Given the rather hilly terrain in my suburb, I’m not sure how 'flat" we are.
And considering this is a metropolitan area of 3 million people with a large immigrant base*, you’d be surprised how much ethnic food we have here.
http://www.demography.state.mn.us/documents/Immigrants2009.csv
We have the second largest Hmong community in North America (Wisconsin is 3rd) and the largest Somali polulation. We also have a lot of Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs and Russians, along with a growing Chinese population.
When I moved here I said, “All right, I can deal with these cold ass winters, but what the hell am I supposed to eat?!” I scoured the entire state for respectable cayenne pepper, and it simply does not exist. Do not tell me to go to this or that Mexican part of town, or so and so’s ethnic store. I’ve been and have a cayenne pepper graveyard in my cabinets of cayenne that just would not suffice. I had to tell my mother to ship me in some decent cayenne pepper from LA. She sent me a whole bag full, for which I will love her forever. That and the whole raising me thing.
No, I intentionally neglected to mention Jello salad, and indeed, anything featured in The Gallery of Regrettable Food. Some things are just beyond the pale, even in jest.
I didn’t get any chocolate chip cookies last time I flew on Midwest (post their merger with Frontier).
Anything west of the Texas Pandhandle may be south but clearly isn’t isn’t “The South”. In fact, if they don’t talk longingly about the good old days in which “servants” danced joyously through the fields in a snowstorm of cotton while benevolent plantation masters sipped mint juleps on the porch, it ain’t The South.
Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico (along with much of Texas and California) are the the southwest. Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana are rocky mountain states. They’re all western states, but not west coast states. Obviously there’s some overlap between regions and states – the Great Plains extends through Colorado and Wyoming, parts of Colorado and Utah are closer to the Southwest, etc.
I’ve never heard anyone describe any of these states as midwestern.
Stranger: That was hilarious. It certainly encapsulates the NY/Northeast/New England view of what the Midwest is all about.
Don’t you remember Obama and Arugulagate?
WRT Pittsburgh: I think it’s absolutely wrong to say that Pittsburgh is in the Midwest. It has some Midwestern-ish elements, but they’re interpereted through the unique character of the city. One of the bases of that character is that it IS a Pennsylvania city, and PA has a distinct culture of its own.
For those of you who are wondering why we’re discussing Pittsburgh–It’s in western Pennsylvania, but it’s less than an hour from the Ohio border. It’s also less than an hour from West Virginia. There’s a little streak of quasi-Southernness to Pittsburgh, but I can’t really give you a good example of how it manifests itself.
Pittsburgh is at the junction of 3 regions and it shows. It also has a remarkable history and personality of its own. It’s a weird but wonderful place.
I have some vague notions about it, but I was still living in my cave in Eastern Europe at the time.
I live in Ann Arbor. There are no local yokels. Everyone here eats hummus and arugula. Possibly together. At brunch, on the way to the farmer’s market, where we pick up some heirloom tomatoes and chat with our friends about how horrible we think Republicans would be, if we ever met any.
All this business about the Midwest being scared of hummus might have some basis for some parts of the Midwest, but I have to imagine it really is ridiculous as applied to Michigan. The Detroit metropolitan area is home to 400,000 Arab-Americans, the largest concentration anywhere in the country. In particular, Dearborn is 33% Arab, the highest proportion of any sizable city in the country. I doubt they have any aversion to hummus over there…
Ann Arbor (and Madison, WI) and other liberal-happy hippy college towns that are really sister cities to Berkelely, don’t count as “Midwest”. But you get ten miles outside of one of these towns and you are in a different world. An alien world. A place…beyond imagination. A dimension measuring not of distance and time, but flatness and blandness. In a few minutes, Ms. Kyla will find herself in this dimension; a place we call…the Midwest Zone.
One could claim you’re just gerrymandering out the parts of the Midwest that don’t meet your preconceptions, though, No True Scotsman-style… Supposing they claimed the more rural or less cosmopolitan parts of every state as accordingly part of the Midwest. Should the term lose all coherence as a simply-connected geographic region?
Listen to this man, for he is bitter, but wise. You get 1/2 block outside of these seemingly normal (but cold) enclaves, and you’d swear you entered East Hicksville, Kentucky.
Hey! I’m bitter but wise too! Just about other things…
Also, I must admit that in my limited experience, my one major impression of the Midwest was that it didn’t know decent ethnic or spicy food from shit. But it’s a big place, with lots of different parts.
