166. Truck Nuts and Hot Dish: RedHeadedGirl and Elyse on All Things Midwestern

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 166 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today are RedHeadedGirl and Elyse, and we’re going to talk about the Midwest.  Specifically, the Midwest of the United States, if you hadn’t already gathered that.  This podcast was inspired by an email from Kendal, and I, we recorded it over the summer, but I had some audio editing issues, which I think I’ve mostly been able to solve.  So it’s a little late, but it’s always good to talk about things in the Midwest, even things that are deep fried.  Especially things that are deep fried; who are we kidding?  So we’re going to talk about supper club, cheese curds, hot dish, the state fair, and of course, truck nuts.

This podcast was brought to you by InterMix, publisher of New York Times bestselling author Samantha Young’s One King’s Way, the new white-hot novella from the On Dublin Street series, full of passion and drama, on sale November 3rd.

And we have a podcast transcript sponsor this month.  Yay!  The podcast transcript this month is being sponsored by Jenna Sutton, author of the Riley O’Brien & Company series, published by Berkley and available in print and eBook.  The first novel in the series, All the Right Places, follows the heir to a global denim empire as he fights his attraction to the company’s new accessories designer.  If you like smart, sexy contemporary romance, this series is for you.  You can read an excerpt at jennasutton.com or connect with Jenna at facebook.com/jennasuttonauthor or on Twitter @jsuttonauthor.

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater, and I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is.

And all of the books that we mentioned, along with links to some of the places that we discuss where you can buy spices or hot dish or potentially truck nuts, those will also be in the show notes as well.

And housekeeping:  if you would like to sponsor the podcast or the podcast transcript, please email me at [email protected].  I would love to hear from you.

And now, it’s time to talk about the Midwest.  On with the podcast!

[music]

Sarah:  Oh, there you are.  You do have beer.

RedHeadedGirl:  [Laughs] Yes, and it’s foaming.

[Laughter]

Sarah:   Well, I have a, I have a shoulder rest.

RHG:  Okay, excellent.

Sarah:  Hey, Spawn.  I’m not speaking to you.

RHG:  Sadly, I did not have the chance to get appropriate Midwestern beer, so we’re stuck with Sam Adams.

Sarah:  That’s perfectly acceptable.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I mean, what were you going to drink?  Like, Old Milwaukee?

RHG:  No, I was going to, I would get some Leinenkugels.

Sarah:  Leinenkugels?

RHG:  Leinenkugel; it’s a brewery in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and it’s my very favorite Midwestern beer, and the first three or four years I lived here, they did not distribute to Massachusetts, and now they do.

Sarah:  Oh!  Oh, there you are!  Hello!

Elyse:  So, I just put a bra on, and Rich is like, who the fuck are you putting a bra on for?

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Why would you put a bra on for us?

RHG:  Ah?

Sarah:  So, if you guys don’t remember why we’re doing this, I have a letter here from Kendal –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – but then this is the paragraph that caused this podcast to be:

I have recently realized that there is a great deal of Midwest love on Smart Bitches.  I think RedHeadedGirl is from Minnesota and Elyse hails from Wisconsin, and it is such a comfort to me, born and bred in St. Paul, university in Wisconsin, to hear familiar accents while I’m down here on the Gulf Coast.  Perhaps you should do an upper-Midwest-themed podcast!  You can talk about tater tot hot dish, Minnesota nice, and why Duck, Duck, Gray Duck is far superior to Duck, Duck, Goose.

Elyse:  I’ve never played Duck, Duck, Gray Duck.

RHG:  That’s because you live in a wrong state.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  So let me start by making sure that I’ve got this right:  Elyse, you are from Wisconsin.

Elyse:  I am from northern Wisconsin, yes.

Sarah:  [Midwest accent] Oh, yeah?

Elyse:  Oh, yeah!

Sarah:  [Laughs] And –

RHG:  It’s so freaky when she does that.

Sarah:  – and RedHeadedGirl –

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – you are from St. Paul or Minneapolis?

RHG:  Minneapolis.

Sarah:  Minnesota.

RHG:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  Now, I am honorary Midwestern, ‘cause I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, but I don’t know if you’ve ever been there.  It is extremely Midwestern.  The people are friendly.  We all have underarm pit wattle.

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  We say pop.

Elyse:  Yep.

RHG:  Thank God.

Sarah:  And, and the portions are huge, and the food is cheap, and the people are friendly, and I didn’t realize until about a year or so ago that all of my closest friends are Midwestern.

Elyse and RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  What is unique about the Midwest?

RHG:  I mean, what’s unique about it?

Sarah:  Or what makes it different from the rest of the U.S.?  ‘Cause it’s definitely a thing, but it can be hard –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – to explain to somebody how Midwest, how the Midwest functions a little bit differently culturally –

Elyse:  People –

Sarah:  – from other parts of the country.

Elyse:  People are really, really nice here, and I think partially in a disingenuous way, ‘cause RedHeadedGirl and I can talk Midwest Nice when we’re really trash talking each other, right?

RHG:  [Laughs] Oh, yeah, definitely.

Sarah:  Can we get a sample of that?

RHG:  Elyse, these cookies are really different.

Elyse:  Right.  What she just told me is these are the shittiest cookies I’ve ever tasted in my life, right?

[Laughter]

Elyse:  So –

Sarah:  Well, that was something!

Elyse:  Right.  So, like, if you have, if you have a family emergency or something happens, you will be inundated with casserole if you live in the Midwest.  Like, people drop their shit and take care of each other here, and I think some of that’s, like, because it’s a very agricultural area, and it’s really cold in the winter, and, you know, people kind of had to band together, and I think some of it’s just, it’s a lot of Germans and Swedes and –

Sarah:  Yes.

RHG:  Right.  A lot, a lot of it is just born in the bone cultural.  You come from, your ancestors came from a place where it’s super inhospitable, and if you’re not willing to help each other and abide by the laws of hospitality, you’re all going to die.

Sarah:  Right.

RHG:  So you need to at least be able to tolerate each other through the winter, and if that involves me going, oh, Elyse, these cookies are different, and Elyse smiles politely, and she knows what I said, and I know what I said, and everybody around us knows what I said, but we can all pretend that I was just commenting on the uniqueness of her cookies.  This is sounding so dirty now!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  All about Elyse’s cookies.

Elyse:  This podcast will be about my cookies.

Sarah:  Well, the thing is, though, I’ve often noticed that in places where the land can kill you if you’re stupid, there’s a lot less pretentiousness, and it could be, like, your worst enemy on the side of the road, but if they’re stuck, you’re going to help them, because otherwise they could die.

Elyse:  Right.

RHG:  Absolutely.  To tell you –

Sarah:  So you, you can’t be overt in your aggression.

RHG:  Right.  Did you watch the FX series Fargo?

Sarah:  No, but I heard a lot about it.

RHG:  Oh, it’s so good.  It’s so good.  And they talk a lot in, like, commentaries and interviews about how this land is so pretty, and it’s going to totally fuck your shit up.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Yeah!

Sarah:  If you’re stupid, you’ll die.

RHG:    If you’re stupid, it’s going to fuck your shit up.  If you’re not stupid, it may fuck your shit up anyway.  You just have to be ready for that and make sure that you have an extra pair of mittens in the car, and maybe you’ll be okay.

Sarah:  Maybe.

Elyse:  Right:  Yeah –

Sarah:  So, what is tater tot hot dish?

Elyse:  Well, the, the tater tot casserole that I have had involves tater tots, of course.  Ground beef is optional, right, along with, like, canned peas sometimes?  Yeah, it’s gross.  But typically, it’s tater tots, like, a cream-of-something soup, right, and then cheese, and it’s baked. 

RHG:  What the fuck is that?

[Laughter]

Sarah:  I think we’re going to have a hot dish culture war –

Elyse:  Yes, we are.

Sarah:  – and it’s just going to be –

RHG:  We, we are!

Sarah:  – ugly!

RHG:  We are.  Minnesota tater tot hot dish, which you can get at the Minnesota State Fair, you can get it deep fried on a stick.  Booyah!

Sarah:  I have been to the Minnesota State Fair, and it was truly life changing.

RHG:  It is, it always is.  Minnesota tater tot hot dish does have ground beef.  If you are a pretentious, citified heretic, you may include some onions in that ground beef, but that, that’s really taking it a step too far.  Mixed frozen vegetables mixed with cream of mushroom soup, ideally the generic store brand, but Campbell’s is okay if you can afford that kind of thing, and then hot dish.  [Laughs] Or then the tater tots, and you bake it in a, in a casserole bake dish.

Elyse:  See, around here, it’s, our version of tater hot dish is like a cheesy hash brown bake that typically, it shows up at every potluck, right, and every, every funeral-type food, and it’s, again, like hash browns, cheese, cream of mushroom or some shit soup.

Sarah:  It is a pity that this is not a video podcast, ‘cause the look on RedHeadedGirl’s face is like, what in the name of fuck are you talking about, you freak?

RHG:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Yeah, and, and –

RHG:  This is very accurate.  [Laughs]

Elyse:  But it sticks, it’s, it’s all within this theme that you eat of, like, starchy food because it’s cheap –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – and it gives you calories to keep your warm, which is also –

Sarah:  And there’s dairy, because the dairy is there.

RHG:  And there’s also cheese in it, because if you don’t have cheese in a dish in Wisconsin, you get put in prison.  I’m pretty sure that’s accurate.

Elyse:  Right, exactly.  It is accurate; that’s 100% accurate.

Sarah:  You know, I have one recipe for a casserole, and I can hardly ever make it because it is so fattening I would gain, like, ninety pounds, but – RedHeadedGirl, this is going to make you very sad – you take Pepperidge Farm pre-seasoned stuffing cubes, and you mix that with about two pounds of browned sausage meat, and you toss all that together, and you put it in the bottom of a big-ass Pyrex, and then you cover it with hash brown potatoes, cheese, and then, right before you put it in the oven, you scramble, like, five or six eggs with a bunch of, with a bunch of seasonings, and you dump that on top, put more cheese, because casserole, and then you shove it in the oven, and that is your breakfast bake casserole, but it, in the recipe that I have, it is called breakfast hot dish.

Elyse:  My husband used to make something we refer to as bachelor casserole, which is basically like, I’m poor and I need to eat something, and it was – I’m looking at him for confirmation – ground beef, Kraft mac and cheese, catsup, and then you baked it – no, he’s just shaking his head.  That was all that – and then he said, like, the next day, if you were really hard up and you didn’t want to eat it any more, if you had some bread you’d, like, put it in between bread and eat it like a sandwich.  [Laughs]

RHG:  That’s revolting.

Elyse:  It is revolting.  It is literally –

RHG:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – one of most disgusting things.  They all agree with me, so it’s not just me.  That is revolting.

Sarah:  When Adam was in college and he had an apartment, he would brown some, like, meat and then just start throwing vegetables in, and then just cover it with rice until it cooked?

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Or pasta, and it would be, like, a sixty-forty balance of starch to thing that is not a starch.

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  And because he’s a guy, you know –

RHG:  Just the right –

Sarah:  – he doesn’t gain weight.  It’s so not fair.

Elyse and RHG:  Right.

RHG:  No, that’s, that’s the right proportion.

Sarah:  I have also been told by Adam that the breakfast casserole of which I speak, we also call it Minnesota madness.

Elyse:  I love it.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  You know, I no longer like Adam.  He’s fired.  Sorry, sorry, Sarah.  You’re going to have to let him go.

Adam in background:  I’m not saying that I came up with the name.

Sarah:  No, he didn’t come up with the name.

RHG:  I don’t care.  He said it; he’s, he’s done.  Sorry.  So –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  I have to just pause to point out that, behind you, Spawn is sleeping with his head in a bag.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  Right?  Like, he just crawled in there –

RHG:  He just crawled in there.

Elyse:  Now he’s asleep.

Sarah:  That’s my – and you can see, I don’t know if you can see; the strap of the bag is wound around his ass – that’s my cross-stitch.  He’s probably sleeping with his forehead on my needle.  This feels good.

Elyse:  Well, I apologize if you hear Dewey on the podcast, because he normally eats at eight, so he is now letting me know –

Sarah:  Bitch!

Elyse:  – it is –

Sarah:  Bitch better have my dinner.

RHG:  [Laughs] Video is great.

Sarah:  All right, so, what are the top most passive-aggressive things you have heard or said to someone in a truly Midwestern fashion?  ‘Cause, you know, I went to school in the South, and I am very fluent in Bless Your Heart.  There’s, like, four or five different kinds that you can deploy at a moment’s notice.

Elyse:  Do you remember Dana Carvey used to do the Church Lady on Saturday Night Live?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  And she’d go, well, isn’t that special.  

Sarah:  [Laugh]

Elyse:  That’s a hundred, that’s a Midwest thing.  Like, that’s –

RHG:  That’s, yep.

Elyse:  – he, they, he got that from a Wisconsinite for sure.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  Special is Midwest code for fucked up.  Like –

RHG:  Yep.  I, I’ve been out of the Midwest for twelve years now?  So, I mean, I can still speak it, but I usually just confuse everybody when I go home, because I’m much more direct and Bostonian in my, in my manner.  I walk too fast, and I talk too fast, and –

Sarah:  I have that problem.

RHG:  – have a little bit more, a little bit too direct for some people’s comfort.

Sarah:  Do you miss it?

RHG:  I, this is, it’s very complicated.  Like, I love being from Minnesota, and I love visiting, but I love Boston so much, and I love having an ocean.  And I mean, Boston’s all, Bostonians always say exactly what they think, at length, sometimes in thicker accents than you can really decipher.

[Laughter]

RHG:  And that, I like that.  I like that a lot.

Elyse:  And you have Chris Evans.

RHG:  I do have Chris Evans.  That’s nice.  I haven’t seen him.  And even if I did, I think I would probably leave him alone, because the poor boy gets anxiety when people recognize him and fawn over him too much.

Elyse:  Well, he just needs me to hold him so that he feels more secure.

Sarah:  Of course.

RHG:  Yes.  Sure.

Elyse:  I hail from the state where our two biggest exports are cannibal serial killers and cheese, and I feel like that’s where my soul belongs, right?

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Serial killers and cheese?

Elyse:  Right, like, you know, the two, you know – we had, we had Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer.  Don’t fuck with Wisconsin, ‘cause we’ll eat you.

RHG:  Sounds about right.

Sarah:  So, what about, when I originally pitched this idea, you guys had a whole list, and Elyse, you were like, going to the lake, brandy old fashions, supper clubs, and cooking everything in a Nesco.

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  Wh-, wh-, what?

RHG:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Okay, so I don’t, I, I do not cook.  I am a very strange Wisconsinite woman.  Like, all Wisconsinite women live for potluck family-tragedy events where they can bust out their Nescos and their Crock-Pots, and they can –

Sarah:  What is a Nesco?

Elyse:  It’s, it’s a giant roaster.  It’s, like, you can put a fucking turkey in this thing.  It’s –

RHG:  Oh, is that what you call them?  We just call them turkey roasters.

Elyse:  Yeah, it’s, it’s like a giant, electric roaster that you can literally put a turkey in, it’s enormous, and you plug it in, and it’s like a big-ass Crock-Pot, basically.

RHG:  It’s like the biggest Crock-Pot you’ve ever seen in your entire life.

Sarah:  Oh, it’s, it’s, it’s basically like a Crock-Pot that you can put a whole turkey in.

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  Right, like, if you have, like –

Sarah:  Like, it’s mammoth.

Elyse:  – something you –

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  Like, when you go somewhere, something’s catered, and they have, like, a ton of meat in a giant, electric heating thing, that’s a Nesco roaster.

Sarah:  Eighteen-quart roaster oven.

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  Holy cow.

RHG:  Yep.

Elyse:  I have a friend, no lie, she can make anything in a Crock-Pot or a Nesco roaster.  Like, I, you give her a challenge, she will figure it out.

Sarah:  Y’all, I think I have just found one of the most Midwestern things?  Among the eighteen-quart roaster ovens, which, by the way, can roast a whole turkey –

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – a pie, a batch of cookies, or it can poach fish or cook a hearty soup.  This thing can do everything, and they have it in a camouflage design.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  So if you are in the woods and you need to hide, you can roast a turkey discreetly?

Elyse:  I guarantee I have bought that as a bridal shower.  Like, gatherings of family and friends, whether it’s a graduation party; somebody’s, like, funeral; a bridal shower; and you have, like, rows and rows of horrible-for-you food all sitting like – and, and you’re trying to figure out how the fuck to plug all this stuff in, right?  ‘Cause everyone brings their own Crock-Pot, so then you’ve got, like –

RHG:  Right, but no one, no one brings extension cords.

Sarah:  Like, a Squid.

Elyse:  Right, so then you’ve got, like, a seriously sketchy power strip situation going on, right, that you’re going to start the house on fire at any time.

Sarah:  With your camouflage Nesco.

RHG:  Yes.

Elyse:  Nesco roaster.  Yeah, absolutely.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  Why camouflage?  Do you need to roast discreetly in the woods, or is this just, like, a motif?

Elyse:  I think it’s just a motif.  I think it kind of, it’s alerting everyone else to your predilections, right?

RHG:  Right.

Elyse:  I don’t, I personally don’t wear a lot of camo, but I feel like, I don’t know, I feel like a lot of camo goes with the same guy who has truck nuts.  That’s a Midwest thing too –

Elyse and Sarah:  – truck nuts?  [Elyse is just finishing her sentence, but Sarah sounds incredulous.]

RHG:  Oh, oh, Sarah, oh!

Elyse:  Oh, Sarah, you Google this.  Yep.

RHG:  Google it now!  We want to watch your face.

Elyse:  My husband is cracking up in the background.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  Yep, truck nuts.

[Silence, then…]

Sarah:  [Laughs] They come in blue!  They are blue!

RHG:  Of course they do!

Elyse:  They are the, they are the –

Sarah:  Big-ass, your truck has blue balls!

Elyse and RHG:  Yes!

Sarah:  Oh, and of course they –

RHG:  That explains a lot, doesn’t it?

Sarah:  It really does, and of course they come in camo.

RHG:  Course.

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  ‘Cause you have to have –

RHG:  You don’t want anyone to be able to see your blue balls.

Sarah:  You – [laughs] – okay, these are also called Truck nutz, truck balls, BumperNuts, BumperBalls, CargoNads, Drive-thru Danglers, Trucksticles, HitchNuggets, Highway Hangers, and Balls-on-a-truck, unless you are in the UK, in which case it is Bumper Bollocks.

Elyse:  Well, it’s like the automotive version of Axe body spray.

RHG:  Yeah.  Yep.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  Oaaghh.

RHG:  She’s right.

Sarah:  They come in blue.

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Like, who in the world would hang blue balls off their truck?

Elyse:  You know –

Sarah:  That’s just, that just seems to be a very dangerous statement about yourself.

Elyse:  You know the person that has the decal of Calvin peeing on something –

Sarah:  Yes.

Elyse:  – on the back of their truck.  It’s that person.

RHG:  That guy.  That guy.

Sarah:  That guy has blue balls?

Elyse:  It’s that guy, yeah.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  Wow.  Oh, and you can get, like, a keychain to match.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Because you –

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  And, and you can order them dressing left or right!

Elyse:  That I did not know.

Sarah:  Yeah, I can order left or right danglers.  This is amazing.  So Midwesterners have a lot of truck nuts?  Like, you drive around and you can, like, count them?

Elyse:  I don’t know if a lot.  Probably, like, a disproportionate number to the rest of the country, except maybe Texas.

RHG:  Yeah, I’ve never, I’ve never seen them here.

Sarah:  The website has testes-monials.

RHG:  Of course it does.

Sarah:  And the, and the tag line says –

RHG:  Somebody is very proud of that.

Sarah:  – and a big pair of Bulls Balls can give your vehicle a big testosterone boost.

RHG:  That’s not what it does.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  No.  [Laughs] Adam just said, I’ll just put some on my Prius.  [Laughs more] Well, when I was in college, guys used to jack their cars up way, way, way higher, or the body of the truck way higher –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – than the wheel, and I used to think that that was sort of inversely proportionate to the actual length of their dick?

Elyse:  Probably.

Sarah:  Like, the higher above your wheel the truck was, the more you were compensating for, so I called them sorry-about-your-penis trucks, and I said that in front of a guy one time.  It did not go over well.  It was bad.

RHG:  [Laughs] Aw.

Sarah:  Yeah.  So, in addition to Nescos and Crock-Pots, do y’all have a lot of supper clubs?  Is that a thing?

Elyse:  Supper clubs are a thing.  I, I’ve never seen a supper club outside the Midwest.  Are they in Minnesota?

RHG:  Yeah, they’re, they’re in the more rural areas.  They’re not in the –

Elyse:  Yeah.

RHG:  – city areas.  But I’m going to let Elyse explain it, ‘cause I’ve eaten at them, but I don’t really understand them.  Like, my grandparents took us out to eat dinner at a supper club on the shores of Lake Superior a lot, and I just thought that was maybe the name of the restaurant.  I don’t know.

Elyse:  Yeah, I mean, it’s basically, it’s a restaurant that’s just open for supper, and, but it’s got, like, a very, like, if you’ve been into one supper club you’ve kind of been to them all?

RHG:  Yep.

Elyse:  A lot of them have lake views.  Not, not always.

Sarah:  So it’s like a country club, only instead of golf, it’s eating?

Elyse:  Well, you don’t have to belong.

RHG:  Yeah, you don’t have to pay dues or anything –

Elyse:  You can just go eat there.

RHG:  – you just show up.

Elyse:  But it’s just called a supper club.  It’s, it’s a bar-restaurant, and they can be like –

Sarah:  Oh, ‘cause I have a friend who’s in South Carolina, and she has a supper club, and that means that on the third Wednesday of every month, they’re having dinner at one of each others’ houses.

RHG:  No.  This is a totally different kind, this isn’t a club club.  This is just a –

Sarah:  So it’s like a social club.

Elyse:  Ah, no, it’s really –

RHG:  I, no.

Elyse:  – it’s just a restaurant that’s open for dinner and no other time.  They don’t serve breakfast or lunch.

Sarah:  Interesting.  This is not a thing with which I am familiar.

Elyse:  But, like, like, they have a lot of wood paneling?

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  Oh, any, any good restaurant does.

RHG:  Wood paneling, it’s kind of – plastic-covered menus, décor that is, you know, kind of plastic-y, like, the plastic-y version of classy?

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Of course.  And are the, are the menus, like, spiral bound, or are they just sheets?

Elyse:  I would say, well, they’re definitely laminated.

Sarah:  Of course.

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  Yeah.  Prime rib is always served on Saturdays as the special.  Fish fry is always the Friday special.  We do a lot of fish fry here.

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  That’s a big deal.

RHG:  Like, trout.

Elyse:  Yeah, you have, you know, your breadsticks come pre-wrapped, like the individually wrapped breadsticks, you know, in the –

Sarah:  Like, in foil or plastic?

Elyse:  Like, in plastic.  Like, you would –

RHG:  In plastic.

Elyse:  Yeah.

RHG:  You buy them.  You don’t bake them; they’re not made on site.  They’re –

Elyse:  No.

RHG:  – brought in with the, they bought them somewhere.

Elyse:  There’s a lot of liquor that’s served.  Usually a salad bar that has, like –

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  – some iceberg lettuce, and then that French dressing that’s super red and is, like, 99% sugar with a little bit of vinegar thrown in?

Sarah:  I used to really like –

RHG:  Fucking love that.

Sarah:  – that salad dressing.

RHG:  I love it.

Sarah:  When I first suggested this idea, you also bo-, both typed in all caps, several times, CHEESE CURDS.

Elyse:  Ooh.

RHG:  Cheese curds are the best thing.

Elyse:  Ah.  Well, there’s two, two varieties, right?

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  There’s the deep fried and breaded cheese curd.

RHG:  As God intended.

Elyse:  Right, that’s the best cheese curd.  And, like, you bite into it, and you not, you burn the fuck out of your tongue, ‘cause you get, like, liquid –

RHG:  Worth it!

Elyse:  – liquid cheese melting.

RHG:  Liquid molten cheese.  It’s like biting into a volcano.

Elyse:  So good.

RHG:  It is 100% worth it.  [Laughs]

Elyse:  And then there’s the, the cold, unbreaded cheese curds, and –

RHG:  And they, they squeak.

Elyse:  Yeah, if they’re, they squeak when you eat them.

Sarah:  And so what’s on poutine is hot cheese curds, but are not deep fried.

RHG:  They are not deep fried.  They’re – poutine is an abomination and needs to die, and I can’t believe that people are doing that to perfectly innocent cheese curds who never hurt anybody.

Elyse:  My husband is a fan.

RHG:  I am violently anti-poutine.  Violent.

Sarah:  I don’t understand, because there are times when I am at a particular juncture of my hormonal cycle where poutine sounds like the greatest thing I could possibly put in my mouth.

RHG:  That’s just weird, Sarah.

Sarah:  Potatoes, salt, cheese, and gravy.

RHG:  Hmm.

Sarah:  Like, it’s, it’s like when your body cries out for sodium, poutine is here for you.  No?  What about your husband, Elyse?  He’s not a poutine fan?

Elyse:  No, he’s reminding me that we saw Harry Connick, Jr., here recently, and, like, he was talking kind of during his set about how his, one of the people in his band – ‘cause he travels with, like, a huge band.

Sarah:  Right.

Elyse:  If you see him live, it’s pretty impressive.  He’s from Wisconsin so he made him try cheese curds, and he got, like, violently ill based on the number of cheese curds and beer he had consumed the previous night –

RHG:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – and he was like, all I remember was kind of this haze of drunken cheese-curd mess, and apparently my wife called me, and he, like, overnighted a bunch of fucking boxes of cheese curds to their house in New Orleans, and she’s like, what, what is this?

RHG:  What’s this stuff?

Elyse:  Why is this here?

[Laughter]

RHG:  Now, when I was home for my cousin’s wedding over Memorial Day weekend, we –

Sarah:  Were there cheese curds at the reception?

RHG:  There – let me, let me tell the story, Sarah.

Sarah:  There’re cheese curds!  Sorry.

RHG:  There is, that, it is related to cheese curds, okay?  [Laughs] Anyway, the night before the wedding, the bride’s side of the family all gathered at a pizza place that had just opened.  It was, it, it’s called Sammy’s Pizza, and it was our favorite pizza place in Duluth where my mom and her sisters grew up, and they had just opened a location in the Twin Cities, so we’re all like, we’re all going to go have dinner there.  And we open the menu, and on the menu, on the appetizers was cheese curds, and I was like, we’re fucking getting cheese curds.  And my aunt who currently lives in Wyoming said, well, are they good here?  And I said, it doesn’t matter!  I have done the science.  Cheese curds are better than no cheese curds.  Ergo, these are better than not having cheese curds at all, so we’re getting cheese curds.  And we did, and my cousin, who is the daughter of the aunt who lives in Wyoming, who has, did not grow up in Minnesota – she’s the only one of the five of us who did not grow up in Minnesota – was like, what the fuck is this?  Is it good?  Should I eat it?  And we’re like, you’re trying it!  What is the matter with you?

Sarah:  [Has been laughing for a while]

RHG:  And so she ate one.  She does not like trying new food, even though cheese curds are like the least adventurous food in the world?

Elyse:  Yeah.

RHG:  And she tried one, and she’s like, oh, that’s pretty good, and she actually had a couple more, and I was like, okay, I didn’t actually get her to eat pizza with toppings on it, but I got her to eat a cheese curd, so I guess it’s a step in the right direction.

Elyse:  Another Midwestern thing is ranch dressing on everything.

RHG:  Oh, yeah.

Elyse:  Like, for, you, you dip everything in ranch dressing, your fries, your pizza, mozzarella sticks.

RHG:  Your mozzarella sticks are actually really good in ranch dressing.

Elyse:  It, ranch dressing is a huge condiment.

RHG:  Yep.  Now Sarah’s looking at us like we’re out of our fucking minds.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Like, why?  Wasn’t, isn’t ranch dressing a relatively recent trend?

Elyse:  I got nothing.

RHG:  I guess.

Sarah:  But ranch dressing goes on everything, ‘cause it’s like liquid cheese?

Elyse:  I, I don’t know.

RHG:  The Midwest is not a place that is known for its –

Sarah:  Flavor.

RHG:  – delicacy of flavor.

[Laughter]

RHG:  So, I mean, ranch is a fairly inoffensive and not-strong-flavored thing, but it still adds a little bit of something without being too ostentatious?  Like –

Sarah:  It basically adds more cheesiness to your vegetables.

Elyse:  Yeah, right.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Okay, so, which is better, the Minnesota or Wisconsin State Fair?

RHG:  I’ve never been to the Wisconsin State Fair, so I have to assume that it’s worse.

Elyse:  Right.  I’m, I’m in the same boat as she is.  I haven’t been to the Minnesota one.  But you, you –

Sarah:  So what is at the Wisconsin State Fair?

Elyse:  Oh, God, what’s at the Wisconsin State Fair?  Probably the big, most famous thing is the homemade cream puffs, which are amazing, and so –

Sarah:  Homemade cream puffs?

Elyse:  Yeah, so you go, I mean, you wait in this huge, long line, and you go into a, a refrigerated building where they make them, and it’s a, a pastry kind of like the size of your head, like a real light, flaky pastry, and they cut it in half, and they put homemade, like, cream puff filling, which is, like, basically, sweet cream that’s kind of cold and refrigerated, and they squirt it on there, and then they slap the other piece of pastry on top, and they sprinkle the whole thing with powdered sugar, and it’s amazing.

RHG:  Hmm.

Sarah:  So it’s basically pastry with cheese.

Dewey:  Mew.

RHG:  Well, I mean, cream.

Sarah:  Dewey, Dewey, Dewey likes this idea.

RHG:  I mean, it’s not cheese, it’s cream.  It’s sweet cream.

Elyse:  Cream, right, yeah, it’s sweet.

Sarah:  It’s, it’s a dairy product.  It’s pastry and dairy.

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  We do –

RHG:  Not all dairy products are cheese, Sarah.

Sarah:  I understand.

Elyse:  There is, there’s a higher –

RHG:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  We have so much work ahead of us.

Sarah:  [Laughs] There’s a hierarchy of dairy product?

RHG:  [Laughs] Yeah.

Elyse:  Hierarchy of dairy, right.  There’s a hierarchy of cheese, you know.  Like, we’re not talking about that Velveeta shit.

RHG:  No.

Elyse:  If Kraft makes it, it’s not cheese.

Sarah:  You’re not talking about the orange rubbery stuff that comes in a shelf-stable cube?

RHG:  No.

Sarah:  Don’t tell me you don’t eat that.

Elyse:  Nope!

RHG:  Nope.

Elyse:  Nope.  Not allowed.

Sarah:  Not even on the Super Bowl when you mix it with tomatoes and salsa?

Elyse:  No, you put real cheese.

RHG:  No.  You use real cheese.

Elyse:  What’s wrong with you?

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I don’t know; I apparently wasn’t realize that there was a hierarchy of appropriate cheese product.

RHG:  Well, I mean, okay, first off, if you’re calling it cheese product, you are at the lower end of the hierarchy right there.

Sarah:  That’s true.  Shelf-stable cheese product.

RHG:  Is at the bottom.

Sarah:  That’s right.

RHG:  In hell.  Where it belongs!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Wisconsin State Fair, we also do, like, pig races.  Like, piglet races.  That’s a fun event.

Sarah:  You don’t have heads carved out of fifty-pound blocks of butter, do you?

Elyse:  In cheese, I think.  Not –

RHG:  Cheese, they use cheese.

Elyse:  Right, I think they do, like cheese carvings.  There’s, you know, it’s like every other state – everything deep fried and on a stick.

Sarah:  Of course.

Elyse:  You know, if it can be put on a stick and deep fried – butter is deep fried and put on a stick.

RHG:  Yep.

Elyse:  Everything deep fried and put on a stick.  You’ve got, like, a lot of 4-H kids walking around with weird-looking chickens and shit.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  If you’re from the Midwest, you’ve probably done something with 4-H at some point.

RHG:  If you’re from the more rural parts.

Elyse:  Right.

RHG:  We didn’t really have 4-H in the city.

Elyse:  I’m from the more rural parts. It was very common that – because before you can legally get a job, you can work on a farm, and it’s still legal –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – so, like, a lot of kids, you know, before school would go milk cows or feed cows or chickens or –

Sarah:  And these are people who learn to drive the trucks on the farm at, like, age nine?

Elyse:  Yes.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  Yes.  It’s totally the, that’s totally an expectation.  Like, we laugh at your, you need to be in the booster seat until you’re 80 pounds or –

RHG:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – ten years old or whatever, ‘cause it was like, I was driving –

RHG:  Over 4’ 9”.  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Right, like, like, you know, I used to sit on a, a phone booth, phone book and drive the tractor.

Sarah:  Drive the truck?

Elyse:  Yeah.  Yeah.

Sarah:  So what is the highlight of the Minnesota State Fair?  Did you go every year?

RHG:  We went pretty much every year, and I, I’ve only been once since I moved, and they recently, the StarTribune always publishes the new foods for the state fair this year article in about mid, early to mid June?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

RHG:  So I look at that and go, oh, I need to go back.  But, I mean, the highlight for me personally was always the horse barn.  That was always the first place we went, because I am horse mad and always have been.

Sarah:  Right.

RHG:  And so we’d go to the horse barn.  There was one year we went where we didn’t have a lot of money.  I think Grandma had subsidized our trip to the fair, and we went to the all-you-can-drink milk booth, and I got my milk, and I, you know, drank my fill, and then, because I had been taught to put away my litter, I threw away my cup, and my mom lost her shit.

Sarah:  Oh, no!  ‘Cause you got a free refill.

RHG:  [Laughs] ‘Cause you can keep, you, you get as many as refills, you keep your cup all day, and you just get a refill whenever you want.

Sarah:  Of course.

RHG:  And that was, like, three bucks that she needed to re-spend, and –

Elyse:  But that’s also a Midwest thing, that it’s, it makes complete sense that you would have all-you-can-drink dairy when it’s probably, like, 88 degrees outside, and nobody throws up.

Sarah:  Nope.

RHG:  Right.

Elyse:  Everyone tolerates that.

Sarah:  Okay –

RHG:  Yep, absolutely.  I mean, we, we def-, we, we also generally come from a stock of people who didn’t have sun for a big chunk of the year, so the only way we’re going to get vitamin D was from our dairy, so we can process it.

Sarah:  All right.

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  So you’re –

RHG:  I’ve put thought into this.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Of course.  Here are the new, some of the new foods at the Minnesota State Fair for this year.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Cowboy Bites.

RHG:  There, there’s, like, seventy things on that list.

Sarah:  Grandma Deb’s Snicker Bar Salad.

Elyse:  Hmm.

Sarah:  Now, Snickers bar and salad in the same dish.

RHG:  Yes.

Sarah:  Okay.  They have –

RHG:  You, okay, is, is it salad salad, or is it salad salad?  ‘Cause those are different things.  Are we talking, like, a sweet Jell-O type of salad, or are we talking a vegetable salad?  Sometimes those things get combined.

Sarah:  This is chopped Snickers bars and granny smith apples tossed in vanilla pudding with whipped cream and caramel sauce.

Elyse:  Oh, yeah, I’ve had that.

RHG:  Okay, so that’s a salad salad.  Yeah.

Sarah:  That’s a salad salad.

RHG:  As opposed to a salad salad.

Sarah:  This is going to make Adam cry.  There are deep-fried barbecue ribs at the state fair this year.  He’s going, huh.

[Laughter]

[Adam says something in background.]

Sarah:  How do you do that?

[Adam says more stuff.]

RHG:  What do you mean, how do you do that?  You take your ribs, and you throw it in the deep fryer, that’s how.  What do you want from me?

[Adam’s still saying stuff.]

Sarah:  He said, but that would detract from the barbecue flavor.  Like, why would you do that?

Adam:  I don’t think that would add anything.

Sarah:  It wouldn’t add anything.  Except that it’s deep fried, and that’s the point.

RHG:  ‘Kay.

Sarah:  Another new item on the Minnesota State Fair list this year, the mac and cheese cupcake.  I don’t think that there is a more Midwestern thing than the mac and cheese cupcake.  I mean, is there a – and of course, then there’s prime rib to go –

Elyse:  Yep.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – which is wrapped up in a big bread noodle.

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  Yep.

Sarah:  ‘Cause you’ve got to have your prime rib to go.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  It has to go with you.

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  Oh, and there’re five new flavors of Spam burger!  And you guys are, like, totally not surprised by this.  You’re like, yeah, yeah, yep, yep.

RHG:  Course not.

Elyse:  If it’s, if it sounds like it could give you a heart attack and, like, was a bad idea, it’s definitely on the menu.

RHG:  It’s definitely, yeah.

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  What’s a kalette?  Do I want to know?

RHG:  I don’t know.

Elyse:  I don’t know –

Sarah:  Oh, I’m sorry, no, this is kalettes:  deep-fried, battered kale.

Elyse:  Now that’s a travesty.

RHG:  Okay, well –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  Okay, you know on Parks and Rec when Leslie Knope –

Elyse:  Yes.

RHG:  – is like, salads, blech!

Sarah:  [Laughs] Yeah.

Elyse:  [Laughs]

RHG:  This is, this is an attempt to make salads okay, and –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  – it’s still kale.

Sarah:  I, I –

Elyse:  Right, kale is going to be shitty no matter what you do to it.

Sarah:  I, I really think that there is no greater expression of the Midwest than a macaroni and cheese cupcake.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Like, that’s pretty much the pinnacle of what you need to know about the Midwest, but this is all part of the whole eat a lot of fattening food so you gain weight in the winter and the cold doesn’t kill you.

RHG:  Yeah, right.

Sarah:  ‘Cause you get your winter weight, and then you lose it, and then you gain it back.

RHG:  Right.

Elyse:  And traditionally, you were doing a lot of, like, physical labor.

Sarah:  Right.  Okay, so are there Midwestern romances that you like?  I know there’re a couple that take place at the Minnesota State Fair.

RHG:  You know what, I’ve never actually read one.

Sarah:  Really?

RHG:  I mean, I, I don’t do contemporary, so –

Sarah:  That’s true; you’re a historical reader.

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  And I tend to gravitate away from romances that are set in kind of areas that I know, because I want to read about other places, you know?  Kind of escapism?  I know LaVyrle Spencer wrote a book, and I don’t know which one it was.  It was set in Door County, Wisconsin, which is very close to where I live.  But I, other than that, not so much.

Sarah:  Do you think there’re any similarities to the small town contemporary trend and Midwestern culture?  Or is that two totally different groups of small, intimately involved communities?

Elyse:  Oh, no, absolutely.  I mean, I think a lot of the small town romances are, at least the ones I’ve read, they’re kind of set, like, in, somewhere near the Rockies, little town, right?

RHG:  Generic, generic small town USA.

Elyse:  Right, but it could very much be, if you added more starchy casseroles it could be Wisconsin.

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  I think, you know, I think the other thing that doesn’t get a lot of love is the fact that our winters are sucky as shit, right?

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  I mean, it’s like, oh, you guys better, better court fast, ‘cause winter’s a-coming, you know.

RHG:  Yeah.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  So –

Sarah:  If you were looking, by the way, for the LaVyrle Spencer, I believe that it is Bittersweet.

Elyse:  That sounds about right.

Sarah:  Because the heroine causes Maggie to move back to Wisconsin, and her first love, Eric Severson, is back.

RHG:  [Gasps]

Elyse:  There’s a, there’s a Nora set around here too, but I don’t remember which out of the pantheon of Nora it is.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Now I need to know, because –

Elyse:  I’m pretty sure she’s remodel- – it may not be Nora, but I think it is – she’s, like, remodeling a bed and breakfast.

Sarah:  There’s a bed and breakfast one, but that’s set in Antietam, Maryland.  Now I have to wonder if – ‘cause I mean, you know, Janet Dailey did one in every state, but I don’t think –

Elyse:  Maybe that’s who I’m thinking of.

Sarah:  Yeah, I think that might who you’re thinking of.  So you don’t actually want to read about the, about the Midwest.  Have you read of anything that seemed pretty Midwestern?

Elyse:  Nicole Helm wrote a book that I reviewed that was very Midwestern, and the hero and heroine kind of had competing farms?  And, but it was a contemporary, but it worked somehow.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  RedHeadedGirl is laughing hard.

RHG:  Competing farms.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Oh, no, that was the Farmers’ Market book.

Elyse:  The Farmers’ Market book, yes, that one.

Sarah:  It was, it was a novella, right?  And it was the, they were, had, they had competing stalls at the farmers market.

Elyse:  Right, and he was, to get more business was, like, walking around shirtless, showing off his six-pack and stuff, and she was really pissed about that.

Sarah:  Right, ‘cause she couldn’t do that.

Elyse:  Right.  He was selling more cabbage ‘cause of his abs.

Sarah:  Well, I mean, you do need abs to, to sell –

RHG:  Sure.  Go with it.

Sarah:  Well, there, actually, there are two Farmers’ Market romances.  There’s All I Have, which is the one where the naked farmer lures people –

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  – by stripping to his jeans, which is just so not cool, and then there is All I Am, Farmers’ Market number two – we need more farmers market romance – and that is a – oh, it’s going to come out next year.  It’s not out yet.  But it is a girl who’s helping out at the farmers market and a guy who is back from Afghanistan and has an organic dog treat business.  I think my uterus just exploded with joy.

Elyse:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  His organic dog treat business is booming.  Like, I think that if you say those words out in the universe, romance readers everywhere pick their heads up and go, what?  Where?  Where?  I want to read that guy.  Where is he?

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  His organic dog treat business.  Like, how, how do you, I don’t think you can top – yeah.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I’m, I’m good.

RHG:  Yeah, okay.

Sarah:  That’s all you need.  So, anything else that you think people need to know about the Midwest.  It’s really –

RHG:  It’s cold.

Sarah:  It’s cold?

RHG:  It gets very cold.  I mean, like, this winter in Boston was terrible.  It was awful, but the temperature never got to 65 below.

Sarah:   And that’s a pretty regular thing in Minnesota and –

RHG:  My senior year of high school, we had school statewide cancelled because the temperature hit 65 below.

Elyse:  Yeah, it’s scary –

Sarah:  And that’s not with the wind chill; that was just, like, outside –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – your lungs will freeze into crystals.

RHG:  Yeah, pretty much.

Elyse:  We had, we had a big issue recently with just having a horribly, bitterly cold winter, but a lot of people who live out in the country, their houses are heated by propane?  So, you’ll –

Sarah:  Oh, jeeze.

Elyse:  – you’ll drive by and you’ll see, like, the big propane tanks by their houses.  Well, there was a propane shortage, so it actually turned into a statewide emergency where you had people who had to live in warming shelters because their houses didn’t have heat.

Sarah:  There wasn’t enough propane –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and they couldn’t heat their houses.

Elyse:  Right, and so it’s, I mean, we don’t cancel school for snow.  We cancel it for cold.  If it is below –

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  – 25 below, we have to cancel school.  And –

Sarah:  And that’s the temperature, not the chill.  Like, if the temperature –

Elyse:  That is the temperature, right.

Sarah:  – during the day –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – is 25 below zero Fahrenheit.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  Right.  And my school district never closes school ‘til the last minute, because it believes, like, toughen up, motherfuckers, right.  You little kids deal with this cold, I guess.  So, yeah.

Sarah:  So if you’re curious, people who don’t use Fahrenheit like all the logically brilliant people of the world –

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  – negative 25 Fahrenheit is negative 31 Celsius, which is in, in, in any language really fucking cold.

RHG:  Yep.

Elyse:  When you open your front door, steam comes out.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  Yeah.  Like, when we tell you it’s too cold to snow, that is an actual thing that happens.

Sarah:  Right.

RHG:  And you kind of hope that it’ll snow, because then the clouds’ll come in and insulate and warm things up a little bit.

Elyse:  Yeah.  When you walk from, like, your office to the car, your tears freeze in your eyes, your boogers freeze in your nose.  You know, you’ve got, like, if, dudes here wear beards, and it is not to be trendy, right.  It’s because it’s cold as fuck, and if I could grow a beard in the winter, I would have a full-on beard.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Like, I, no fucks would be given.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Do you guys, did you guys have to plug in your cars?

RHG:  Yeah, my parents did.  They do.  They still do.

Sarah:  They still plug in their cars?

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  We are getting the, or actually, we already have the parking meters, like, the public parking meters where you can plug in your electric car?

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  And this, this past year it was so cold for such a long stretch of time, like, this is the kind of weather where, like, Adam’s Prius didn’t know what to do.  Like, it just –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – the little dashboard turned red, and it was like, I, I’m from California.  I don’t drive in this cold.  It was cold enough where you should have been able to plug in your car, and so I – [laughs] – I saw a picture on a local website of people just sort of standing there with the plugs like, okay, I know that in cold places I can use this to warm up my car.  Where do I put this plug?

RHG:  Oh, bless.

Sarah:  But it wasn’t the right, yeah, it wasn’t the right plug.

Elyse:  You want to talk about what we’re reading?

Sarah:  I was going to ask that next, but I didn’t want to –

RHG:  Oh, okay.

Sarah:  – I didn’t want to move away from the Midwest if you guys wanted to talk about cheese or deep-fried cheese.

RHG:  Right.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Or cheese that has been deep fried and then cheesed.

RHG:  I mean, like –

Sarah:  Do you –

RHG:  – Minnesota and Wisconsin –

Sarah:  – do you have a hot dish recipe?

Elyse:  Me?

Sarah:  No, no, no!  RedHeadedGirl.

RHG:  No, me.

Sarah:  You told me yours.  Is this, like, a closely guarded RedHeadedGirl secret?

RHG:  It kind of is.  I mean, I – the kind of chili –

Sarah:  You make it for SCA, don’t you?

RHG:  No.

Sarah:  You have historically appropriate hot dish.  [Laughs]

RHG:  Oh, go to hell.  Go to hell.  That’s not even funny.  I do have a, my chili recipe is a variation on Minnesota chili.

Sarah:  Uh-huh?

RHG:  And Minnesota chili is like this:  you ground your, you brown your ground beef.  You throw in chopped-up celery for your crunchy bits.

Sarah:  You have lost me.  Isn’t that what the onion’s job is?  Or do you guys not like onions?

RHG:  What onions?

Sarah:  Oh –

RHG and Sarah:  – no onions.

RHG:  No onions.

Sarah:  No, that would be too strong!

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  That would be flavor.

RHG:  That would be too strong.

Sarah:  That would be way too much flavor.

RHG:  And then two cans of, or no, one can of kidney beans.  Not the ones that have the peppers in them –

Sarah:  Right.

RHG:  – ‘cause that’s too much.  If you’re feeling really daring, like, a quarter of a green bell pepper chopped up?  Very small.

Sarah:  Right.

RHG:  But just a quarter, maybe less.  For your tomatoes, you throw in two cans of Campbell’s tomato soup?  And then –

Sarah:  So you’re combining bland things into a thing.

RHG:  And then, and then, you go down to the basement where every house in Minnesota has a little lead-lined chamber that has a little lead vial of chili powder with a single atom of chili powder in it, and you bring up that vial – [laughs] – and you wave it over the pot, and then you put it back for the next time you make chili, and then you let that heat up.  And that’s –

Sarah:  I have in my house, right now, I think ten different kinds of hot chili powder.

RHG:  Yeah, that’s too much.

Sarah:  That’s too much.

RHG:  Now, what I do when I make chili is I do use onions, I use a whole green bell pepper.  I still can’t do very spicy.  I do have a very pasty-white-girl palate.

[Laughter]

RHG:  But I do have chili powder, which I got from Penzey’s Spices.  It’s good chili powder.  And a little bit of cayenne pepper, and I use one can of the Campbell’s tomato soup and one can of peeled tomatoes.

Sarah:  Right.

RHG:  And mush that up, and if I’m feeling like I really need to clear my sinuses out, I’ll swipe my roommate’s sriracha and put a drop or two in there.

Sarah:  And does that make your head explode?

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Pretty much?

RHG:  Pretty much.

Sarah:  All right.  So tell me what you’re reading, ladies.

RHG:  I am reading Mary Jo Putney’s Not Always a Saint.  I’m not too sure exactly when that’s coming out, but Kensington sent it to me, and Kensington, I’m Kensington’s bitch, basically.  And I’m also your bitch, it’s okay.

Sarah:  I know.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Kensington, Kensington sends out really good ARCs.

RHG:  Yes.  And they, they know what I like.  And I’m also reading Demelza, which is the second book in the Poldark series?  Which is what the last half of the first season of Poldark is, is based on.

Sarah:  Nice!

Elyse:  I’ve been reading a lot of contemporaries lately?  I don’t know what the deal with that is.  I’m reading the series by, the Nine Circles series by Jackie Ashenden, and she’s one of those authors that I really wish kind of got more coverage, ‘cause she’s so good.  Like, if you like really angsty, sexy contemporary romance that’s kind of over the top but still works, she’s, like, just read her.  She’s amazing.  And she had, my two favorite books by her are Having Her and Taking Him, and the hero in Having Her – I’m looking it up, ‘cause it’s been a while since I read it – I can’t remember if he’s actually a virgin or if he just can’t – he has, he has issues where he doesn’t want to have actual intercourse because of bad things that have happened to him, but he’s still, like, super kind of, all of her heroes are very kind of dominating, but not in a douche-y way, so it’s this weird combination of weird combination of won’t actually have intercourse but still wants to be bossy-pants in the bedroom kind of thing?  It’s hard to explain, but it works –

Sarah:  Hmm!

Elyse:  – really, really, really well, and if you kind of like the tortured – Taking Him by Jackie Ashenden.  If you like the kind of tortured hero, he acts like it’s that trope.  Yes, he is a virgin.  And then the heroine in Taking Him and Having Her, both of the heroines work at, like, a comic book shop, and so they’re, like, into cosplay and geek culture and stuff like that.  So –

Sarah:  Cool!

Elyse:  – I can feel people, like, perking up as I say that.  So I really like her books.  And then, what else have I been reading?  I just Lauren Dane’s two newest books, Opening Up and Falling Under, which are both really, really good.  But the heroines in those books have super shitty families, so, like, if you can’t deal with that, I would not recommend.

Sarah:  Yeah.  That can be a little hard to read sometimes.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is the end of this week’s episode.  I hope you enjoyed that interview.  I’m sure you could hear the sort of fuzziness when Elyse was talking, and I apologize if it was hard for you to hear.  I did my best to make that audio work because, well, this conversation cracked me up like whoa.

This week’s podcast was brought to you by InterMix, publisher of New York Times bestselling author Samantha Young’s One King’s Way, the new white-hot novella from the On Dublin Street series, full of passion and drama, on sale November 3rd.

The podcast transcript this month is being sponsored by Jenna Sutton, author of the Riley O’Brien & Company series published by Berkley and available in print and eBook.  The first novel in the series, All the Right Places, follows the heir to a global denim empire as he fights his attraction to the company’s new accessories designer.  If you like smart, contemporary, sexy romance, this series is for you.  You can read an excerpt at jennasutton.com or connect with Jenna at facebook.com/jennasuttonauthor or on Twitter @jsuttonauthor.

Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater.  You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This is the Peatbog Faeries from their album Blackhouse.  This track is called “Jakes on a Plane.”  You can find the new album at Amazon or iTunes or wherever you like to buy your fine, fine music.

If you would like to email us, you have suggestions, you want to tell us something we got about the Midwest wrong, which I’m sure RedHeadedGirl would love to argue about, you can email us at [email protected].  We love your email, ‘cause you are all awesome.

Future podcasts will include me talking about romance novels with many people, and if you would like to sponsor the podcast or the podcast transcript, you can email me at [email protected].

But until then, on behalf of Jane, RedHeadedGirl, Elyse, and myself, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[fine, fine music]