Last month I wrote a blog for The Atlantic's Food Channel about my obsession with British cookbooks and the best places to cookbook shop in London. One of the blog's readers suggested that I might want to get my hands on a book called Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer: A Golden Treasury of Classic Treats by Jane Brocket. In here I'd find dozens of recipes from classic British storybooks. Unfortunately, the book is hard to get here in the U.S., and since I don't have a lot of extra money right now for amazon.co.uk, I located another book Brocket wrote, The Gentle Art of Domesticity: Stitching, Baking, Nature, Art & the Comforts of Home at our local library.
I've renewed it twice, and now the library wants it back so I see I'm going to have to buy it for my personal library. It has been the prescription I needed to get me through cleaning and packing our home for our move. I haven't read it cover-to-cover, but instead, dip into it during the day between scrubbing bathroom floors and packing books. What I like most about it are the photos: Brocket is an avid knitter, crocheter, and quilter (and blogger!), so there are dozens of colorful pictures of her handiwork. The book also includes recipes, lists of novels and movies that celebrate domesticity, and even an extensive list of sources for quilters, bakers, and "haberdashers" that covers not just the U.S. and U.K., but countries all around the world. The book is a wee bit aspirational for me, except for the baking and maybe some simple quilting projects, but hey, an Anglophile can dream.
