Kitchens of the Great Midwest

by J. Ryan Stradal

  • • •

  How are you gonna beat that? If only there were two blue ribbons to hand out. But Pat knew that wasn’t realistic. To top a bar recipe like that, you needed a better one, and so far this was it:

  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.

  • • •

  Didn’t get much simpler than that, did it? Pat had been making that recipe for twenty-five years, and it was the one that won her five blue ribbons and one red ribbon in the six years since she had finally given in to the extreme public pressure and entered it in the summer County Fair Bake-Off. This year’s was just a week away now, and the deadline to submit a recipe and entry form was tomorrow.

  • • •

  That evening, Pat would meet the other women in the Fellowship Hall of First Lutheran Church for the “dry run,” where everyone who was considering entering the County Fair would make a full batch of their bars, just for the other church women, and they would have an anonymous vote among themselves to determine who would be encouraged to submit. Now that the First Lutheran women had asserted themselves as a force to be reckoned with, it was important that everyone put her best foot forward.

  The TV interrupted one of Pat’s all-time favorite movies, Lawrence of Arabia, to declare a severe storm warning for the area. Pat called everyone to ensure they would make it; they were Minnesotans, and a little thunder and lightning wasn’t going to hold them back. Only Frances Mitzel, who was sixty-two and, in her words, “not the best driver,” expressed some hesitation.

  • • •

  Pat got to the church early to turn on the lights and set up the tables with plates and napkins. She parked her old Honda Accord in the minister’s spot and saw before getting out of her car that the Fellowship Hall’s lights were on already. Maybe the Cub Scouts had left them on. That wasn’t like them. She retrieved her nine-by-thirteen-inch pan of peanut butter bars from the floor of the backseat and walked with it under her arm to the front door, which was propped open. The air smelled like ozone and a tall gray thunderhead rose over the corn farms on the edge of town. There were no sounds but the engines of passing cars and the warm breeze pushing through the willow trees on the edge of the parking lot, touching Pat’s face, pushing her bangs straight up in the air.

  • • •

  In the Fellowship Hall, a skinny woman in an impertinent white summer dress—no sleeves, low neck, and cut above the knee—threw an ivory cotton tablecloth over a folding table.

  “Hello there,” Pat said, smiling. “I’m here with the women’s group. We’ll be using this room tonight.”

  “I know,” the woman said, her pretty face, with its sharp chin and wide brown eyes, earnestly smiling back. She looked as elegant and sophisticated as a TV anchorwoman. “Evan and Jenni said that I could come early and help set up.”

  She didn’t even call him Pastor Evan.

  “I’m Celeste. Celeste Mantilla. My family’s new here.”

  “Wow. Well, welcome to First Lutheran. I’m Pat Prager.”

  “Oh my God,” the skinny woman said, taking the Lord’s name in vain in the Lord’s house. “You’re Pat Prager. The Pat Prager?”

  “Yep,” Pat said, removing the cotton tablecloth from the folding table. “Well, first thing is, we save the nice tablecloths for funerals and other public functions. ’Cause it’s just us tonight, we’ll use one of the disposable paper ones.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m sorry,” Celeste said, helping Pat fold the tablecloth. “Wow, I’ve heard so much about you. Six-time blue ribbon winner.”

  “Just five, actually.”

  “Oh, it’ll be six by next week, I know it. You know, I brought something tonight, but I’ll feel lucky if I’m just picked to enter.”

  “Who told you about all this?”

  “Oh, Barb Ramstad. We bought the house two doors down from hers.”

  “Oh, that big one?”

  “I know, right? Too big for us. Cleaning one bathroom is bad enough, but try four. There goes half your day. And I don’t even want to think of the heating bills in the winter. But it’s nice being close to the Ramstads. I got a boy in middle school who’s the same age as their son.”

  This woman had a teenage son? She didn’t look a day over thirty. And that thinly disguised bragging about her giant house was so ignorantly prideful. Pat had just met this woman and she could already tell that her loose attitude and freespending, big-money ways were going to cause problems for everybody. “Oh, nice,” Pat said. “So where’d you move here from?”

  “Fort Myers, Florida. My husband got a job at 3M, so we moved up here for his work.”

  Probably a rich engineer. “There’s ELCA churches in Fort Myers? I thought you’d be more Missouri Synod down there.”

  “No, there’s four in Fort Myers. We’re sure blessed to have this one up here now.”

  Pat could see the skinny woman’s bra when she bent over. To dress like that in a church, even in the Fellowship Hall! Maybe in Florida they sang hymns in their bikinis, but that wouldn’t fly up here. “Well, we’re surely blessed to have some new faces in our congregation,” she said.

  As they unfurled the cheap white paper over the table, Pat did start to feel bad in her heart about cutting this woman down. Celeste was a stranger in a strange land and here in God’s house it was Pat’s duty to be welcoming and think of how she’d want to be treated in that situation. Besides, it wasn’t as if Pat’s family didn’t have its complexities. After all, her son, Sam, was apparently the biggest pot dealer in the high school, which wasn’t exactly something she’d put on a bumper sticker. Even so, it’s not like he was a total waste like his cousin Dan Jorgenson down in Farmington. Sam was getting a 3.4 and his freshman-year teachers said that he showed promise. There was no punishment that would change him; he swore that he never tried any worse drugs, the pot sales were saving them money on his future college loans, and the stuff would probably be legal in a year or two anyway. Besides, he did the right thing and tithed.

  • • •

  Pat heard Sandra’s heavy steps in the hallway and turned to see her with Barb right behind, each of them carrying a pan of their signature bars, then Corrina, running in last, holding an umbrella, with her bars already cut up and piled in a mint-green Tupperware bowl. Why had they agreed to send only three to County this year? Pat wished she could vote for them all. She was waiting to see Sandra and Corrina size up this skinny newcomer, but apparently Barb had introduced Celeste to them already, at some event or happening that Pat hadn’t been made aware of.

  “I like those capri pants, Barb,” Celeste said, pointing below Barb’s waist at the pork-chop pockets and drawstring hems.

  “Oh, thanks. Got ’em at Kohl’s. Originally fifty dollars, cut down to twenty-nine, but I got ’em for nineteen with a coupon.”

  Everyone nodded in admiration at the good value.

  “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.”

  “How was the drive into town?” Celeste asked.

  “Wind’s pickin’ up,” said Sandra, who, in her faded XXL Twins T-shirt and knee-length denim shorts, was eager to end the fashion conversation. “We better make this quick.”

  “Where’s Frances?” Pat asked.


  “She didn’t want to drive in the weather,” Corrina said.

  “Well, I don’t want her to miss out if she made bars.”

  “It’s OK, Pat,” Barb said. “She said she knows her bars aren’t going to win anyway.”

  “So it’s just the four of us for three spots?”

  Celeste looked over the group. “I made some,” she said, reaching down to pick up a large canvas sack sitting against the wall. Thunder rattled the light fixtures again as she produced a nine-by-thirteen-inch pan containing a dark brown and stark white concoction. “These are my Mississippi mud bars.”

  “Do you have the recipe?” Pat asked, and Celeste pulled a piece of cardstock from her Louis Vuitton bag on the floor.

  “Yes, right here,” Celeste said, handing the card to Pat:

  4 eggs

  1 cup Grade AA butter, softened

  2¼ cups sugar

  1 teaspoon vanilla

  1½ cups flour

  ½ cup cocoa

  1 cup chopped nuts

  7 ounces marshmallow crème

  Preheat the oven to 350˚F. In a large copper mixing bowl, at medium speed, beat the eggs, butter, sugar, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Add the flour and cocoa. Beat until well blended. Fold in the nuts. Spread in a greased 9-by-13-inch pan. Bake for 40–45 minutes. Immediately place spoonfuls of marshmallow crème on top and spread until smooth. Let cool for one hour.

  Frosting:

  ⅓ cup Grade AA butter

  ½ cup cocoa

  2½ cups powdered sugar

  ⅓ cup heavy whipping cream

  1 teaspoon vanilla

  Melt the butter; stir in the cocoa. Cook for 1 minute. Add the powdered sugar, whipping cream, and vanilla and mix until smooth. Spread on top of the marshmallow crème. Freezes well.

  • • •

  “Looks like a crowd-pleaser,” Pat said, handing the card back.

  “It might be a tad rich for some,” Celeste said. “But yes, kids adore it.”

  “Pat, should we even serve yours?” Sandra said. “You know the rest of us are just fighting for two spots here.”

  “Well, I definitely want to try them,” Celeste said.

  The rain came in at an angle and began to pummel the windows. It sounded like people, bad people, throwing pebbles at the church. Pat went to the glass and saw pea-sized bits of ice jumping in the lawn.

  “It’s hailing,” she said.

  “Oh, jeez,” Barb said, and started slicing her bars.

  • • •

  While Pat was eating one of her own bars, just for comparison, the fluorescent lights flickered out, and almost immediately the chilling wail of that awful tornado siren kicked in from three blocks away. As if they needed a siren to tell them that their lights were out. The elapsed time between the lightning and its thunder was getting shorter; the storm was directly over them now.

  “How exciting,” Celeste said, smiling.

  “Well, even if we’re stuck here,” Sandra said, slicing herself a Mississippi mud pie bar, “at least we won’t starve to death.”

  “Oh my,” Corrina said, taking a bite. “Celeste, these are incredible.”

  Sandra looked at her own tray of bars and shook her head. “Well, I don’t have a shot this year. Celeste, if we don’t finish ’em all here, I’m gonna steal them and take ’em home.”

  “Thank you,” Celeste said, looking down at her feet. “It’s just an old family recipe, nothing special.”

  “Why a copper mixing bowl?” Pat asked Celeste.

  “Oh, for the egg whites,” Celeste said. “It stabilizes them. Don’t ask me how.”

  Barb looked at Pat. “You didn’t know that?”

  “I actually don’t separate my eggs for bars. When I’m making a soufflé or sponge cake, I add a little cream of tartar to my egg whites, and that does the trick for me.”

  The other women nodded.

  “Don’t get me wrong, though. Who wouldn’t love to have a copper mixing bowl,” Pat was quick to add. “But we just gotta work with what God gives us.”

  “I use a copper whisk,” Barb said.

  Sandra, finishing her Mississippi mud pie bar, licked her plastic fork. “I think we have our winner right here. What do you think, Pat?”

  Pat nibbled at her Mississippi mud bar. When she raised it to her lips, she saw that Celeste’s bar left a thick stamp of greasy oil on the paper plate. In her mouth, she literally felt granules of sugar wash around; her fillings cried out in protest. She chased the thick buttery slab with a glass of water, which she swished around in her mouth before swallowing.

  “Definitely one of our final three, yes,” she said, smiling.

  • • •

  When the rain receded enough for all of them to drive home safely, Pat got in her rusty old Accord, which didn’t look like much, sure, but got a person from point A to point B reliably and had been loyal to the family through so much abuse. Not even Eli’s ungrateful daughter Julie could destroy that car. The problem, on days like today, was that one of the rear windows didn’t go all the way up, and even though they had taped up a Hefty bag to cover the gap, the storm had blown it right off the car. Now part of the backseat was sopping wet and would have to be dried later so it didn’t get full of mold.

  Why was God testing her like this? With the storm, the wet seat, and, most painfully, the soul-breaking trial that was Celeste Mantilla. Maybe, Pat thought, God felt that she was having it too easy with the blue-ribbon-winning bars year after year. Maybe He felt that she needed a challenge. And so He had sent this demonic force, in the form of a beautiful woman with these ridiculously sweet bars, to oppose her, to put things in perspective, to remind her of what was really important. Like He said in 1 Peter 1:7, “The trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth.” Which was true. But why were the most pious always the most severely tested?

  Don’t answer that, Lord, she said as she turned onto her street, and whispered a brief prayer of apology. She also forgave her friends, for the Mississippi mud bars proved that their spirit might be strong, but their flesh was weaker than ever. One day they would see the error of their ways; but when the time of their contrition came, she would be gracious and forgiving to them and not say that she had known from the first that Celeste was pure evil, because no one likes to hear an I-told-you-so.

  • • •

  At home, the power was still out, so there was no opening the garage door. Pat carefully stepped up the wet concrete stairs to her front door with her one-quarter-empty tray of bars and trudged up to the kitchen. Her husband, Eli, and son, Sam, were drinking milk and eating Schwan’s mint chocolate chip ice cream in the candlelight, watching distant lightning from the kitchen window.

  Wiping her face and head with a paper towel, Pat looked at Sam’s huge bowl of ice cream without saying anything.

  “Mom, it’ll go bad otherwise. With no power to the fridge.”

  “Did you save any?” Pat asked.

  “A little,” said Eli, eating the ice cream out of the box, tilting it to her eye level.

  “So, Mom, who else besides you is going to County?” Sam asked, squirting more Hershey’s chocolate syrup on his ice cream.

  “Me and Barb, and this new woman, Celeste,” Pat said, setting her tray of bars down on the kitchen counter.

  “When the power went out,” Eli said, putting his empty glass of milk in the dishwasher without rinsing it first, “I was six hundred words into a blog post about an injury in our secondary. Then, blam! All gone.”

  Sam looked up at his stepdad and said nothing. Pat’s son from her first marriage wasn’t a Minnesota Vikings fan, or a fan of any sports, really, and neither was Pat, but that didn’t prevent Eli from telling them each about everything he wrote on his blog.

  “And I was juuuust about to save
it and shut the computer off.”

  Pat removed a milk glass from the dishwasher and rinsed it out in the sink. “Anyway, this new woman Celeste’s a piece of work,” she said.

  “Well, they don’t even have the results of the guy’s MRI yet. But I knew we should’ve picked a safety in the draft. We switched to a Tampa 2 D and we have one guy who’s a Tampa 2 safety. And so guess who goes down today in practice.”

  “And her bars. Basically fat bombs. Of course, you-know-who just loved them.”

  “And there’s no decent free agents this time of year. Blew our chance there.”

  “They don’t realize how embarrassing it’s gonna be to enter those bars in a County contest. You have to be more nuanced at the County level. It’s not like the judges are a bunch of eight-year-old boys.”

  “Maybe we can move one of the corners to safety. That’s what I was proposing.”

  “And you should see her. You can bet she doesn’t even touch these bars. She looks like a model.”

  “Who looks like a model?” Eli asked.

  “The new woman at church, Celeste.”

  “You should invite her over sometime,” Eli said, opening the freezer. “What else we got in here?” He pulled out two flat brown rectangles wrapped up in cellophane. “What are these things?”

  “My edibles,” Sam said. “Brownies. They go for forty each.”

  “Edibles. Is this a felony amount in here?”

  “No, felony’s one and a half ounces. Way less than that in those things. An ounce each, tops.”

  “You should only sell these, then.”

  “I don’t sell. My friends sell. I grow and manufacture.”

  Pat stepped out of the kitchen without looking back. “I don’t want to know any of this,” she said, walking into her separate bedroom. “Help yourself to the bars.”