12 Things Wisconsin Parents Keep Trying to Send Home With Their Adult Children

The hug ends, but the packing doesn’t.

A Wisconsin parent circles back to their kitchen counter for one more thing.

Then their fridge, then their pantry.

By the time their adult child’s car pulls out of the driveway, the trunk holds more than anyone planned.

These are the things Wisconsin parents keep trying to send home with their adult children.

1. Bag of Squeaky Cheese Curds

A fresh bag of squeaky Wisconsin cheese curds only stays squeaky for a day or two before the fridge turns it rubbery.

Wisconsin’s cheesemakers produced 25.2% of the country’s cheese in 2024, more than any other state, so a factory-fresh bag is never far from reach.

Freshness doesn’t wait.

So the bag goes into a departing kid’s hands before anyone even asks for one, squeak included.

2. Jars of Home-Canned Tomatoes

Jars of home-canned tomatoes crowd a Wisconsin pantry every fall, the payoff from a growing season that packs a whole garden’s harvest into about six weeks.

Two people can’t get through that many jars of tomatoes, salsa, and pickles before next summer’s crop is ready.

The shelf runs out first.

A kid who just moved into a first apartment leaves with a case of mason jars anyway, pantry space or not.

3. Foil Pan of Fish Fry Leftovers

A single order of fried perch or walleye at a Wisconsin supper club usually comes out bigger than one plate can hold.

Wisconsin’s Friday fish fry tradition took hold for two practical reasons: Catholic families abstained from meat on Fridays, and taverns needed a way to stay open during Prohibition.

Parents wrap what’s left in foil before anyone clears the table.

Nothing goes to waste.

The visiting kid carries that pan home, fries and all.

4. Cooler of Spotted Cow

New Glarus Brewing keeps its Spotted Cow inside Wisconsin on purpose, after the brewery struggled years ago to keep both Wisconsin and Illinois stocked at once.

It’s legal to carry a few cans over the state line as a gift, just not to sell them.

Whoever’s saying goodbye treats that loophole like an assignment.

The cooler comes out.

Someone packs and zips it before anyone reaches the driveway.

This is the one item here that a kid can’t just buy again once they’ve left the state.

5. Ring of Usinger’s Sausage

Parents make the drive to Usinger’s storefront on Milwaukee’s Old World 3rd Street, the same spot Fred Usinger opened in 1880.

The family still runs it four generations later.

A kid who’s since moved away doesn’t get to swing by on a whim anymore.

So the sausage travels instead.

Someone wraps it, packs it on ice, and treats it like cargo too important to trust to a cooler bag alone.

6. Cooler of Venison From Deer Camp

Wisconsin hunters registered 182,084 deer during the nine-day gun season in 2025, and a lot of that meat lands in family freezers within a week.

A Wisconsin couple can only eat so much venison sausage and backstrap before the freezer runs out of room.

A grown kid with an empty apartment freezer becomes the overflow plan.

Someone makes room.

The cooler comes out of the garage before deer camp even wraps up for the season.

7. Bag of Fresh Wisconsin Cranberries

Wisconsin grows about 60% of the cranberries harvested in the entire country.

The U.S. crop came in close to nine million barrels in 2024 alone.

A fall trip to a marsh or a roadside stand rarely ends with the exact number of bags a parent planned to buy.

Extras never make it back.

A kid headed back to an apartment three states away still ends up with a bag of cranberries riding in the back seat.

8. Sack of Door County Cherries

Door County is the only place left in Wisconsin where tart cherries are still grown commercially, and the Seaquist family alone farms about 1,300 acres of the trees.

A summer trip up to Door County turns into a stop at an orchard stand almost by habit.

Parents buy more dried and frozen cherries than a year of baking could use.

The sack gets split.

Half stays home, and the other half goes to whichever adult child happens to be visiting that week.

9. Tin of Marathon County Ginseng

Marathon County grows about 95% of Wisconsin’s ginseng crop, and Wisconsin alone accounts for nearly 98% of everything grown in the United States.

Parents who swear by a spoonful of ginseng tea or a handful of the dried root treat it like a cure-all.

A tin goes to whichever kid is heading back to a stressful job next, asked for or not.

Nobody gets a vote.

It rides in the suitcase next to everything else, right or wrong.

10. Box of Racine Kringle

Wisconsin named kringle its official state pastry in 2013, catching up to what Racine bakeries had already been proving for decades.

Parents keep a box of the oval, flaky pastry in the freezer for exactly this kind of goodbye.

Someone pulls it out, wraps it, and presses it into a bag before anyone can say they’re not hungry.

Nobody turns down kringle.

A kid can complain about the extra weight in a suitcase all they want, a parent has already zipped the box inside it.

11. Tote of Northwoods Cabin Gear

Wisconsin counts more than 15,000 lakes across the state, and a family cabin sitting on one of them tends to collect gear nobody ever throws away.

Extra life jackets, a spare tackle box, and a paddle that’s been replaced but not retired pile up in a garage rafter.

Seeing a kid set up near water turns into an opening every time.

Nobody throws it out.

The tote comes down from the rafters.

Half of it is gear the kid will use, and half of it is just clutter clearing out of the garage.

12. Old Packers Sweatshirt

Parents treat Green Bay Packers gear like an heirloom instead of a garage-sale pile.

The Packers are the only team in the NFL with no single owner.

That community-ownership setup is a big part of why a fan's gear never becomes just merchandise.

Nearly 539,000 shareholders hold the team instead, and none of them collects a dividend or gets to resell shares outside of one of the team's rare stock sales.

A parent folds a faded sweatshirt from a decade-old playoff run into a departing kid's bag without a second thought.

Nobody's in it for money.