Kitchens of the Great Midwest

After decades away from the Midwest, she’d forgotten that bewildering generosity was a common regional tic.

When Lars first held her, his heart melted over her like butter on warm bread, and he would never get it back. When mother and baby were asleep in the hospital room, he went out to the parking lot, sat in his Dodge Omni, and cried like a man who had never wanted anything in his life until now.

It made hot girls forget you were a dork, which is the point of all music.

Where did you source your ingredients from?” one of them asked. “Are they local?” “Yeah,” Pat said, “they’re from the store about a mile from my house.” One of the girls behind the table laughed. “Sorry,” she said.

She suddenly felt sorry for these people, for perverting the food of their childhood, the food of their mothers and grandmothers, and rejecting its unconditional love in favor of what? What? Pat did not understand.

What people don’t understand about deer is that they’re vermin. They’re giant, furry cockroaches. They invade a space, reproduce like hell, and eat everything in sight.

And she would pray for guidance, but she wouldn’t ask the Lord forgiveness for swearing at her husband. That was gonna stand for now.

Even though she had an overbite and the shakes, she was six feet tall and beautiful, and not like a statue or a perfume advertisement, but in a realistic way, like how a truck or a pizza is beautiful at the moment you want it most.

He couldn’t help it—he was in love by the time she left the kitchen—but love made him feel sad and doomed, as usual. What he didn’t know was that she’d suffered through a decade of cool, commitment-phobic men, and Lars’s kindness, but mostly his effusive, overt enthusiasm for her, was at that time exactly what she wanted in a partner.

What an honor to live in a part of the world that loves good old-fashioned baking.

Yes, he just wanted her to want to be a mom, in the same way that he felt, with all of his blood, that he was a dad first, and everything else in the world an obscure, unfathomably distant second.

God made her a giving person, and even in this house of people who could be so hateful and hard, her one skill, she knew, was to serve them and make them happy, the way even an unwatered tree still provides whatever shade it can.

wavering. She was not raised to confront people or defend herself in a confrontation; she was raised to appease, to mollify, to calm, to tuck little monsters in at night, to apologize for things she screwed up without realizing, to forgive, to sweeten, and her bars, her bars did that for the world, they were her I’m Sorry, they were her Like Me, they were her Love Freely Given.

already thinking about the good and the bad and the deep human necessity of it all, and how anybody ever got anything done without family, and how someone could give that up in the amount of time it takes to seal an envelope, with the same saliva once used to seal a marriage.

She hated those boys and knew that they were stupid and hence their opinions were baseless and the impact of their lives on the planet would be measured only in undifferentiated emissions of methane and nitrates . . . but still.

She’s told me that even though you won’t meet her tonight, she’s telling you her life story through the ingredients in this meal, and although you won’t shake her hand, you’ve shared her heart. Now please, continue eating and drinking, and thank you again.

Girls were lucky, they didn’t have to have a thing. They just had to look nice and come to your shows and not call you all the time about stupid stuff.

As the eastbound flight reached cruising altitude, Cindy opened the latest issue of the Economist—she saved her smarter reading for public situations—when

His love for her made her feel like she was wearing sunglasses even when she wasn't.

But Octavia was a nice person with a big, generous heart who felt sorry for outsiders and tried to help them. And people like her never get any thanks for their selflessness. They are not the ones with the hardness to make others wait; they are the ones left waiting, until their souls are broken like old pieces of bread and scattered in the snow for the birds. They can go right ahead and aspire to the stars, but the only chance they'll ever have to fly is in a thousand pieces, melting in the hot guts of something predatory.

...have a house without a pie, be ashamed until you die.

1 Timothy 6:9—“Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition.

Also, what kind of baked good judging panel had three men on it? One was fine, but three? This was obviously a P.C. correction to last year's six female judges.

He had figured this out with his last girlfriend—women love it when you remember shit they tell you, and love it more when you repeat it back to them. But

the label, emblazoned with OREGON TILTH CERTIFIED ORGANIC, GMO FREE, CRUELTY FREE,

1 bag caramels 5 tablespoons cream ¾ cup butter, melted 1 cup brown sugar 1 cup oatmeal 1 cup flour ½ teaspoon baking soda ¼ teaspoon salt 1 cup chocolate chips ½ cup nuts, chopped (optional) Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Melt the caramels and cream in a double boiler. Cool slightly. Combine the butter, sugar, oatmeal, flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix until crumbly. Press half of this mixture into a 9-by-13-inch pan and bake for 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the chips, the nuts, and the melted caramel mixture. Sprinkle with the remaining crumbs and bake for 15–20 minutes more at 350˚F. Don’t overbake. Cut while warm.

2½ cups crushed graham cracker crumbs 1 cup melted Grade A butter 1 cup peanut butter 2½ cups powdered sugar 1 cup milk chocolate chips with 1 teaspoon Grade A butter Mix together the graham cracker crumbs, melted butter, peanut butter, and sugar. Pat into a greased 9-by-13-inch pan. Melt the chips and butter and spread them on top of the bars. Set in the refrigerator until firm. Cut into bars. •

He didn’t ever intend to stare at her for such long stretches; it would just happen. When their eyes met, bam, there went five minutes. Or twenty.

Cynthia was so furious that evening, she opened a single-vineyard Merlot from Stag’s Leap that she’d been saving, and paired it with a bowl of macaroni and cheese from a box.

She sighed. And then she kissed him. And they kissed for a long-ass time.