Kitchens of the Great Midwest (25 page)

Braque sat up. “Well, say hi to your brother from us. I hope he’s half as cute as you are.”

He nodded once, hoping in that moment never to see that Braque woman again.

Eva picked up her purse from a rack by the door and followed Jordy out to her front step, closing the door behind them. “How’s a hundred?” she asked.

“What?” he asked. His face was flushed with the cold outdoor air, his
nose free of the warm smells of a strange home, and he hadn’t noticed that she’d followed him out.

“A hundred bucks for the venison. I hope that’s enough.”

Jordy was about to say that he didn’t need any money for it, but then for some reason he didn’t. “A hundred’s OK.”

Eva handed him the money and hugged him again. “If you need anything—anything—let me know, all right?” She looked him in the face. “I’m thinking of you.”

“Yeah, OK,” he said. 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.

 • • • 

In the car on the way home, he wondered if he could have got more than a hundred. He always fucked up every kind of negotiation. But whatever. It was a hundred more than he had thirty minutes ago, and he needed it for more pills for when his mom’s ran out, which would be real soon. He would just have to figure out where to get them. He had some ideas. He was good at that kind of thing. Or was going to have to be. Because this was another four-pill kind of day today. He could just tell already.

W
ho doesn’t like bars? That’s what Pat Prager wanted to know.

 • • • 

Pat sat in her kitchen and made a list in her head of all the people she knew who loved bars, whether they were light and crunchy Rice Krispies bars, sweet and tart lemon bars, or rich and heavy peanut butter and chocolate bars. That list numbered
everyone
. Kids loved bars, teenagers loved bars, Pastor Evan loved bars, and even Pastor Evan’s wife, Jenni, who always made such a show of skipping the bars—Pat had seen her in her car, eating them, after everyone else left Bible study. Cops loved them, firemen loved them, teachers loved them, her first husband, Jerry Jorgenson, now in God’s kingdom, loved them, and even her second husband, Eli Prager, who, between work and writing for that Minnesota Vikings blog on the Internet, always came up from his man-cave to sneak more bars.

 • • • 

Everyone knew that Deer Lake made the best bars in the county—one of them had won the Bars division of the County Fair Bake-Off six years in a row—and everyone knew that the best bars in Deer Lake were made by the women of First Lutheran Church.

Pat didn’t like to toot her own horn, but her peanut butter bars had won the blue ribbon for Best Bars five of the last six years now. Still, she couldn’t rest on her laurels, because there were some really darn good
bars out there. Like Sandra Bratholt’s cherry coffee cake bars, Frances Mitzel’s sour cream raisin bars, Corrina Nelsen’s lemon bars, and Barb Ramstad’s Kraft caramel bars:

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. The caramels and cream may be melted in a microwave.

 • • • 

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.”