Politics

I have a theory that in order to be First Lady you have to have a cookie recipe.

Martha Washington had a cookie recipe:  jumbals.  (Jumbals have fallen out of fashion but they’re a little like a pretzel made out of biscuit dough.) 

Mary Lincoln had a cookie recipe:  gingerbread men, which is exactly what you would expect, if you were “writing a cookie recipe” for Mary Lincoln.

Jackie Kennedy didn’t exactly have a cookie recipe, she had a peanut brittle recipe (and, also, quite a good recipe for creme brulee) but she was Jackie Kennedy and it was the ‘60s and if you wanted a cookie really badly, peanut brittle might do the trick.

Pat Nixon did not have a cookie recipe.  She had a brownie recipe and further to my theory, he had to resign. 

When One for the Table was kind enough to mention the recent publication of Mission Accomplished! (or How We Won the War in Iraq) – our “definitive compendium” of misinformation, disinformation, failed predictions and outright lies about the Iraq war – my colleague Victor Navasky and I decided to return the favor by scouring our database to see what quotes, if any, it might contain relating to “food, politics, and love.” 

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), our search proved quite fruitful – at least in regard to the food and politics part of the equation.

For example, Bill O’Reilly declared in January 2003, less than two months before the invasion: “I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week.” 

Dear President Bush,

       As one of your most devoted supporters, may I congratulate you on being given Liberia's highest civilian order on Thursday at the executive mansion in Monrovia.

       I understand that, in Liberia, almost nothing works and that people are nervous about their future in the aftermath of a catastrophic civil war, that the country is overrun with weapons, malnutrition is pervasive, half the children are not in school, and many buildings are uninhabitable.  There is little running water or electricity and no sewage or landline phone system.

       Consequently it is no surprise to me that they should have considered you worthy of this signal honor.

Here’s a dish particular to the Low Country, down South Carolina way, and it is um-um- hamfat delicious. We’ve been eating it all our lives which is why some Yankee wags are prone to call us southerners full of beans.  Reformed southerners eat Hoppin’ John on New Year’s Day made with black-eyes, though this version is not absolutely kosher since the peas in the pot are supposed to be field peas.  But everybody knows you have to eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day or you won’t be rich in the year to come.  So make it how you’d druther depending on the date.