The Lost Arts of Hearth and Home
The Happy Luddite's Guide to Domestic Self-Sufficiency
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
The Lost Arts of Hearth and Home is not about extreme, off-the-grid living. It’s for city and suburban dwellers with day jobs: people who love to cook, love fresh natural ingredients, and old techniques for preservation; people who like doing things themselves with a needle and thread, garden hoe, or manual saw.
Ken Albala and Rosanna Nafziger Henderson spread the spirit of antiquated self-sufficiency throughout the household. They offer projects that are decidedly unplugged and a little daring, including:
* Home building projects like rooftop food dehydrators and wood-burning ovens
* Homemaking essentials, from sewing and quilting to rug braiding and soap making
* The wonders of grain: making croissants by hand, sprouting grains, and baking bread
* Adventures with meat: pickled pig’s feet, homemade liverwurst, and celery-cured salami
Intended for industrious cooks and crafters who aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves, The Lost Arts of Hearth and Home will teach you the history and how-to on projects for every facet of your home, all without the electric toys that take away from the experience of making things by hand.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Albala and Henderson follow up their The Lost Art of Real Cooking with an utterly charming collection of recipes and how-tos for the 21st-century hipster homemaker. Like postmodern Elizabeth Davids, they augment their own recipes with obscure, intriguing ones from earlier centuries, such as Apicius's fourth-century Apricot Minutal, which stews up the fruit with spices and garum, an ancient fish sauce. The book consists mostly of recipes albeit for unusual, slow-food, and occasionally bizarre dishes such as injera (Ethiopian sourdough pancakes), liverwurst, thousand-year-old eggs ("among the scariest things I have ever tried at home"), kombucha, and butter sauce with ambergris (yes, the "waxy glob that forms in the intestines of sperm whales, which they barf up") but, like a quirky updated 1896 Fannie Farmer cookbook, it also includes eccentric but usable household hints and instructions, from soap-making to pounding a ring out of an old silver quarter (using an expedited method invented by Henderson's father). A fun gift for any curious reader, the book is a must-have for makers and urban homesteaders.
