How this headline may connect to industries in Minnesota. Technical scores are below — click any ? for what a metric means.
Grant McGuire: Try it, you.Showers this morning then scattered thunderstorms developing during the afternoon hours.High around 85F.Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.Chance of rain 50%..There’s a peculiar kind of food preference that works in reverse.Instead of turning your nose up at oddball dishes other people eat, you keep eating it — doggedly, curiously — until figure out why others like it.That’s been my lifelong approach to food, and it has taken me on a longer journey than I ever expected.I have applied it to snails, chitlins, and various forms of fried fat.Now I apply it to Midwest food.I grew up in the Tri-State Area in the 1960s, which meant certain things were understood.Fish came fried.Fresh fish wasn’t a concept that landed on the Chimney Corner restaurant menu — it was battered, dropped in oil, and served without apology.The local fried fish tradition comes out of both Catholic Friday traditions and the Midwest region’s lakes and rivers.Steak was its own religion, and well-done was the gospel.No exceptions.The idea of serving beef any other way would have struck our crowd as suspicious.I think about this when I watch footage of a certain president attacking a well-done steak with ketchup.I understand exactly where that instinct comes from.Doesn’t make it right.The chefs may be screaming and pulling their hair.But I understand it.Then there were casseroles (often called “hotdish” in Minnesota and the Dakotas).I never thought of them as regional.They just appeared on the dinner table a couple of times a week.They showed up at church potlucks.They materialized at funerals, dropped off by neighbors who didn’t know what else to do with their grief.It wasn’t until I read about Midwest cuisine as an adult that I realized the casserole is a cultural institution there — a form of edible community, a dish built for feeding people gathered together in celebration or sorrow.What changed me wasn’t sophistication.It was stubbornness.I’d encounter something I didn’t understand — an unfamiliar spice, a texture that didn’t compute — and instead of retreating, I’d go back.Again and again.Until I figured out its popularity.Medium rare steak was a revelation that arrived embarrassingly late in my life.I only learned about it when I left the Tri-State.That first blush of pink center, the way good beef actually tastes when it hasn’t been cooked into submission — felt like finding out a familiar song had a second verse I’d never heard.Fried fish, interestingly, I’ve come back to recently with fresh eyes.I love the Japanese tempura version.Knowing now what a beautifully grilled or poached piece of fish tastes like makes the fried type feel like a deliberate choice rather than a default.The crunch, the salt, the way good frying seals in flavor — there’s real craft there, and I’d missed it by taking it for granted.And casseroles?I’ve claimed them entirely as my own.Loaded with vegetables, layered with creamy goodness, they’re not the bland dish I once mistook them for.They’re art.The Tri-State kid who didn’t know better is still in there.He just keeps eating until he does — stubborn, curious, and a little smarter.Grant McGuire is a Huntington resident.His email address is grant11955@gmail.com.