Did you know that George Washington's favorite breakfast was Johnny Cakes?
A type of pancake made from cornmeal.
Welcome to the Chop Chop Podcast.
I'm Harry Rosenblum.
And I'm Stella Maiden.
Our mission at Chop Chop Family is to enrich the lives of families by inspiring and teaching them to cook and eat real food together.
Today, we're talking about picky eating, specifically by the President of the United States.
Next Monday, February 16th, we celebrate George Washington's birthday, also known as President's Day.
Schools and federal offices are closed and we thought it would be a good time to talk about some of the food the presidents don't like.
Let's make cookies!
Did you know that many presidents were picky eaters?
I'm not surprised.
I seem to remember that George Bush famously didn't like broccoli.
And Barack Obama has a whole list of foods he didn't like, including salt and vinegar chips mayonnaise, coffee and soda and ketchup on hot dogs.
I definitely prefer mustard over ketchup on my hot dogs, so I can see where he's coming from.
Growing up, I wasn't really a picky eater, but I wasn't the biggest fan of zucchini, beets or jello.
And you could not get me to touch the canned cranberry sauce during Thanksgiving.
Were you a picky eater, Harry?
Not really.
Although I do, of course, have some favorites when it comes to foods and some things I'd rather not have if given the choice.
But really, for me, it's about preparation and seasoning more than the specific vegetable or food.
Exactly.
What I've found is that oftentimes we don't like certain foods because of the way they are prepared.
For example, broccoli can be mushy if it's overcooked.
That's precisely why it can't be canned.
It turns to mush in the can because part of the process is that you have to heat the can up.
Imagine how gross it would be to open a can and have it be full of mushy, overcooked broccoli.
Ugh.
I like to eat broccoli with some sharp cheddar cheese melted on top myself.
Here's something you can try at home.
If there are some foods that you don't like, try experimenting with how you cook and season them to see if you can change your mind.
Adding foods you aren't so sure about onto pizza, in a smoothie or in a pasta can be a great way to test them out.
Or you could try this with cabbage or broccoli or cauliflower.
If you just steam it and put some butter on it, it's very plain.
So try taking steamed broccoli and tossing it in some oil and vinegar and then roast it in the oven until it's starting to get just browned.
It's really good.
I totally agree.
I wonder if President Bush tried this out.
It might have changed his mind about broccoli.
I spoke with our friend Eddie, a writer, researcher and photographer who knows a whole lot about presidents and their favorite and not so favorite foods.
I am a historian and archivist and photographer who specialized in the presidency of Barack Obama.
I covered his presidency for the entire two terms.
As a nation, we look to what the president eats to think about presidents' personalities a lot of times.
Of course, since our presidents have been human, they all have food preferences and dislikes.
And so when we hear about those preferences and dislikes, we tend to make judgments about them.
But sometimes they're just things that come up from their childhood.
Can you start by sharing what foods presidents famously enjoyed?
With Barack Obama, he had a huge sweet tooth, and things that he loved, such as Fran's salted caramels, which he encountered first on the campaign trail, became a national obsession.
Joe Biden loved to talk about the ice cream that he adored.
When he first announced the run that eventually made him president, he said my name is Joe Biden and I love ice cream.
And side note, Grater's chocolate chip ice cream was supposedly his favorite kind of ice cream.
Grater's is a 150-year-old Cincinnati-based ice cream brand.
It's really delicious.
We also know other things, like we know that Donald Trump's favorite fast food meal is a Filet-O-Fish, because he says that pretty frequently.
We know that Ronald Reagan loved jelly beans and served them at its inauguration, right?
And we know that Thomas Jefferson, who a lot of historians think of as our quote unquote biggest foodie, introduced a lot of foods that we consider standard to the American palate, such as French fries, which were actually pommes frites.
Jefferson spent time in France as the ambassador for the United States.
He also introduced basically the tomato as a widely used vegetable.
And he also brought back from his time in Paris macaroni and cheese, which was at the time Parmesan cheese.
And he's also credited with popularizing ice cream.
His influence on the American palate was really huge.
And so French fries, comfrey and macaroni and cheese and ice cream and tomatoes are four things that we eat today without thinking about their origins, but they basically came into the American food scape thanks to Jefferson.
Not that other people weren't eating them, but Jefferson really popularized all of them because he was serving them when he was president at the White House.
It's really amazing how President's food choices and interests impact all of us in the country, in the United States, and also how they use to really connect with people, like things like jelly beans and ice cream, like that's something anyone pretty much has access to and can enjoy.
And so that's a really kind of interesting connection they can make with the public.
I'm wondering how important it is for presidents to kind of remain open minded about food or kind of express interest in food in general.
When the older President Bush the first President Bush said he didn't like broccoli and banned it from the White House, it outraged broccoli growers across the United States.
Broccoli was kind of having a moment and had just started to be heavily commercialized.
And here was the president of the United States declaring his dislike for it.
The farmers literally organized a convoy of trucks to go to the White House with broccoli and deliver tons of broccoli to the president.
And he didn't care.
He just was having none of it.
It's really interesting to hear how personal preferences have such an impact when you're in that position.
And it was so fun hearing all these stories that you've shared.
So thank you so much for being a part of the show today.
Oh, you're welcome.
Happy President's Day.
Thanks, Eddie.
That was so informative.
Do you want to hear a joke?
Mr. Red and Mrs. Red live in the Red House.
Mr. Purple and Mrs. Purple live in the Purple House.
And Mr. and Mrs. Green live in the Green House.
So, who lives in the White House?
The President!
Welcome to the Kitchen Playground.
Today is a quiz all about food and the presidents.
Do you know what POTUS stands for?
POTUS stands for President of the United States.
Stella, if you were POTUS and didn't like a food, would you ban it from the White House?
I don't think I would ever ban a food from the White House.
I mean, I'm not really a picky eater anyway, so I don't know what foods I wouldn't allow.
But I think it would be nice to still have foods that everyone can try and that everyone enjoys.
Do you think it's a good idea to ban a food because you don't like it?
It's a good question.
I feel like it's very heavy handed to ban a food, especially from somewhere like the White House, where you're entertaining and you have people coming from all different parts of the world and all different parts of the country.
So to say that the food is like not allowed seems very rough to me.
But I think if it's something that you really don't like and if you don't want it to be served to you, you know, as the president, I think you're probably pretty busy.
So it's not like you get to make yourself a sandwich for lunch.
You're probably just asking people to bring you food.
That's a really good point.
Are there any foods that are banned from your house?
Well, there's nothing that's like totally banned from our house, but my son Frank, is allergic to nuts.
So we don't usually have nuts and peanut butter around.
And if we do, we don't really cook with them.
Other members of the family can eat them, but we don't put them in dishes because he's allergic.
And it could really hurt him if he ate them.
What about you, Stella?
Yeah, in my family, there's really only one food I can think of that we never eat, and that's pork.
And it's basically because my mom never liked it, so she never makes it.
We never really grew up eating it either.
That makes sense.
I mean, you know, there are lots of foods, pork being a big one, that are often banned from people's houses because of their religious beliefs.
And so they just don't eat them and they eat other things.
Absolutely.
Since we talked so much about things that presidents don't like, I did some research about presidents and some foods that they did like.
John Quincy Adams liked fruit.
I love fruit too, and this one I can definitely get behind.
Adams was an accomplished gardener and he was especially proud of his apple apricot, peach and plum trees.
Two presidents were known for their love of squirrel stew William Henry Harrison and James Garfield.
Wow.
Well, we don't eat a lot of squirrels now, but back before electricity and good food preservation, people ate a lot more wild game.
Did you know there were also two presidents who loved one of my favorite foods?
Sauerkraut.
James Buchanan and Warren Harding both listed it as a favorite.
I think it's pretty cool that they loved a food that came to this country with immigrants and shows how new ideas and tastes all blend together here in America.
Thanks for listening to the Chop Chop Podcast.
Be sure to check out the Chop Chop Substack newsletter, and we hope you'll join us there.
Go to chopchopfamily.substack.com and join the conversation.
This podcast is written produced, edited and hosted by Harry Rosenblum and Stella Maiden, with engineering by Matt Patterson.
Sally Sampson is the founder of Chop Chop Family and writes the Substack.
Shout out to Lola.
Thanks for adding your voice to our show.
Music in this episode by Mr. Smith and Lisa Hammer.
We are also a part of Kids Listen, the number one place for finding great podcasts for kids of all ages.
Please stay in touch, whether you have a joke you'd like to share or if you'd just like to tell us what you had for lunch.
We love to hear from our listeners, so please send us your recipes poems, book or podcast recommendations or anything else you think we'd like.
Ask a grown-up to help you email us, podcast at choppedupfamily.org.
Thanks for listening.
