Ongoing research

No canning of butter, cheese, cream, yogurt, etc. will produce a safe product.Aside from a very tiny bit of butter that may be used to reduce foaming when canning jams and jellies, there are no home canning recommendations for dairy products, including butter, hard and soft cheeses, milk, and yogurt.Many …

Should you process water for storage and emergency use? Experts recommend that households store at least a three-day supply of water per person to cover drinking and food preparation needs in the event of an emergency.  With a minimum daily recommended amount of one gallon of water per person per…

Be extra cautious preserving your own baby food. Want to preserve your own baby food?  High-acid fruits are the only food for which there are home processing recommendations for use as baby food. Unfortunately, there are no recipes for canning pureed or mashed vegetables, meat or poultry. …

Safety and quality depend on what you have in the freezer.If you’ve got an excess of produce that you don’t have time to process, can you store it in the freezer to can later? Yes, sometimes. The freezing process breaks down the cell structure of produce, which changes the density of the food. For this…

Applesauce isn't the only game in town! Turning bushels of apples into home-canned applesauce is a time-honored tradition for many folks. But why stop at plain applesauce, or even apples for that matter?  Many fruits can be processed as fruit purees, and fruits can be mixed and matched.  …

Select the most appropriate straining cloth for culinary purposesCheesecloth and butter muslin are loosely woven cotton fabrics used for making – yes, of course, cheese and butter – as well as for other culinary and household purposes. Is there a difference, and does it matter which cloth you use? Yes and…

With very few exceptions, homemade chocolate sauce is unsafe for shelf stability. Homemade chocolate sauces are fun to make and are great to have on hand for quick dessert toppings or to give as gifts. It may be tempting to can your own sauces (or other types of spreads) that include chocolate products,…

As those of you who read this space at least sometimes know there are a lot of reasons that plant leaves turn yellow and that this can be beyond just the most obvious like nutrient deficiency or sickness, and sometimes includes things that we don't think about at the beginning.In this vein, consider the…

 An expert on the battle between root-knot nematodes and cowpeas will present a seminar hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology on Wednesday, May 20.Plant breeder, geneticist and nematologist Bao-Lam Huynh of UC Riverside will speak on "Genetic Analysis and Marker-Assisted…

USDA NIFA Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program USDA NIFA is soliciting proposals for the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program. The primary goal of BFRDP is to help beginning farmers and ranchers in the United States and its territories enter and/or improve their successes in…