Home canning, drying and preserving

The final line of this introductory chapter states:

Empty jars are Slackers

This is just one example of the tone served throughout the book — Mrs A. Louise Andrea was a lecturer on food and cookery at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the New York International Exposition and was awarded a PPIE Diploma and Gold Medal in cookery.

This chapter states what is to come in the book, which appears to be intended to be first read cover-to-cover, then referred back to as needed — different from how one might “traditionally” consume a recipe book. It offers the broad steps that can be applied to her methods of food preparation, including the necessary equipment, time-saving tips and generalisations:

“Many housewives do up fruits in various ways, but seem afraid to try their hands at soup, meats, fish, and vegetables for fear of failure…”

Andrea’s tone is conversational, and like the rest of the book, she does not make use of the traditional list-format that recipe and reference books use. This chapter is one of the few that use pictures — readers can see a copy of her diploma and three photos in black-and-white of different steps of preserving.