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The Gourmets of Grantville
After traveling through time and space from the year 2000 in West Virginia to 1631 in Germany, the town of Grantville faces many challenges. The biggest is finding enough food, medicine, and other supplies to stay alive and healthy while helping their new German neighbors and a constant flow of refugees do the same. Working together, they grow and gather enough food for everyone, but it's not quite what anyone is used to eating. The Germans view potatoes as animal food, unfit for human consumption, and not all the Grantvillers can accept that even small children drink beer instead of water. With the expert advice of the Grantville Cooking Club, up-time and down-time cooking is combined to create a new cuisine and to jump-start more than a few new restaurants and businesses.
Meanwhile, regular life continues. How do you keep going when you know that your child, or spouse, will die because life-saving medicine or surgery isn't available in 1631? How do you cope with watching them slowly die from something that was curable in the world you came from? Greg Ferrara, Linda Bartolli, and Phillip Bartolli are forced to face these questions when the Ring of Fire happens weeks before Tina is scheduled for lifesaving surgery that, like her life-saving medication, is no longer available.
Meanwhile, regular life continues. How do you keep going when you know that your child, or spouse, will die because life-saving medicine or surgery isn't available in 1631? How do you cope with watching them slowly die from something that was curable in the world you came from? Greg Ferrara, Linda Bartolli, and Phillip Bartolli are forced to face these questions when the Ring of Fire happens weeks before Tina is scheduled for lifesaving surgery that, like her life-saving medication, is no longer available.
211 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 18, 2021
12 people are currently reading
21 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 30, 2022
2022 bk 75. A good welcome back to the Ring of Fire universe. Told from the female perspective, this is the tale of how women of both up and down time gathered together to feed their families the strange food of each other's home environment. It is a magical time where the new inventions and the teaching of crafts provide incentives for even young teens to create businesses, partnerships develop, new guilds are created, and glass barriers are broken. There is laughter, and tears, and the reader is compelled to check out what cookbooks she has that would help in such a situation. This will be read again.
January 23, 2022
Good home cooking read. Reading about cooks figuring out recipes, experimenting to re-create lost foods, knitting socks, opening a restaurant franchise in new locations, etc. is not something I do in my normal historical fiction/space opera/historical accounts type pleasure reading. This is Grantville in the early 1630s in German alternate history world invented by Eric Flint. Bethanne Kim make this ordinary life come alive and interesting without Croats raids or Ottoman spies adding drama. No shooting unless you reference a certain husband shooting off his mouth then living to regret it. I thought to myself"I never would have guessed that I would catch myself reading this type of "ordinary daily life" type book and actually enjoy it. Most of the book's inhabitants are familiar because they have appeared before in the 1632 universe. Do not just stick with the mainline novels - read about the rest of world too. Recommended.
January 6, 2022
Heartwarming and fun, Bethanne Kim has once again knocked it out of the park by grabbing the 1632 universe in all its complexity and making it fully relatable to the fans of the setting. It is rare for a new author to come into the now well established 1632 setting and so fully capture it. Highly recommended to all fans of the 1632 universe setting.
January 17, 2022
I can smell the gingerbread.
I like the idea that a story can make me hungry. I haven't had a bagel in awhile. I grew up with my grandmother who was a bakers daughter. So I can taste in my mouth her butter rolls.
I like the idea that a story can make me hungry. I haven't had a bagel in awhile. I grew up with my grandmother who was a bakers daughter. So I can taste in my mouth her butter rolls.
January 18, 2022
Most Excellent!
I loved the story, I'll have to buy more of them, because this one was so good. The concept of religious freedom that we take so lightly was once very important and now it's just common place.
I loved the story, I'll have to buy more of them, because this one was so good. The concept of religious freedom that we take so lightly was once very important and now it's just common place.
July 15, 2022
Another good ROF story
Another good Ring of Fire story. This had well-developed characters and a plot different from other ROF books. Nice to read about ordinary people doing ordinary things.
Another good Ring of Fire story. This had well-developed characters and a plot different from other ROF books. Nice to read about ordinary people doing ordinary things.
July 27, 2022
Very enjoyable
I liked the development of the characters and how they related to each other. The first part of the story was easy to follow but latter jumped around a bit and was harder to follow. Still it was a bright and happy read.
I liked the development of the characters and how they related to each other. The first part of the story was easy to follow but latter jumped around a bit and was harder to follow. Still it was a bright and happy read.
March 15, 2022
Bagels!? Yes, that's what I've been missing! Great work Bethanne, the cheers and the few tears worked so well. Looking for more soon.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews