Sweet victory
First Family/Inauguration Cookie Pack from Little Rae’s Bakery
With only 10 days, 13 hours, and 6 minutes to go in Bush’s time in office (but who’s counting?), pretty much everyone is already casting their eyes forward to US President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on 20 January.
So what do we know about Obama’s likely approach to food issues?
- Much speculation has been made over the fact that Obama both read and responded to Michael Pollan’s open letter in the New York Times to the ‘Farmer-in-Chief’.
- Sustainable food advocates have been campaigning for Obama to turn part of the White House lawn into an organic garden, and it turns out that the White House already has a rooftop garden that helped provide both the Clinton and Bush families with very local produce.
- The Obamas plan to keep the current White House executive chef Cristeta Comerford, who creates “original dishes with American flavor” and who shares the Obamas “perspective on the importance of healthy eating and healthy families”.
- Reaction from the left has been decidedly negative to Obama’s pick for Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack–a big advocate of biofuels, GMOs, and biotechnology who used Monsanto’s private jet while he was governor of Iowa. Should we be dismayed? Or maybe he isn’t the agricultural antichrist after all?
For more up-to-the-minute info on the “Obama Foodscape”, check out Obama Foodorama. And if you’re in the catchment area for Little Rae’s Bakery in Seattle, don’t miss the First Family/Inauguration pack of cookies, designed “to honor the entire first family to show our support and hope that when we stick together, when we lean on those closest, we are strongest.” Because the Obamas couldn’t adopt a dog from the animal shelter due to allergies, Little Rae’s is donating a portion of every sale to the Humane Society. It doesn’t get much sweeter than that.
