. This book isn't for how you should eat every day. It's for pretty good meals in a sticky situation where your neighbors are subsisting on cold canned soup, or backpacking in the back country and eating well while your trail buddies are eating MREs and canned tuna. Given those scenarios, the book is well worth the cover price.I have no financial interest in this publication or Honeyville.

I loved this book. Nobody makes recipes as awesome as these for food storage! Plus, don't listen to naysayers! I could get freeze-dried and/or dehydrated ingredients from any company and use the recipes, as the author has specified many times on her website and blog. It was originally written when she was Honeyville's chef so she used their products, but you don't have to do so. I was also able to make baking mixes and other shelf-stable recipes for my family that didn't use the freeze-dried items and I use them often for loaves of bread and cookies. There's a ton of information on cheftessbakeresse.com that will help those looking for more from the author. She's always helpful and tries to be available to answer questions. I've found that to be the most amazing part of owning this book! Found her on facebook and joined her group there and wow! So nice. So good at what she does!! Not everyone can just come up with recipes like this and it's just a wonderful resource. Look at some of these recipes. Egg frittata, Thai chicken and spicy peanut sauce with rice, carrot cake breakfast pudding, personal meals, baked ziti, and even pie! You really will love it!!

The book is well made with quality photos and things are laid out nicely BUT the recipes call for specific ingredients from their company. If I had known that beforehand, I would not have purchased the book.I wanted to make my own soup mixes and stuff for less money, not have to spend more money on exclusive ingredients.

There are some awesome recipes in this cookbook, but they are all very carb heavy, so not for keto people that's for sure. I am looking forward to making some of these for camping trips and when my daughter and her family go hiking.

I’m sure that the recipes in this book are good but just about every one of them call for an ingrédient that I don’t have readily available. For example, if I want to make 9-Grain Peaches and Cream Cobbler Cereal, I would need Chef Tess Wise Woman of the East Spice Blend. If I want to make Chinese Sticky Rice, I would need to buy Chef Tess Amazing Wok-Star Seasoning. In addition, now that I have this book I can see that the author pushes Honeyville products almost exclusively. Of course, other brands can be used. Bottom line, I just don’t want to have to run to the store to buy some off-the-wall ingredient, every time I want to use this book. This book is going to Goodwill.

Wow, not only do you get great, easy to follow long term storage techniques, but there are a lot of really tasty looking recipes, that look easy to prepare, due to the "no pops and whistles" style of presentations. This is well worth your time, check it out and enjoy!

This book is specifically written for people who are regularly rotating through their freeze dried foods, OR who have a Harvest Right and are freeze drying their own foods. We are the latter. The book is full of recipes for complete just add water meals that can fit in a quart Mason jar and sealed for mid to long term storage. I'm at the point where I make a massive batch of something on the weekend and then freeze dry what we don't eat. It's nice to get some amounts of things like butter power and cheese powder per jar meal and just use the dry ingredients. The book used Honeyville products ( it IS a Honeyville book) but there are other brands of freeze dried foods. A lot of the powders are also available from Anthony's. Since fats won't freeze dry, butter power and peanut butter power are made by mixing it with maltodextrin. There are some proprietary seasoning blends in the book. It would have been nice to include the recipes for those since we are purchasing the book.

The recipes are fine but as a 'handbook' one should not have to guess what spices are used (Tess' All Purpose Seasoning - means nothing). So, whether or not the Italian Seasoning is romantic or not, a special section of ingredients to make seasoning mixes would be expected and certainly more appropriate in a HANDBOOK. Although basic recipe ingredients are obvious, the seasoning selection (perhaps a ploy to keep customers dependent) is a disappointment. Also, what on earth is cornstarch gel? Perhaps an explanation or two.

It was not at all what I wanted. I wanted to know how to freeze dry and how to rehydrate all this book told me to do was take my freeze dried food and put it in jars. It doesn’t take rocket science to do that! Every meal was the same take it out of a jar and simmer in a pan.I was very disappointed and thought it a waste of money.

Another great book. Especially if you are new to healthy cooking.

wife wasn't real impressed with book, coulda been alot better

Should have read reviews. Do not buy this book if you arent in the us! Biggest waste of money I've ever spent. We dont have freeze dried foods that are required for this recipe in canada