Capturing garden vegetables at their best for year-round enjoyment: It's smart and taste bud ticklin', if you're picklin'!

Pickling is one of the oldest and most inexpensive methods of preserving foods. Families would gather over mounds of vegetables and huge steaming pots, producing savory and delicious pickles and chutneys. Home pickling is now enjoying a resurgence, as the cost of food and the desire to know where and how foods are prepared increases.

The wonderfully inventive recipes in The Complete Book of Pickling feature modern methods and equipment in accordance with the latest food-safety standards. The book also includes classic and unusual international ingredients. Newcomers to the art will find step-by-step techniques and details of specific equipment needs.

Enjoy wonderful foods year-round with recipes such as:

• Kosher dill pickles
• Aunt Thelma's bread and butter pickles
• Pretty beet and radish pickles
• Gingery cantaloupe pickles
• White balsamic and pepper pickled strawberries
• Clementine pear chutney
• Pineapple lime tomato salsa
• Smoky three-pepper cucumber relish

Author Jennifer MacKenzie specifies manageable sizes for average households, and she includes serving suggestions and quick recipes for dishes that use the preserves for top flavors.