I was stupid enough to belive the other reviews and who wrong can one be. The book tittle suggests that i should after purchasing it be able to preserve foods, there are a mere couple of pages on freezeing and drying and the like and the rest of it is just recipes lots and lots of recipes and next to no ideal training or skill base building. as ever one of those highly trained chefs that really do know there stuff but are completely unable to write down how they do it. the two stars are because of the mass of recipes the minus three stars are for the complete or basics, if you want to learn how to preserve food buy another book, if you know what to do or already have the basics then this is deffinatly for you because of the recipes.