February 24, 2013
Because this new blog is all about sharing
with friends and hopefully soon to be friends my love of reading and the books
I read and review I thought this the perfect book to begin with.
It is an easy to read novel by Darien Gee
who also writes under the name Mia King.
This is the first book I’ve read by the author under either name and I
found it an enjoyable read.
It has all the highlights of a good “soap
opera” type book. You begin with Julia,
a grieving mother, who mysteriously finds a plate of Amish Friendship Bread along with a bag of the starter and how to use instructions on her front porch one
day.
As the story develops you are introduced to
more and more characters with a bit of their background explained as the book
continues forward and the starter is spread about the small fictional town of
Avalon, Illinois.
The starter takes on a life of its own,
similar to that of a chain letter, only no dire consequences (other than the possible
waste of good food) if you do not pass it on.
There, as in all good soap operas, are
moments of drama, the possibility of a love affair or two, some hilarious
moments and of course the sad and good times.
While I seldom read novels, much preferring
other genres including mysteries I did enjoy this one. However, it does have a bit of a mystery as
to where the first bag of starter came from and you must read the book to find
out who started the sequence of events that brought several lonely people
together in the small town of Avalon, Illinois.
Then there are the recipes in the back of
the book to intrigue you and a website and
a facebook group dedicated to the hundreds of recipes you can use the
starter for. It also has gluten and dairy free recipes for both the starter and the uses of it.
In my tough rating system of one to five
stars I give this book a 3.5 star rating.
It moved a little slow for me in a few places with a bit of the drama
being repetitive, but it was an interesting read. Interesting enough I will be
reading more about the ladies of Avalon, Illinois in the second book by Darien
Gee “The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society” soon.
Books written by Ms. Gee under the name of
Mia King are: “Good Things”, “Sweet Life”, and “Table Manners”.
On a personal note I have often heard of
Amish Friendship bread, but had never had any.
I did know prior to reading the book that it was not actually developed
by the Amish, but just some how got the name and it stuck. You can read more
about the history of this starter and its use on various sites on the web.
I decided to “create” the monster and try
this recipe out for myself to see if it’s a sour dough recipe my men folk would
like. I’ll be posting my adventures with Amish Friendship Bread on my Patterson’s Pantry blog and the recipes I use will also of course
be on the recipe blog as well. Today is
day one of my starter. Follow the hyper
links over to see how it goes.
Jan who hopes you will enjoy the book “Friendship
Bread” by Darien Gee and in the solid form of bread in your own kitchen in the
near future in OK
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