kitchens of the great midwest by j ryan stradal

In his other life, he was a story editor for unscripted TV shows on VH1, which he said taught him lessons in efficiency that were valuable to him as a writer. He’s also the fiction editor at literary website the Nervous Breakdown. He has long been active in the Los Angeles literary scene: He co-produces the reading series Hot Dish, acquires books for small publisher Unnamed Press, edited the 2014 California Prose Directory (an anthology of California writers) and is on the advisory board at 826LA, Dave Eggers’ nonprofit youth writing program housed in a storefront on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park. Stradal has also been asking himself how he came to arrive in his current situation: that of budding novelist. “How did this assembly of people come to arrive at this place in time?” “I knew I wanted to tell the story of a dinner party, working backward from the guests who are going to be there,” Stradal says of his conceit for the novel. The ritual of making a Caesar salad tableside is elevated to an art form, and the love and attention put into baking perfect peanut butter chocolate bars becomes a woman’s declaration of self-worth. Stradal’s descriptions are tender morsels that would be at home in any detailed food blog. Thorvald lives in a world where food, like speculating about the outcome of the 2016 presidential primaries, has become a religion. Stradal’s grandmother loved canning fruits and vegetables in the 1950s, but it is unlikely she knew the difference between Northern Xtra Sweet bicolor corn and heirloom Golden Bantam corn, both of which are discussed at length in a chapter that finds a young Thorvald wowing guests at a dinner party with her immaculate palate and otherworldly cooking skills. After vomiting, she needed two bananas, reverse-osmosis water, and a protein shake to replenish,” Stradal writes in one of a number of passages that address the near-frantic heights of modern food obsession. It was way less slammed with rubes than at lunchtime. “Braque had never been to Whole Foods this time of the morning before. a place he lovingly sends up in a hilarious chapter about Thorvald’s calorie-obsessed cousin, Braque Dragelski, whose mouth is as filthy as her colon is clean. He grew up in Hastings, Minn., (population 22,000) and studied film, television and radio at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

Kitchens of the great midwest by j ryan stradal