Would-Be Prezzes and Supporters: Eaters All
Today’s NYT has a four-piece feature on how potential-voter dining habits correlate to support for a certain presidential candidate. Slate has kindly boiled down those four pieces into a paragraph:
[T]he NYT points out that each side is carefully analyzing how their potential supporters eat in order to target them as specifically as possible. The paper’s dining section compiled an interesting list of the overarching themes that can help identify supporters. For example, Clinton’s like fruit-filled cookies, while Obama’s, strangely enough, “intensely dislike vanilla wafers.” McCain voters are partial to Hardee’s, while Clinton’s like Church’s Fried Chicken, and Obama’s skewed toward Panera Bread. How about snacks? Clinton’s supporters prefer Newman’s Own Pretzels, McCain’s like Sun Chips, and Obama’s are partial toward Kettle Chips. Of course, exceptions are plentiful but these comparisons are more than a little addictive.
In other food news from the presidential trail, Cindy McCain is a recipe thief, Hillary drinks Canadian whisky, and Barack Obama’s mom was a one-time food stamp recipient.
All this political food talk reminds me that a friend (not Monica Lewinsky) once suggested a certain bodily fluid of Bill Clinton’s probably “tastes like BBQ sauce.”
Former First Chef Scheib On WH Eating Habits
Walter Scheib, the longtime White House head chef who was fired by Laura Bush in 2004, dishes on the carni-, herbi-, and omni-vorous habits (but not on the firing, which the NYT recounted here) of the White House denizens he cooked for during his 11-year tenure there in an amNY Q&A.
One would imagine that the two presidents had different tastes, but according to Scheib, the culinary camps were determined by gender, not politics.
“If we opened up a burger joint in the basement, both presidents would have been just as happy. They both believed if something was good, putting melted cheese on it would improve it 100 percent.” Predictably, the first ladies were more diet conscious: Hillary Clinton was a fan of local, regional cooking; Laura Bush was “adament about organics.”
[...]
["]If you look at it geographically, Texas and Arkansas are pretty close. They both have lots of barbecue and lots of spicy foods. The main difference was the steak dinners. The Bushes would more often look for beef.["]
Scheib, who published The American Chef last year and runs a haute cuisine catering company of the same name — also serves up Bill Clinton’s favorite steak recipe, which boasts buttermilk and 24-ounce porterhouses — and talks about Chelsea Clinton’s teenaged veganism, from which she’s seemingly (and thankfully) recovered.
