Obamas plant a garden and set the tone for what we eat

Over the past few years, I have been collecting political editorials, speeches and essays in a computer folder labeled simply Obama. It occurred to me — as it did to almost everyone I know — that an Obama presidency was historically significant. Downloaded from various Web sites are speeches, starting with the keynote Obama delivered at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 when he was campaigning for John Kerry.

"Tonight is a particular honor for me because — let's face it — my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely," Obama said. "My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father — my grandfather — was a cook, a domestic servant to the British."

There's Garrison Keillor's essay about attending the inauguration: "It was more than Democrats feeling their oats or African-Americans celebrating the unimaginable," wrote Keillor. "It was a huge gasp of pleasure at a new America emerging, a country we all tried to believe in, a nation that is curious and venturesome, more openhearted and public-spirited."

And lately the file has grown fat with stories about how the Obamas are changing the food culture of the White House. Naturally, I saved a report about Michelle Obama supervising the installation of an organic vegetable garden on the South Lawn. I also saved one about Charlie Brandts, a White House carpenter who brought in beehives to augment the garden and provide honey for the president's table.

There's an open letter of support to the Obamas from Chefs Collaborative, an organization committed to cooking with sustainable ingredients. The letter was signed by hundreds of American chefs and food authorities, including Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley and Rick Bayless from Topolobampo (one of the Obamas' favorite restaurants in Chicago). Chefs from coast to coast are thrilled that people who have demonstrated an appreciation for the sustainable-food movement now occupy the White House. The collaborative even published a recipe for the "Yes We Can Cocktail," a modified julep with ginger and rhubarb.

White House chef Cristeta Comerford, who was hired by the Clinton White House and rehired by the Bush White House, seems to have come into her own with the Obamas. She speaks eloquently about the wisdom of buying local organic produce but looks tiny beside the towering first lady in a video of her leading a tour of the White House kitchen before the family's first official presidential dinner. A link to that video on YouTube is one of the more recent additions to my Obama file.

Another video shows Obama taking a lunch break with Vice President Joe Biden at "Ray's Hell Burger" in Arlington, Va. That little outing prompted a media blitz that rivaled the coverage of last spring's swine flu.

Why? Because too often human history is written in chapters defined by wars or other calamities when all the while there is an equally vital story of humanity recorded in what we ate.

For my students at Seattle Culinary Academy, I recently jotted down some thoughts on American food history, and I used those notes to guide me in May, when the Renton Historical Museum invited me to speak in conjunction with a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibit they were hosting called "Key Ingredients: America by Food."

Collating a list of observations about America's eating habits from colonial times to the present helped me see the broad sweep of how our food has been defined by ongoing themes of regionalism (Southern Fried Chicken Sandwich and Sweet Ice Tea from McDonald's anyone?), the embracing and rejecting of foreign influences (how about those Freedom Fries?), and an ever-increasing dependence on industrialization in both the production and distribution of our victuals (From TV dinners to organic baby greens from California, none of it would be possible without the industrial "cold chain.").

Every time we have a war, technological advances for feeding the troops influence how we eat at home. Our own war between the states prompted huge advances in canned-food production to feed those soldiers, and World War II left our food supply permanently enmeshed in the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower spoke of in his farewell address.

Political leaders from the Madisons and Jeffersons to the Roosevelts and Kennedys have colored how we eat. It's not just the farm policies their administrations help establish, it's what the first families put on their own tables. Dolly Madison's ice cream and Thomas Jefferson's macaroni with cheese became popular American standards that have never left the mainstream. Elegant French suppers prepared by Renee Verdon in the Kennedy White House were served just in time to fuel America's appetite for Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," which was published in 1961 and became one of the best-selling cookbooks of all time.




In the same way that Eleanor Roosevelt's Victory Garden planted during World War II popularized the idea of home vegetable gardening and helped encourage 20 million other American families to plant Victory Gardens, Michelle Obama's garden on the South Lawn might prompt millions of 21st-century Americans to plant gardens of their own.

Even though the demands of the economic crash have made it hard for the president to address the ongoing health crisis that has cost Americans so much in recent decades, his wife's action in the garden speaks volumes about the first family's priorities.

from http://www.nwsource.com/