The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J Ryan Stradal & Recipe by J Ryan Stradal
Let’s talk Ryan Stradal!
When I reached out to Ryan asking him for something for Foodie Book Club, he responded so positively, immediately offering a recipe for Pat's peanut butter bars from his book The Lager Queen.
Maybe it came in a different way than I’m normally gifted a recipe, but I love the fact that the recipe came literally, from pages of his book, so a BIG thank you to Ryan.
April Read Foodie Book Club
Firstly, I took this information straight from Ryan’s website.
Usually, I have to do a lot of digging around in order to get the low down on our featured author, but a great BIG shout out again to Ryan for letting me strip his website clean of information about him.
“J. Ryan Stradal lives and works in Los Angeles County, California.
He grew up in the Midwest, in the southern Minnesota town of Hastings, where he often failed his driver's license exams, and graduated from Northwestern University, where he often slipped on the ice.
He does not own a gun and a motorcycle, which makes him unique among the men in his extended family.
J Ryan Stradal
His second novel, The Lager Queen of Minnesota, ( our monthly read) was published by Viking / Pamela Dorman Books in July 2019.
Receiving starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and BookPage, it became a national bestseller its first week of release, and was named one of the best books of the year by NPR, USA Today, Booklist, Paste, and the Texas Library Association among other places
In 2019, he did a sixty-one-stop book tour that took him to bookstores, libraries, and breweries in fifteen states between July and December.
The TV rights for Lager Queen are presently being negotiated.
In 2020, The Lager Queen of Minnesota was named the winner of the WILLA Literary Award (by women Writing the West, to honor the best in literature honouring women’s or girls’ stories set in the West that are published each year) and was a finalist for the Heartland Booksellers Awards
I’m a big fan of this book cover.
His first novel, Kitchen of the Great Midwest, was published by Viking / Pamela Dorman Books on July 28th, 2015, and reached the New York Times Hardcover Best Seller list at #19 on its third week of release. In April 2016, the American Booksellers Association voted Kitchens the Indies Choice Book of the Year Awards In July 2016 ….. and lots more
So far, Kitchens has been acquired for publication overseas in twelve countries (Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Israel, Italy, Korea, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). Back in November 2014, before it was published, the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society awarded Kitchens of the Great Midwest first prize in their annual novel competition. He's extremely grateful for the places that put it on their 2015 best-of lists.
Our recipe came from this book
His shorter writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Review of Books, BuzzFeed, CNET, VanityFair.com, The Rumpus, Granta, Boulevard, Joyland, Midnight Breakfast, Los Angeles Magazine, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Electric Literature, Midwestern Gothic, The Towner, The Rattling Wall, The Nervous Breakdown, Bright Wall / Dark Room, Goodreads, Monkeybicycle, The California Prose Directory (2013), American Short Fiction (online), Knee-Jerk Magazine, Insomniac, Longitude, Trop, Cedars, Facsimile, Marguerite Avenue, Hobart, This Recording, NFL.com, and in McSweeney's The Goods. He also contributed field reports for the serialized iPad/iPod novel The Silent.
A selection of his short stories, compiled under the title "Nerd & Whore are Friends," was a 2013 finalist in the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Competition.
His short fiction has also been anthologized and named a finalist for the James Kirkwood Literary Prize.
In addition to trying to write short stories and novels, he was a contributing editor at TASTE from 2017 to 2019. Previously, he was the fiction editor at The Nervous Breakdown from 2013 to 2016, and an editor-at-large at Unnamed Press in Los Angeles from 2015 to 2017. He was also co-editor, with Adam Cushman, of Critically Acclaimed a compendium of "real reviews of fake movies," published by Rare Bird in January 2018, and editor of the 2014 California Prose Directory, an anthology of writing about California by California writers, published by Outpost19.
He volunteers for & is on the advisory board of the educational non-profit 826LA
He's also helped create products and materials for their affiliated store, the Echo Park Time Travel Mart.
He co-produces, with Summer Block, the literary/culinary series “HOT DISH," which has featured Shauna Barbosa, Sara Benincasa, Cecil Castellucci, Steph Cha, Jade Chang, Carina Chocano, George Ducker, Lauren Eggert-Crowe, Gina Frangello, Ann Friedman, Rico Gagliano, Jim Gavin, Amelia Gray, James Hannaham, Heather Havrilesky, Meg Howrey, Peter Hsu, Julia Ingalls, Kima Jones, Siel Ju, Taleen Kali, Brad Listi, Ben Loory, Lou Mathews, Tracy McMillan, Mary Otis, Lilliam Rivera, Davy Rothbart, Jen Sincero, Stacey Vanek Smith, Ramesh Srinivasan, Jerry Stahl, Chris Terry, Diana Wagman, and Alissa Walker, among many others.
He has often worked in television, story editing or producing shows for VH-1, MTV, ABC, FOX, TLC, A&E, Discovery, and History. Working primarily for Original Productions from 2008 to 2014, he was the senior story producer on “Deadliest Catch” and “Ice Road Truckers” and a supervising producer on “IRT: Deadliest Roads,” "Storage Wars," and “Storage Wars: Texas.”
Storage wars, a not so guilty secret of mine.
He was also associate producer on Chad Hartigan's film “This Martin Bonner” which won the Audience Award for Best Of NEXT at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013.
He likes books, wine, sports, root beer, craft beer, and peas.” Taken from Authors website here.
Before I write more, I just want to say how fabulous it is that Ryan is involved in storage wars, Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch and I’m not even pretending that they’re secret viewing for me, I openly enjoy all of these programs.
Lots of the following information is from Ryans website, written for the Independent by Tim Walker, taken from Entertainment Weekly and an interview by Jeremy for From Read More Books, and just a bit from me thrown in for good measure!
Tim Walker spoke to Ryan Stradal for the Independent, sitting down with him for a coffee in a Los Angeles bookshop.
At the time of interview, Tim, describes Ryan Stradal as:
“….an unprepossessing 39-year-old in a baseball cap and a T-shirt advertising the (Midwestern) band Guided By Voices, admits he’s not entirely comfortable “tooting [his] own horn”.
The interview says that:
Stradal grew up in Hastings, Minnesota, eating his parents’ home-cooked Midwestern comfort food.
The J stands for nothing, apparently – he didn’t know it was in his name until he saw it on his birth certificate – and he goes by the name Ryan.
He started going to restaurants when he was still a teenager.
“I got into food as a replacement for travel,” he says. “I really wanted to see the world as a kid and I couldn’t afford it, but I could afford to eat at interesting restaurants. So I would eat at Minneapolis and St Paul’s Thai or Ethiopian restaurants. I was seeing the world through Minnesota’s version of its cuisine.”
Like many young and ambitious Midwesterners, Stradal moved first to Chicago – to study radio, TV and film at Northwestern University – and then made for the coast.
“Where did you source your ingredients from, are they local?” asks one hipster foodie, to which Pat replies: “Yeah ... they’re from the store about a mile from my house.”
The satire is gentle, and Stradal avoids taking sides. “I grew up in Pat’s world, and if I’m served peanut butter bars, I’d prefer them the way she would make them,” he says, but adds that he also sympathises with the more conscientious modern eater: “I don’t think it’s wrong to want to know where your food ingredients come from.”
Just for the record, this is the recipe that was gifted to us, taken directly from his book, Kitchens!
About the Book
I don’t think I’ve ever had to work so little to get so much information for Foodie Book Club monthly write up, and I’m not complaining!
Ryan’s website describes the book as:
“A novel of family, Midwestern values, hard work, fate and the secrets of making a world-class beer, from the bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest.”
Two sisters, one farm. A family is split when their father leaves their shared inheritance entirely to Helen, his younger daughter.
Despite baking award-winning pies at the local nursing home, and becoming a local celebrity because of the pies, her older sister, Edith, struggles to make a living. With a move to another town and the death of her husband, she can't help wondering what her life would have been like with even a portion of the farm money her sister kept for herself.
With the proceeds from the farm, Helen builds one of the most successful light breweries in the country. Where Edith has a heart as big as Minnesota, Helen's is as rigid as a steel keg. Yet one day, Helen will find she needs some help herself, and she could find a potential saviour close to home. . . if it's not too late.
Meanwhile, Edith's granddaughter, Diana, earns a shot at learning the IPA business from the ground up--will that change their fortunes forever, and perhaps reunite her splintered family?
To write this book, Stradel visited 36 different breweries, some a little bit stealthily, gaining entrance and sneaking some photos.
Even after all that research, Ryan isn’t the biggest fan of beer:
“If I had my druthers I’d probably have a Citra IPA,” says Stradal. “I know it’s a normcore choice, but I’ll own it.”
By the way, can I just point out the use of the word ‘druthers’ in that sentence, a word I never use but I’m planning to fit it into as many sentences as possible from now on.
Entertainment Weekly interviewed Ryan, read on to find out what they chatted about:
1) When did the idea for Lager Queens first come to you?
One of the things that inspired this book was my book tour for Kitchens of the Great Midwest. It brought me to a lot of smaller towns in the Midwest, and I noticed that a lot of these towns now have breweries. I was born in 1975, and in that year there were fewer breweries in the entire U.S. than there are in Minnesota right now. It made me think, this has happened under my nose. I don’t know that much about beer; I’m more of a wine drinker, to be honest. But I thought, this is happening in such a robust way in the part of the country I grew up in — I’m going to invent some characters who will help me learn more about beer.
2) It’s clear where the inspiration for place came from, but what about the characters? Are they based on real people who you know?
They’re definitely based on real people. Like my mom — she first put a book in my hands and encouraged my writing at a young age. She was actually a writer herself, but she died before she could publish anything other than a few poems. I feel in a lot of ways that I want to continue her legacy and honor her influence and write books that she would like if she had gotten to see them.
One of the things I do to keep her alive, in my heart, is to write her into my characters. In some cases I’m having a conversation with her. I think a lot of how Edith looks after her family above all else is inspired by my mom. She’s very willing to accept compromises in other aspects in her life, except for when it comes to her family. Helen’s ambition comes from my mom. She went back to college as an adult, got a degree, and ended up becoming a writer for the state of Minnesota — that kind of midlife career change and the happiness came out of it was a big influence for all of these characters. They all have a point in their lives when their priorities shift in a major way.
3) It’s clear where the inspiration for place came from, but what about the characters? Are they based on real people who you know?
They’re definitely based on real people. Like my mom — she first put a book in my hands and encouraged my writing at a young age. She was actually a writer herself, but she died before she could publish anything other than a few poems. I feel in a lot of ways that I want to continue her legacy and honor her influence and write books that she would like if she had gotten to see them.
One of the things I do to keep her alive, in my heart, is to write her into my characters. In some cases I’m having a conversation with her. I think a lot of how Edith looks after her family above all else is inspired by my mom. She’s very willing to accept compromises in other aspects in her life, except for when it comes to her family. Helen’s ambition comes from my mom. She went back to college as an adult, got a degree, and ended up becoming a writer for the state of Minnesota — that kind of midlife career change and the happiness came out of it was a big influence for all of these characters. They all have a point in their lives when their priorities shift in a major way.
4) Can you discuss your use of archetypes, specifically as it relates to Midwestern culture?
I think it happens naturally. I don’t know any stereotypical Minnesota women, so it’s pretty easy not to write that. It’s more difficult to attempt to write complex characters. I like to see how Midwesterners stand up to conflict, and also how they react to success. That’s something I’ve been intrigued by since I was a kid. Another attribute of Edith that reminded me of my mom is that she has no instinct for self-promotion, or willingness to self-promote. She’s a little proud of herself at times, but it’s never her idea.
I did a lot of research. I probably personally visited about three dozen breweries, and I rather intensely visited about a dozen within that 36. At some I just went in, tried their beer, and took pictures, and at some I talked to brewmasters and saw facilities. At Spiral Brewing in Hastings, Minn., they even broke down the numbers for me — they were very transparent, and that kind of thing was helpful to know for [writing this book]. I like beer, don’t get me wrong, I have plenty in the fridge. I just didn’t know it as well.
6) What do you anticipate will really resonate with Minnesotans in Lager Queen?
I’m sure there’s going to be at least one beer nerd in every audience that’s going to have a different opinion than my characters did in the book. One of the things that I wanted to see more of in contemporary fiction, because I read a lot of it, is a sense of hope and reconciliation, and also a book that was funny and moving. So I hope that other people who are looking for that kind of book find it, and perhaps they’ll agree with me. I certainly went through a lot writing this book; emotionally, I felt it took a lot out of me. As my friend Lou Matthews says, always be ready to take credit for things other people see in the book.
The following I found on From Read More Books – by Jeremy, so even more information about the book:
1) What inspired the beer-y theme in The Lager Queen? Did you know much about brewing before diving into the writing?
I enjoyed beer, but I didn’t know the difference between a lager and an ale, to be honest. While I was touring the Midwest for my debute novel in 2015, I was blown away by the craft breweries I frequently encountered, some in towns much smaller than Hastings.
When I spoke with the owners of these craft breweries, and learned a bit about the brewing history of my home state and region, I felt that I wanted to tell this story, but from the perspective of unlikely narrators. I created a handful of characters who I introduce at a point in their lives where they know nothing about beer, so their education can take the reader on a journey and not merely be didactic.
2) There are a few great Minnesota breweries mentioned in the book. Do you have a personal favorite?
Surly gets a lot of hype (deservedly), as well as Fulton, Bauhaus, Bent Paddle . . . the list goes on!
Tough question — but I’d have to say BlackStack, who made (and canned) Blotz lager last summer. They’re great guys and their beer is consistently marvelous.
5) The three women — Edith, Helen, and Diana — are the stars of The Lager Queen. Why focus on midwestern women, specifically?
Originally, many of the male characters also had POV chapters, but their chapters weren’t strong enough to make the cut. These three women, meanwhile, were indispensable. There’s a lot of my mom in them. I write to keep her alive, which is why my primary characters are usually women.
Such a lot of info out there about this book and I can see why it’s so popular.
It’s a book that’s easy to read, with subjects that feel to me, universal to all of us.
Family, love, sisterhood, marriage and loss, all things that if written about with a heavy hand, could appear shallow and superficial.
Not so in this book, which is why I’m giving the book a 3 Egg rating.
I give it a 3 egg rating
Ingredients
2 ½ cups graham cracker crumbs
1 cup melted butter plus an extra 1 Tbsp Butter
1 cup peanut butter
2 ½ cups icing sugar
1 cup chocolate chips
How it’s done!
Mix together all the ingredients except chocolate chips and 1 Tbsp butter
Pat into greases 9 x 13” pan
Melt the chocolate chips along with the 1 Tbsp of butter
Spread on top of bars
Refrigerate until firm
Cut into slices
