What midwestern / northern dishes do you like?

Pasties and pierogi always remind me of my grandparents and midwestern dinners.

I love tater tot hot dish. It might be called a casserole in other places, but it's hot dish in MN. I like lefse and can make it on my own grill. I love fried walleye. I enjoy a salad that is more like a dessert than an actual salad. We buy homemade pasties that are made by church groups doing fundraisers.

my parents were from the midwest.. but their odd food habits had to do with ethnic dishes.. and not "midwest".. like my granddad put sugar on leaf lettuce, and would break up a slice of white bread into milk to eat it. my dad puts butter, brown sugar and cinnamon on brown rice. we only ate brown rice at our house. my mom liked brown sugar cake (with hot sauce), basic stew.. beef, carrots and potatoes. we all eat brunost..norweigen cheese we don't eat peanut butter sandwiches.

What?!!! Without those, I got nuthin’. 

Johnny Marzetti and Maid-rites

Brats, cowboy beans, apple crisp, cheesy potatoes. I come by my rotundity honestly.

I am not sure if I fall into the Northern category...but I am Northern New England so that has to count for something.  

tourtiere (meat pie)

Pasties with gravy. No fing ketchup.

Gross!

Chicken pot pie
Sausages
Onion dip
Meatballs
Corn fritters (with buttermilk dip)
And so much more!!

We're going to be making pierogi on Thursday with dd and her fiance.  DH and dd learned all the tricks from my MIL... make the most tender dough and delicious filling.  would love a good recipe for Pasties!

Dh is from the Rochester, NY area: rhubarb as a side dish and in a pie, white hot dogs, fish fry on Friday.

Mom was Italian, Dad was German. We had a lot of pasta or potato dumplings with sauerkraut at our house growing up!

Do you guys remember a while back someone wrote a newspaper column for the NYT where they listed the alleged favorite regional dishes I believe for every state, and the moron had grape salad down for Minnesota. What the what? Sorry, NO, just no! In all my 50+ years I had never even heard of that abomination much less tasted it! ~link to story about the story~

I think it was last year when I was visiting friends from South Dakota, they had a bowl of it in their fridge and asked me if I wanted some.   Not wanting to be rude, I said, “suuure...” I’ll just suffice it to say, I quite honestly never need to try it again because it was a pretty bad combination of flavors and textures. It was odd to say the least, and the first thought that popped into my head was, “Who *ever* thought to mix these particular ingredients together? Ugh.”

And because I know the rules, that this post is worthless without the recipe, here ya go: