Posts Tagged ‘Obama Foodorama’
Should Have Seen This Coming: ‘Iron Chef’ Visits White House for ‘Kitchen Garden’ Challenge
Comerford and Flay get fresh (veggies) in the White House garden.
Jeesh, speaking of predictions, Y&H should have guessed this would happen as soon as the White House broke ground on its kitchen garden in March: Iron Chef America has trotted out three of its, ahem, heaviest hitters to cook a meal from ingredients plucked from the hugely symbolic garden.
The special two-hour episode of Iron Chef America, dubbed with a stunning lack of subtlety, Super Chef Battle, features Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse, who take on Bobby Flay and White House Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford in the competition.
The episode has already been filmed, and according to The New York Times‘ account, First Lady Michelle Obama laid out the ground rules to the teams (they had to cook five dishes using ingredients from the White House kitchen garden) and put in a good plug for her Healthy Kids Initiative.
The show will air on Sunday, Jan. 3, on the Food Network.
Not surprisingly, the air date is politically tinged. So says Y&H’s virtual friend, Obama Foodorama, who writes:
White House Farmers Market Draws Criticism Before Its Opening
The traffic is outrageous on Vermont Ave. during rush hour!
No one needs to tell you, least of all Y&H, that in this blog-eat-blog, 24-hour news-cycle world everyone is required to have an opinion. But, really, shouldn’t everyone wait until the object under criticism has actually opened?
I’m speaking about the new FreshFarm Market by the White House, which the busy non-profit opens today with guest appearances from First Lady Michelle Obama, Mayor Adrian Fenty, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Last month, Mother Jones was first out of the block in predicting dark things about the market:
[I]f this idea becomes reality, the Obamas should be careful to make it a sustainable market for local farmers rather than a kitschy tourist attraction bogged down by pins and t-shirts that say “Yes We Can Farm” and “Change We Can Grow In.” But let’s face it, due to the massive security detail the market would require and the overwhelming draw for Washingtonians and tourists alike, the latter is more likely.
(Just for the record, Capital Spice has an excellent run-down of the vendors, none of which appear to be hawking pins and t-shirts.)
WTOP continued the early hand-wringing with a story about potential rush-hour traffic snarls:
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White House Farmers Market to Open Tomorrow
Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack explains the USDA’s local farm program.
UPDATE, 5:52 p.m. Weds.: The Los Angeles Times has more details on the market here.
As part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food campaign, the White House will launch a farmers market tomorrow in the 800 block of Vermont Avenue NW. It’ll run every Thursday from 3 to 7 p.m. until Oct. 29.
The Chicago Tribune quoted USDA Undersecretary Ann Wright as saying that the market and other programs to support local farming are “very much a part of the president’s initiatives to bring more healthy food to underserved communities and children.”
According to Y&H fave Obama Foodorama, the opening of the White House market will also coincide with another KYF2 initiative: Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan “will announce farmers market promotions program grants for markets in the northeast corridor…”
Have We Stopped Caring About the Obamas’ Restaurant Visits Already?
So Michelle Obama and the First Family’s defacto White House chef, Sam Kass, dined at Oyamel last week, and you know what? The local media didn’t Tweet their fingers to a pulp to report every last chip slathered with salsa that crossed the First Lady’s lips.
Eddie Gehman Kohan, the indefatigable blogger who covers all things Obama and food at (what else?) Obama Foodorama, thinks she knows why:
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A Tale of Two White House Vegetable Gardens: Toxic or Not?
Shortly before the holiday weekend, a small shitstorm started brewing over the the elevated levels of lead discovered earlier this year on the White House lawn, site of the vegetable garden heard ’round the world. In a column for Huffington Post, Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, wrote that National Park Service tests found “highly elevated levels of lead — 93 parts per million.”
“It’s enough lead for anyone planning to have children pick vegetables in that garden or eat produce from it to reconsider their plans: lead is highly toxic to children’s developing organs and brain functions — however, it’s below the 400 ppm the EPA suggests is a threat to human health,” Kimbrell added.
As leader of the Center for Food Safety, a non-profit dedicated to fighting Big Ag and its anti-environmental and sustainable ways, Kimbrell figured he had cornered the devil living in the White House dirt: a commercial fertilizer called ComPRO, made from a wastewater plant’s sewage sludge, which the Clinton Administration apparently had agreed to spread on the lawn during its temporary stay at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It was a theory that Kimbrell borrowed from Mother Jones, which first reported on the possible ComPRO connection.
Kimbrell took this rare gift horse — a highly visible White House vegetable garden and a major commercial fertilizer with potentially harmful effects — and rode that sumbitch as far as he could go. He rode her hard:
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No, Really, This Is the Final Word on Obama’s Visit to Ray’s Hell Burger
In the “For What It’s Worth” department, Obama Foodorama is reporting that Ray’s Hell Burgers was recently cited for a number of health violations, including improper food handling and under-cooking hamburgers without informing the public.
ObFo waves a tsk-tsking finger at President Obama and Joe Biden for not doing their homework and for not ordering their burgers well-done:
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Malia and Sasha Obama Will Eat Well at Sidwell Friends
Young & Hungry’s friends over at the Haphazard Gourmet Girls blog have launched a new project, Obama Foodorama, which HGG Editor in Beef Eddie Gehman Kohan describes as “an unlikely mash-up of idiotic Obama foodie gossip and a serious look at Ag policy, and all the raving problems Obama is facing in farming, food safety, ethanol, etc. ”
Yesterday, ObFo posted an item about the Obama girls going to Sidwell Friends, which promotes not only local and sustainable eating but has also graduated a wealth of food geeks. Writes Obama Foodorama:
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