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Fast Money & Foreign Objects
BY LAURA SHAPIRO
The First Kitchen
Eleanor Roosevelt’s austerity drive.
BY LAURA SHAPIRO
Those invited to the White House quickly learned a vital rule: eat before you go.CREDITILLUSTRATION BY EDWARD SOREL
The meal started abruptly, with a main course of stuffed eggs, prepared as plainly as possible by mashing five hard-cooked yolks with a teaspoon of vinegar and half a teaspoon of minced onion. A thin coat of tomato sauce covered the eggs, which were served hot, accompanied by mashed potatoes and whole-wheat bread. Dessert was a small portion of pudding made chiefly from prunes, flour, and water. Festive it wasn’t; nevertheless, this was luncheon for six at the White House on March 21, 1933, less than three weeks after Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first Inauguration. The President, a sophisticated and enthusiastic food lover, was not at the table. He had asked for a tray in his office, and later said that the meal had been “good.” But for Eleanor Roosevelt, proudly presiding at the lunch, “good” didn’t begin to address it. She had been planning the White House meals since well before the Inauguration, commissioning nutritious, low-cost menus from the home-economics faculty at Cornell, in the hope of making the White House a demonstration project for conscientious cookery during the Depression. It was a personal triumph to see one of these humble, wholesome meals served on White House china—two courses for only seven and a half cents per person, including coffee. She told the press that she and the President would be eating this way regularly.
But Eleanor was also testing a very different approach to the First Kitchen. An acquaintance had sent along an idea she found appealing: why not showcase the finest American ingredients and regional dishes? The nation had a distinguished culinary heritage, but gastronomes of the nineteen-thirties feared that traditional skills and flavors were disappearing as homemakers pounced on canned soup, cottony white bread, and American cheese. The best-known expert in American culinary history at the time was the cookbook writer and journalist Sheila Hibben (who not long afterward became The New Yorker’s first food critic). She agreed to visit the White House kitchen and advise the staff on such homey classics as stewed crabs, johnnycake, and chicory salad, as well as Presidential recipes going back to Washington and Jefferson. Honest fare like this, Hibben believed, could help people make their way through hard times. “Crisis or no crisis, the tension of the country is better for preoccupation with the art of cooking,” she counselled the First Lady.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/11/22/the-first-kitchen?mbid=social_facebook
funny read continued in link
The First Kitchen
Eleanor Roosevelt’s austerity drive.
BY LAURA SHAPIRO
Those invited to the White House quickly learned a vital rule: eat before you go.CREDITILLUSTRATION BY EDWARD SOREL
The meal started abruptly, with a main course of stuffed eggs, prepared as plainly as possible by mashing five hard-cooked yolks with a teaspoon of vinegar and half a teaspoon of minced onion. A thin coat of tomato sauce covered the eggs, which were served hot, accompanied by mashed potatoes and whole-wheat bread. Dessert was a small portion of pudding made chiefly from prunes, flour, and water. Festive it wasn’t; nevertheless, this was luncheon for six at the White House on March 21, 1933, less than three weeks after Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first Inauguration. The President, a sophisticated and enthusiastic food lover, was not at the table. He had asked for a tray in his office, and later said that the meal had been “good.” But for Eleanor Roosevelt, proudly presiding at the lunch, “good” didn’t begin to address it. She had been planning the White House meals since well before the Inauguration, commissioning nutritious, low-cost menus from the home-economics faculty at Cornell, in the hope of making the White House a demonstration project for conscientious cookery during the Depression. It was a personal triumph to see one of these humble, wholesome meals served on White House china—two courses for only seven and a half cents per person, including coffee. She told the press that she and the President would be eating this way regularly.
But Eleanor was also testing a very different approach to the First Kitchen. An acquaintance had sent along an idea she found appealing: why not showcase the finest American ingredients and regional dishes? The nation had a distinguished culinary heritage, but gastronomes of the nineteen-thirties feared that traditional skills and flavors were disappearing as homemakers pounced on canned soup, cottony white bread, and American cheese. The best-known expert in American culinary history at the time was the cookbook writer and journalist Sheila Hibben (who not long afterward became The New Yorker’s first food critic). She agreed to visit the White House kitchen and advise the staff on such homey classics as stewed crabs, johnnycake, and chicory salad, as well as Presidential recipes going back to Washington and Jefferson. Honest fare like this, Hibben believed, could help people make their way through hard times. “Crisis or no crisis, the tension of the country is better for preoccupation with the art of cooking,” she counselled the First Lady.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/11/22/the-first-kitchen?mbid=social_facebook
funny read continued in link
