Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning is a fascinating and thought-provoking book that has an entirely different feel from most modern homesteading books.  The project started when a French gardening magazine asked its readers to share old-fashioned fruit and vegetable preservation recipes, so the resulting compilation feels a bit like an oral history turned into a cookbook.

When you find a copy, I recommend that you start by flipping to the appendix, which in many ways is the most valuable part of the book.  I've spent years slowly figuring out which preservation technique works best for each fruit and vegetable, and the authors of this book have created a quick tabular view of that information.  For example, they show that onions are best stored whole on the shelf, but that you can also preserve them by drying, lactic fermenting, or adding vinegar.

In general, the authors recommend drying fruits and lactic fermenting most vegetables --- I definitely agree with the former and might have to get over my anti-pickle sentiment enough to try the latter.  In fact, after reading through the entire lactic fermentation section, I settled on Swiss chard ribs as a good starter recipe since the authors of the recipe note "Swiss chard ribs are not acidic.  Our children dread lacto-fermented green beans, but they love the milder taste of Swiss chard."  I'll let you know if Mark and I feel the same way once our first lactic fermentation experiment is ready at the end of August.