Fried Walleye and Cherry PieMidwestern Writers on Food
There’s more to the Midwestern kitchen and palate than the farm food and sizable portions the region is best known for beyond its borders. It is to these heartland specialties, from the heartwarming to the downright weird, that Fried Walleye and Cherry Pie invites the reader.
With its corn by the acre, beef on the hoof, Quaker Oats, and Kraft Mac n’ Cheese, the Midwest eats pretty well and feeds the nation on the side. But there’s more to the Midwestern kitchen and palate than the farm food and sizable portions the region is best known for beyond its borders. It is to these heartland specialties, from the heartwarming to the downright weird, that Fried Walleye and Cherry Pie invites the reader.
The volume brings to the table an illustrious gathering of thirty Midwestern writers with something to say about the gustatory pleasures and peculiarities of the region. In a meditation on comfort food, Elizabeth Berg recalls her aunt’s meatloaf. Stuart Dybek takes us on a school field trip to a slaughtering house, while Peter Sagal grapples with the ethics of paté. Parsing Cincinnati five-way chili, Robert Olmstead digresses into questions of Aztec culture. Harry Mark Petrakis reflects on owning a South Side Chicago lunchroom, while Bonnie Jo Campbell nurses a sweet tooth through a fudge recipe in the Joy of Cooking and Lorna Landvik nibbles her way through the Minnesota State Fair. These are just a sampling of what makes Fried Walleye and Cherry Pie—with its generous helpings of laughter, culinary confession, and information—an irresistible literary feast.
Peggy Wolff has written on food and food culture for publications including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Hartford Courant, and Orlando Sentinel. She is the food editor for REALIZE Magazine.
“Fried biscuits, Creole-style spaghetti, carrot shavings in Jell-O, and perfect peach cobbler—this is the food that haunts midwesterners throughout their lives, and it’s inspired a collection of evocative essays by some of the region’s most appealing writers.”
—Laura Shapiro, author of Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America
“Fried Walleye and Cherry Pie—what an eyeful! I so enjoyed reading these personal accounts of midwestern foods and the stories they tell, which is food plus people, place, and history. As Peggy Wolff says at the start, food is not just food; it’s the experience that counts—where you are and who you are with. And that is just what these stories are about: the bigger picture of food that makes its memory poignant and worth telling.”
—Deborah Madison, author of Vegetable Literacy
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