Kitchens of the Great Midwest Quotes

“After decades away from the Midwest, she’d forgotten that bewildering generosity was a common regional tic.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“It made hot girls forget you were a dork, which is the point of all music.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“What an honor to live in a part of the world that loves good old-fashioned baking.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“...have a house without a pie, be ashamed until you die.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.  •”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“It all looks the same in the toilet the next morning...”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“Braque was used to this kind of crap; her mom had been a master choreographer of anxious micromanagement since Braque could remember.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“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.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“As the eastbound flight reached cruising altitude, Cindy opened the latest issue of the Economist—she saved her smarter reading for public situations—when”
― J. Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest