Kitchens Of The Great Midwest Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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’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.

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.

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.

With a dog, it’s almost like having a kid.” “No, it’s not like having a kid,” she said. “It’s preferable in every possible way. That makes it like having a dog.

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.

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.

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

What he would tell her instead, he hadn’t yet decided, but now was not the time to think about such things. Now was the time to sit with his little family of two people, and cry.

Braque was used to this kind of crap; her mom had been a master choreographer of anxious micromanagement since Braque could remember.

It all looks the same in the toilet the next morning...

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

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.

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.

Did she really have to wait out seven more soul-shredding years? It was like being told you can run free one day—in June several years from now—but during every second of the intervening time, you’ll be getting run over by the world’s slowest steamroller, and every day it cracks a bone, and recracks it, and recracks it, and when you’re eighteen all you’re going to have is a body full of dust, lifted and carried into the future like a flag loose from its mast.

One of the things that Eva hated the most about being a kid was how everyone always told her that childhood was the best time of their entire lives, and don't grow up too fast, and enjoy these carefree days while you can. In those moments, her body felt like the world's smallest prison, and she escaped in her mind to her chile plants, resting on rock wool substrate under a grow light in a bedroom closet, as much a prisoner of USDA hardiness zone 5b as she was.

He’d read that being in an adult relationship means having a willingness to change. Knowing when you’re wrong and owning up to it—that’s the definition of being a man. He was thrilled for the opportunity to mature before her eyes like this. “OK.” She shrugged.  •

The blouse was an even better deal,” Barb continued. “It’s Guess brand, originally seventy-nine dollars, but I got it at T.J. Maxx for eighteen.” “Wow,” Corrina said. “Every time I go there, I never see anything like that.” “Well, you gotta know when to go to these places.

and not like a statue or a perfume advertisement, but in a realistic way, like how a truck

I hate it when people misuse the word 'literally,'' Eva said. Jordy noted that the grammar was corrected but the swearing went unremarked.

She was a good person and maybe even meant what she said, but he had no idea how to respond. "Thanks," he said. He'd never said that word so much before this week, when he learned how perfectly it could shoot down further conversation. This woman had tried harder than most, and probably deserved better.

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

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

When it came to Eva’s life, her mom had the awareness of a fifty-cent guppy; there were sad-eyed janitors at school who seemed to have more insight into Eva’s heart than her own parents did.

There were Lolo McCaffrey’s thick braids and patchouli-oil smell, crouched down by the nutritional bars, her moon face staring at the label of a Clif Bar like someone who can’t read.

He sometimes talked about her as if her death were a jackknifed semi on the road ahead. Will viewed it more like the giant crack in their concrete driveway; he felt it, saw it, and walked over it every day, but it was too big and strange to fix.

Dormitories are even cooler than I thought they would be,” Eva said. “They’re like a prison, but the sex is worse,” Braque said.

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.

Fiona and Jarl had gotten engaged a few weeks before, on Black Friday. Jarl thought they could get a better deal on rings that way.

She looked like a shorter, wider Hillary Clinton, but with the posture and attitude of someone fifty-eight hours into a sixty-hour workweek.

hadn’t grown into being a woman, she had become a woman with an exclamation mark, the sort of hardy feminine brute of the Pleistocene from which all women, great and frail, are descended.

They were generous in the way of people running a garage sale who give things away to the folks who come at the end.

Still, he had been a charismatic, talented scoundrel who almost certainly was on to a new woman after a week in Japan; there was nothing to long for or feel sorry for.

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.

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

Have you been in a canoe?” “Anywhere where two people can fit, they can have sex. It’s the law.

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.

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.  • • •

was like being told you can run free one day—in June several years from now—but during every second of the intervening time, you’ll be getting run over by the world’s slowest steamroller, and every day it cracks a bone, and recracks it, and recracks it, and when you’re eighteen all you’re going to have is a body full of dust, lifted and carried into the future like a flag loose from its mast.

She lay down on top of the spongy, flower-patterned comforter, but in spite of having slept only three hours, she wasn't tired. She had the pepper in her blood of a soldier being sent to war.

There was nothing like home her. Just, perhaps, something to hold on to in the absence of one.

Their thing was that they played sad cowboy music, and played cover songs in the style of sad cowboy music. Their cover of “No Diggity” was off the chain! It made hot girls forget you were a dork, which is the point of all music.

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.

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

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

Yes, the dish was flawless, and the wine pairing was supernatural, but these people were out of control. Were they trying to emotionally justify the meal’s price tag? Did they have too many cocktails in the drinks tent? It was a breathtaking meal, one of the best that Cindy had ever had, but the hysteria around her was making her brain red.

if one day, that woman would seek her out, and for whatever balance of time, Cindy would have a daughter again. For now, she would return to her kitchen, wash the plate, the cup, and the fork, and just live in the world she had created, the world where the two of them existed, and nothing more.

To Eva, Cousin Randy was an untouchable demigod—an angel’s wing broken from an ancient statue, sent here to help her hover above all things insipid and heartbreaking.

Eva knew that her mom hadn’t gotten the vegan sorbet because it was too expensive. In their home, cost was the main reason why something good didn’t happen.

WINTERS WERE TOUGH in the Midwest, then and now. I never liked winter. And I hate snow. It’s white, but it darkens your heart.

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.  •

no hotel in the world, now known or yet to be conceived, could ever dominate your senses like a 1989 Château Margaux or pack more surprises into twenty seconds than a 2007 Les Clos Sacrés Savennières.

They stopped at a Subway attached to a gas station. When he placed his order for a foot-long meatball marinara with extra cheese and no vegetables, he wondered if the sandwich artist could tell that his mom had died.

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. •

Eleven years later, her cousin’s head on her shoulder, she could’ve held her like that again; even on a train that smelled like hot metal and strange male sweat, she could’ve put her arm around Eva and kept her close and safe, all the way to 95th/Dan Ryan and back again, on an infinite, silver loop.