Perhaps I’d eaten a small lunch on the day I ran across Dining with Jane Austen, Julienne Gehrer’s online account of her research into foods Jane Austen, or her characters, might have eaten. In any case, my nuanced critical judgment could be summed up in a single word: yum.
Scroll down for pictures of an open-face toasted cheese sandwich to die for, as well as some pretty good-looking frittery things. Isn't your mouth watering just a little? And apparently more is coming, since Gehrer hopes to publish her work two years from now, in time for the bicentennial of Emma.
No, of course we don’t want to live in 1812, but there were some compensations for the corsets, the deaths from now-preventable diseases and the severely constricted options for women. Toasted cheese!