Irradiation is not dangerous, nor does it affect food, or stay with foods, or affect the taste, texture or quality. If you are concerned about it, suggest you move to a location where there are heavy lead walls and roofs, no microwaves, and no cell phones. All these can give off radiation to some degree. You get more radiation from being outside for an hour in the sun. Today, many shelf stable foods are done this way. Meats, fast meals, and milk, as well as paper boxed tomatoes and broths. The radiation used doesn't change temperature. It works on the microbe level and can easily kill bacteria. In fact, some hospitals are now using it for sterilizing items. A single X-ray can give you 10 times the amount that an irradiated food gets. Some time ago, there were commercially made bottled juices, and their claim to fame was they were not pasturized. After a big lawsuit, they had to comply. Someone actually died from the juice which had eColi in it. How about the tomato scare this past summer..

Katrina, I'm including a link from the National Center for Home Food Preparation which addresses this matter. You should be just fine. As for recipes, please check out Your Greatest Hit Recipes for Leesa - The Condensed Version. Many of the best recipes that we share and make over and over again are listed there. I'm certain you'll find something. Good luck, Kathy Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP - Canning for Special diets

anyone ever use apple juice/cider as part or all of the liquid for fermenting kraut Since no added liquid is needed for fermenting kraut - the cabbage makes its own liquid in the process - I never use either, not even water. Come time to jar and process (can) if you don't have enough liquid you can just make up extra brine (boiled and cooled brine is 1-1/2 tablespoons of salt per quart of water). I suppose you could use either cider or hot apple juice at that time instead of the brine. But if used during fermentation I'd think the extra sugar they contain could cause problems with excess bacterial growth. JMO Dave Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP - Making Kraut

The difference between cider and juice depends on whom you ask. For labeling purposes, the gocernment doesn't specify a difference. Most of the folks where I grew up considered cider unprocessed and unfiltered and juice processed and filtered. For purposes of cooking, you can use juice for cider, but I'd use pure juice and not the brands that have added sugar or HFCS in them.