Bars


What exactly are the ingredients? Are they crunchy brownies or something else? Is that what the sign language girl's mom served the crew?

I don't have low self esteem, I have low esteem for everyone else.-Daria

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"Bars" is a generic term like "cookies" and like cookies there are many varieties and variations. Like brownies (which are actually in the bar category) they are a sweet dessert baked in a pan and cut into rectangles. Bars are/were a staple of informal entertaining in the Midwest -- more adult than cookies, less showy and less perishable than a torte. Few self-respecting ladies would show up to a church-basement funeral meal without a pan of bars.

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Yes, my mother-in-law is from Ohio and always has a plate of bars ready when we, or anyone else, for that matter, come over.

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Old thread, but I had to comment since the previous folks didn't tie it up and put a ribbon on it.

I will assume that the OP has heard and used the phrase "candy bar" before... why is this such a hard one for people to grasp?

Just like there are many different types of retail "candy bars", there are many different types of home made candies - those which are spread into a pan and baked, resulting in something resembling either cookies or brownies are the things referred to as "bars" in this context.

I'm sure that many people outside of the Midwest have had the same exact types of treats - so if the word "bar" is so foreign, then tell us what you would call them?

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The term "bars" isn't only a Midwestern thing by any means. Check out the baking aisle at the grocery store and you'll find boxed mixes from national brands to make various types of bars. Plenty of recipes in cookbooks and magazines, too.

What the movie seems to be poking fun at is the "coffee and bars" culture which (even in the late 90's) was a little old fashioned, unsophisticated, rural, Midwestern and out of date. In a place like Mount Rose coffee and bars were the standard offering for everything from parent-teacher conferences to baby showers to car dealer midnight madness sales to city council meetings. And if you thought anyone might drop by you'd have a pan of bars on hand to serve with coffee to your visitors. Among the respectable ladies of the community bar recipes would likely be an occasional topic of conversation and perhaps traded if something was unusual or interesting. I remember as a kid when M&M bars hit the scene (M&M's themselves were nothing new but somebody got the idea to put them into blonde brownies and it became quickly popular) and out of the blue for a few years you could count on multiple ladies bringing M&M bars to any bake sale or picnic.

Obviously people eat things like brownies and lemon squares all over the country, and it's not like serving a dessert at a baby shower is uniquely Midwestern -- of course not. But I think (at least traditionally) "coffee and bars" in the small-town Midwest are expected, boring, cliche, typical, provincial, dull.

That the OP had to ask what they are even talking about supports the idea that bars aren't a "thing" in the way they were (are?) in the small-town Midwest. And that's what the movie is making fun of. Of course coffee and bars are the omnipresent symbol of small-town hospitality and small-town dullness.

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