Bayless as Salahi 2.0: The chef seemed more interested in serving his own career than his President and First Lady
When Chicagoan Rick Bayless was invited to be the guest chef for Wednesday’s State Dinner with Mexico, he was offered both the absolute highest honor an American can have–the opportunity to serve his country–and the highest honor an American chef can achieve. But since announcing his post to the world via a story in the New York Times in mid-May, Bayless has turned his service to his country and to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama into a disconcerting personal publicity junket. It’s been a stew of hubris, a lack of discretion, and breaching of White House tradition, which included stepping on Mrs. Obama’s role as First Lady.

It began the moment Bayless started spilling State Dinner details to the Times, and continued with his use of Twitter, where he’s been tweeting about the White House since May 12. As the star of the self-created drama of “Twittergate,” Bayless has made sure that the State Dinner was more about him, rather than the larger diplomatic/social mission he was charged with helping create. For future White House guests chefs, Bayless stands as an object lesson in everything not to do when called to serve the country.

White House chefs wear a crest that’s a version of the presidential eagle on their formal chefs’ whites, with little American flags on the collars. They are literally serving their country, and their president. Many of those working in the White House kitchen are long-time vets, with multiple decades of service. The guest chefs who are invited to share this honor are given the opportunity to join a very small, elite corps of highly talented individuals who are literally creating culinary history. The State Dinner with Mexico was a diplomatic event of the utmost importance, set against a backdrop of political tension. Bayless’ behavior has been a low moment in the context of the long history of the White House culinary corps. (Top of post: The First Couple with Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón and Mrs. Margarita Zavala, at the formal arrival for the State Dinner; above: The crest on Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford’s jacket; the other White House chefs have a version that has a darker blue)

Everything was perfect…until Bayless became Salahi 2.0
From a menu that encompassed both the First Lady’s commitment to local, regional and sustainable foods and the cuisine of the honored guests, to the dramatic yet whimsical reception tent filled with hundreds of airborne butterflies in a nod to President Calderón’s birthplace…the White House social staff, led by Social Secretary Julianna Smoot, thought of everything for the event. Staff worked tirelessly, and achieved something very close to perfection. They created an elegant, memorable evening presented by the President and First Lady, spotlighting the best that is America, and celebrating the crucial relationship between the US and Mexico. (Bayless, above)

And as the star of Twittergate, Chef Bayless has been the source of the only bad headlines–and there have been many–for the State Dinner. After months of negative publicity following the first State Dinner of the administration, this one was also the chance for the White House to hit the social reset button. But Bayless became Salahi 2.0, this State Dinner’s version of the crashers who marred the first State Dinner. There’s now no talking about the State Dinner with Mexico without talking about Bayless and Twittergate. And post-dinner, he’s hitting the talk show circuit, and his little scandal during what should have been his silent, shining moment of service, with the President and First Lady in the spotlight, will continue to be discussed. That didn’t have to be the case.

The root of the problem…
Twittergate officially began when Lynn Sweet reported in Chicago Sun-Times that Bayless was breaching protocol and posting White House information on Twitter, and noted that he’d been asked by the White House to stop. Bayless protested–on Twitter–that Sweet “made up” the story, saying that he’d never tweeted from the White House, and that he hadn’t been instructed by anyone in the White House to stop the potentially security-breaching behavior. (A Bayless tweet, above)

The location of where the Tweeting originated wasn’t the critical point. Sweet’s point was that Bayless was leaking White House info on Twitter–and he certainly was. For the record, the White House frowns on tweets about or coming from the kitchen. There’s a good risk of accidentally breaching the food security protocols that are in place to protect the president.

Thursday afternoon, after a period of laudable Twitter silence, with no more comments about the White House and the State Dinner, Bayless roared back with ten new Tweets in a row– “correcting the record” about the White House and Twittergate once again–just in case anyone had managed to forget it.

Bayless tweeted: All made up rumors of my WH Twitter posting have become tiresome. Wanna know the truth? Here goes (not nearly as titilllating as the rumors). He then gave seven points of “truth” about his drama. Clearly, Bayless was well aware he’d caused a big stir in the blogosphere and in the media. If he had any discretion, Bayless would not have tweeted about the White House again, following Round 1 of Twittergate. And sure, in one of his tweets he notes that he was honored to be chosen to be a guest chef…but that just doesn’t make up for the rest of it.

There’s also the question: Why did Bayless originally post Lynn Sweet’s story in his Twitter stream, if it was so offensive? Clearly, Bayless likes publicity, good or bad. And was it perhaps to remind everyone that Rick Bayless is the most important thing about the State Dinner, not the President and First Lady’s efforts at critical diplomatic outreach?

Hubris: The art of the leak in the New York Times, and overstepping his bounds
To compound matters, Bayless wasn’t just blurting White House details on Twitter. The leaking and protocol breaching started with the Times story. In what is a fairly historic act of hubris, Bayless overran Mrs. Obama’s prerogative as State Dinner hostess when he told the Times on May 12 some of what he would be cooking as guest chef.

Traditionally, the East Wing releases all menu details on behalf of the First Lady, or the First Lady hosts a menu preview for media to discuss foods and china, etc., on the day of the State Dinner. But Bayless announced, a week in advance of the event, that he’d be preparing Oaxacan black mole, part of the evening’s entree, and herb green ceviche. He even went so far as to provide the Times with the recipe for the ceviche–and he was photographed for the paper with the done dish (above).

And then Bayless tweeted about it, proclaiming: “One of the dishes im serving at the State Dinner!” (sic)

For contrast, when White House Executive Pastry Chef Bill Yosses was interviewed in a different story in the Times, in the same week, and queried about the desserts he’d be prepping for the State Dinner, Yosses stuck strictly to protocol.

“This is Mrs. Obama’s house,” Yosses gently pointed out. “It’s not my place to say what dessert she might serve.”

Another breach
Bayless also told the Times that Yosses would be using locally sourced strawberries for his desserts. Not satisfied with the Times and Twitter, Bayless gave an interview to NPR, further embellishing on his menu plans. And in the same Times piece, Bayless breached protocol further by announcing the head count for the State Dinner. Again, that’s something that’s not revealed by the East Wing until the day of the event, when the list of expected attendees is made public late in the afternoon.

Bayless on shortcomings of the White House kitchen
Bayless was tweeting about the White House even before he arrived in DC. The tweets continued after he got to Washington, because in the midst of what was supposed to be his service to his country, Bayless was publicly lamenting all the “problems” the White House was presenting for him. To the Times, and on Twitter and elsewhere, Bayless worried that the White House couldn’t find the “rare” ingredients he needed (really? It’s the White House), he mentioned that he was worried about the size of the White House kitchen (too small!), he complained that he couldn’t send his own food into the White House, he noted that it was a battle to be allowed to bring in his own knives.

In a post-dinner interview given to Esquire after the last bite of State Dinner Wagyu beef had been consumed, Bayless continued the complaining, and said that the only problem he had with creating the dinner was the junky jello the White House gave him:

“They got us this gelatin that we’d never worked with before,” Bayless said. “And the little jellies didn’t ever set up. We had to remake them twice before we got them to do what we wanted them to do.”

But, Bayless adds, he made it all work in the end, despite the incompetence of the White House. And he spent a lot of print inches worrying about his mole sauce, too.

“They’re not used to making those kinds of things in the White House,” Bayless told Esquire. “So I was concerned about whether they would know good quality from bad quality. So I sent them a care package of all the different specialized ingredients. And they got it.”

Again, really? Bayless sent food into the White House? Both the act of sending and the idea of bringing outside food in are unlikely. And why the public tweeting about the White House having difficult finding his ingredients, if Bayless had sent ingredients in? This is not a question I’m going to ask the White House to confirm or clarify; I know enough about food security protocol to understand that questions about food sourcing get a “no comment.” You’ll note on the State Dinner menu that the Wagyu beef for the entree is identified as from “Oregon,” but there’s no farm named.

For the record, the White House has hosted seven different State Dinners for Mexico. Not to mention the fact that both President Bushes and President Lyndon B. Johnson were Texans, and huge fans of Mexican food, which was routinely created in the White House kitchen. And there’s probably no cuisine that “can’t” be cooked at the White House.

Adios, Rick Bayless…vaya con Dios
The White House has nothing to do with Bayless’ bad behavior, obviously. Everything for the State Dinner was planned perfectly, and the event was superb. Unfortunately, the chef’s behavior couldn’t be planned for.

And Bayless seems entirely unaware that he’s done anything wrong, too. In one of his “correcting the record” tweets from Thursday, Bayless wrote “State Dinner@WH went off without hitch.Flavors were mine…”.

Without a hitch? Bayless himself is the hitch.

Another tweet from the same series (above) makes no sense. If Bayless understands security and privacy…why would he continue to tweet about the White House–when he was already aware that he’d caused a big, negative stir??

In the end, it’s Bayless who will get burned by a situation that’s become a little too hot to handle. The White House has become the center of America’s culinary landscape. Many of the high-profile chefs who have been invited to serve their country by cooking at the White House are welcomed back again and again. Chefs Art Smith, Bobby Flay, and Jose Andres have each been guest chefs multiple times. Bayless, who in skill may be the equal of his peers, is not their equal in discretion. He will be the one chef who doesn’t get called to serve his country again.

That’s a prediction, but I’d bet the Blackberry I tweet from on it, wink wink wink.

If Bayless returns to the White House during the Obama years–I’ll eat that Blackberry. Topped with some Oaxacan mole, and a side dish of green ceviche.

For the record, the White House has declined to comment on Bayless.

Note:
To clarify about the White House and Twitter: As noted in this post, non-kitchen visitors who arrive at the White House for certain meetings are sometimes asked to surrender their phones, or specifically instructed not to Tweet. Journalists, including this one, use Twitter at the White House. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton do, too. But there’s a big difference between journalists tweeting, and a guest chef who is dishing up privileged info to the world. Especially if it involves a potential security breach or privacy issue–as discussing White House food protocol necessarily does. Tweeting from the White House kitchen is frowned upon.

Photos: Formal arrival at top of post and crest by Obama Foodorama; Ceviche by New York Times; Bayless from publicity

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Gramercy Tavern is voted the “most popular” restaurant in New York all the time. It’s a restaurant with regulars like most don’t have anymore. People go there to eat in an unfazed New York, where restaurant eating remains a polished, “Now I shall dine,” sort of affair. Popularity is an unfortunate thing to vote on, but in a city that’s brutal whenever it’s not convinced, it seems people like reminding themselves that they like this restaurant.

Like other cities’ favorite restaurants, Gramercy Tavern has a quality that can only be gotten from being liked. It’s warmth a place can’t try for because it’s a side effect of confidence. Whatever the restaurant does well, it knows it owes a good deal to how attached its city is to it: Gramercy exists in two places at once, in a gray, stone building on 20th street, and in its patrons’ memories, in versions each of them owns and tends.

How bound those two Gramercy Taverns are to each other makes changing the restaurant’s buying priorities difficult. Its executive chef, Michael Anthony, who took the kitchen over from Tom Colicchio in 2006, is trying to. He’s committed to a local food economy in the quietest, simplest way a chef ever is. He believes cooking’s best when it’s done with ingredients from the nearest soil, pasture, and water. So he’s changing the way the restaurant considers food, trying to send new roots into the agriculture of the northeast while keeping its great taproot planted in the pavement that gave it room to grow. He’s doing it all without fanfare, and modestly, and in a way I haven’t ever seen.

In a city where most new restaurants are scrambling for the niche of diners that care by cramming farms’ names onto every menu line, Gramercy’s menu stands out for their absence. There aren’t any farms’ or producers’ names on either of its two menus—one is for its front bar room and one for its formal dining room. When I was there to cook a few weeks ago—I chopped squash and cooked kale, and ate—there was “Smoked Trout, Cippollini Puree, and Pickled Onions,” and “Warm Salad of Vegetables and Black Lentils.”

Judging by how much attention Gramercy calls to its ingredients’ provenances, you’d think it didn’t know, or didn’t mind. The other words that are nowhere on Gramercy’s menus are: “farm,” “market,” and “seasonal.” There’s no mission statement or list of suppliers. Its menu looks similar to ones of other comparable, fancy New York restaurants—like Le Bernardin, and Jean Georges, and Bouley.

The greatest difference is that the others, like a lot of seasonal menus, list ingredients that seem warming and wintry. But in the middle of February, when it’s thirty degrees and hailing, and little is being harvested here, there’s not a terribly wide variety of ingredients to make a menu out of. So Gramercy’s, most of which comes from farms in this strange, icy, northeastern winter, is made from boxes and boxes of every kind and size and shape of onion and radish and turnip, and vegetables preserved in the fall, and the spicy pickling liquid left from last summer’s pickled peppers. It’s an absolute masterpiece of onion, root vegetable, and pickled sorcery.

There’s no trickery to how they turn black radishes and tough burdock into fine food. I’m not talking about trying to fool diners. It just turns out that a mute puree of little cipollini onions is the only thing that really goes with a piece of hot-smoked trout, and that pickled chard stems, and tiny pink beets, and sliced radishes are all you’d want on your lentils. It works. And when we talked at the end of the day, Mike told me a story that’s the best way I can explain how he manages to turn the aloof ingredients of New York February into food that you eat when you dine, without feeling like he needs to justify its limitations out loud.

If you look out his mother’s kitchen window in rural Ohio, Mike told me, you see yards and coops filled with chickens. You can’t buy their eggs in the local grocery store because, like most in the country, it doesn’t sell local eggs; it’s too logistically difficult. Mike’s mother told his son how much she missed good eggs. He told her to cross her neighbors’ backyards and ask if she could buy some; she did, and she does, and she eats better eggs than most people in rural Ohio.

It does seem hard to keep yourself in good, local eggs. Fewer people raise backyard chickens (except in Berkeley and Brooklyn, where more people raise backyard chickens). But it’s often so hard because we’re accustomed to doing things one way, and to get good, local food means doing them another. Sometimes it only means seeing the chickens in our neighbors’ yards.

Seeing them, and using the other smallest-possible ways to not just eat local food, but raise it up like good cooking can—even in New York in the middle of February—is what Mike’s doing to connect to one very demanding, time consuming source of richness and value for his restaurant without disconnecting from another.

You don’t need to know you’re eating virtuously and turnip-ly to be happy in a quiet dining room in front of a plate of pureéd turnips. Gramercy is being judged according the same standards as restaurants whose ingredients are going whizzing around the planet in cold storage as I type. And it still works.

Mike wonders if by keeping his buying and cooking philosophies implicit, he’s missing a great opportunity to say something. A restaurant, especially one as loved as Gramercy, is a good soapbox, and Mike has good gospel. I don’t know the answer. I know that to keep your head on straight you have to believe that small is beautiful. Spending more time doing things than talking about them is decidedly small. There’s great grace to that, and often grace seems as hard to come by as good eggs.

Photos: Ellen Silverman Photography

View full post on Civil Eats

by Darby Minow Smith

Scallop and dungeness crab salad wrapped in prosciutto topped with lumpfish caviar and avocado: A Hajime creation. Photo by Phu Son Nguyen of sushiday.comGrowing up in small-town Montana, two things just made no sense: vegetarians and sushi. Why eat tofu, or raw
fish, when you could just as easily have a big juicy steak? Coming from
generations of cattle rancher stock, I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s ringing
defense of vegetarianism, Eating Animals, with trepidation. But the only
beef I ended up having with Foer was that he ruined my ability to enjoy the raw and the rolled—right after I had moved to sushi paradise, Seattle.

“Imagine being served a plate of sushi. But this plate also
holds all of the animals that were killed for your serving of sushi. The plate
might have to be five feet across,” Foer writes. At current rates of fishery depletion, scientists
predict the demise of most seafood by 2048.

Foer describes modern fishing as warfare. Hajime Sato has a
similar take: “[It’s] like someone is beating somebody and I’m just walking by
and noticing it but not doing anything about it.”

But Sato isn’t an environmentalist author or even a
vegetarian. He’s chef and owner of Mashiko, a Seattle sushi restaurant. Not wanting to
throw punches himself anymore, he revised his menu to include only sustainable
fish last August.

Sato, who not only serves sushi but teaches others how to
prepare it, knew the dreadful truth about certain fish. For a time, however, he
served them anyway. But then he met Casson Trenor, author of Sustainable Sushi.

Trenor knows just about everything that’s wrong or right
about what can end up between your chopsticks. For instance, the most
disgusting thing about shrimp isn’t even their visible poop veins: “Some shrimpers have been known to discard
more than ten pounds of unwanted sea life for every pound of shrimp they keep,”
he writes.

After talking to Trenor about sustainability, Sato said,
“Okay, within three months, I’ll change it [the menu] entirely.” Trenor didn’t
believe Sato. But, Sato recalls, “I said ‘No, when I say I’ll do
something, I’ll do it. That’s me.’” And he did.

Not your typical sushi chef. Not your typical sushi. Photo by Phu Son Nguyen of sushiday.com“Don’t do anything mediocre,” he says. Not a surprising personal
motto from someone who races motorcycles and whose diners are greeted by a sign
that reads “Please wait to be seated. Unless you’re illiterate.”

Sato took a big risk with his 15-year-old, award-winning
restaurant.

The first few months were rocky; Sato couldn’t sleep for
worrying. “Should I go back? Am I doing the right thing?” he asked himself,
“People don’t get it.”

But business rebounded and he continues to be resolute about
sustainability. He finds careless pescatarians’ logic odd and is
incredulous that there are international laws against eating cheetahs, but
Bluefin tuna have only very limited protection. “You can basically wipe the
entire species out in a week and say okay, next …”

Although the plight of the Bluefin tuna has made headlines
recently, Sato points out that eel (unagi) is the worst fish to serve. “Eel is
actually [at] the category of extinction. It’s not even endangered anymore. But
people are still eating it,” he says.

Whatcha doin’ back there? This mysterious lover is a breed of eel that won’t end up on your plate. Its populations also happen to be healthy. Photo courtesy Richard Ling via Flickr The spooky thing about eels, besides their mean mugs, is
their mysterious breeding habits. It’s not just that eel lovin’ is an
unpleasant subject: “They [eels] go back and forth between fresh water and salt
water about four or five times in their
life. And we have no idea how they mate, how they reproduce at all. So let’s
not really touch the eel.”

Wild or farmed, eating unagi is never a good idea. In eel
farms, they take the young from the wild and fatten them up. Those eels never
even get the chance to do whatever only God knows they do in the dark.

Eel is classified as a red fish in Trenor’s book. Helpfully,
he divides fish into three color categories. 
Green means chow down: “These
fish and shellfish are caught or farmed in ways that don’t have any major
adverse effect on the environment.” Nimbly nibble yellow fish: “Animals in this
category are from fisheries that are either poorly understood or have some
troubling characteristics. Limit your consumption of these animals.” And red, of course, means by all means stop:
“Fish and shellfish are caught or farmed in a manner that is inordinately
deleterious to the health of the oceans.”

Sato mostly serves green fish, but he serves some yellow,
too. Occasionally a customer will ask him, “Are you 100 percent okay with this?”
“No,” he replies, “I eat the same as any other practice I do. I drive a car.”

But what if every fish out there was classified red
tomorrow?

Then I’m not going to serve. I’m going to have a vegetarian
restaurant. Which is totally fine. But I’m trying to prevent it. I’m trying to
prevent it so we can do this. People tend to wait wait wait until the last
moment and then freak out. Let’s freak out just a touch more right now.

Keeping up to date on the status of each fish he serves
takes a lot of time. “You cannot just stop learning about it,” he insists.

Trenor and Sato’s relationship continues. Sato reads
Japanese publications on sustainability and Trenor reads English sources. They
talk three times a week to share what they’ve learned.

Sato, the first traditionally trained sushi chef to go
sustainable, can’t understand Japanese aversion to sustainable sushi: “The reality is, if you really read the history of sushi,
tuna actually was not in there, [nor] toro, unagi … I’m basically going back to
what traditional is. They didn’t have a huge fleet of boats.”

Though he doesn’t intend to challenge veteran sushi chefs
(“They’d kill me with a knife”), Sato hopes to promote sustainable sushi and
bring more chefs into the fold. He understands the difficulties of switching to
and finding sustainable fish, but he’s willing to share his experience and
support those who face the same hardships.

Have you ever even heard of the Sanma fish? Photo by Phu Son Nguyen of sushiday.com“I had to say goodbye to distributers that I’d been using
for 15 years, which is really tough. They sometimes helped me out when I was in
financial trouble,” he says. He went from having four or five distributors to
nearly 20 in order to fill out his menu. 
He sees this as a plus for his diners, giving them choices far beyond
the standard fare. “There’s so many
other fish. But some people don’t get that,” he says. Sato recommends diners
relax and expand their tastes. “Today eat this, tomorrow eat that. It’s good
for the ecosystem, economy, everything.”

In the past, his business philosophy was to make sushi
affordable for everyone. He’s kept his prices low and his sushi delicious, but
his philosophy has changed to something he calls egocentric: “I’d like to keep
my business longer than the next five years.”

Ultimately, Sato believes the fate of the fish and our
ability to eat them in the future is up to the consumer. He hopes we choose
wisely.

If you’re not in the Seattle
area, bring Trenor’s book with you to your favorite restaurant, the grocery
store, the fish market. Ask questions.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a good, simple pocket guide as well. And you can see how your local seafood restaurants measure up at Fish2Fork. Finally, check out Mashiko’s website sushiwhore.com, where you can read Sato’s blog about sustainability, peruse his mouth-watering menu, and watch silly sushi videos. (And it’s pointed out that sake is sustainable.)

Related Links:

Why America’s greenest mayor got no love

Break with consumerism to save the world, Worldwatch report urges

How do I find a green job?

View full post on Grist – the Latest from Grist

Anger at Trick vegetables like mildew has spread on the Internet. . . And the Colbert video on “Watercressgate.” . . The question of the stunt Vegetable White House is on the special episode of Iron Chef America has to be built up to a big meme on the Internet, raised around the news sites and on the blogosphere this week, although the episode was originally on 3 January broadcast. And the interest was high, despite the fact that the devastating earthquake in Haiti, and in spite of other political “scandals occur” simultaneously. In some places, is a rather volatile response to the use of substitute vegetables and indignant, raised serious questions of transparency in the White House and First Lady Michelle Obama’s credibility. In other places there is a feeling of disappointment and a confidence that the adoption of the Food Network was doing only what is Hollywood best – creating a false impression – when it comes to the truth about the vegetable cooks with on-air in the EZ uncooked disclosure Chef America. Reporter Lynn Sweet’s post on Trick vegetables in her column in the Daily AOL Flotus that the issue into the headlines launched, is now getting more than 650 comments – more comments than any other postal Sweet has written for the site, and that speaks for the high level of anger and interest. And AOL is only one corner of the Internet. The issue has so much attention that held on Thursday, Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report got a funny little trick on vegetables, “Watercressgate” where host Stephen Colbert makes light of the topic. It notes playfully, “I’m not sure what the chefs harvested, but the audience has a load of manure – but that is a broad and strong popular opinion seems to be in the blogosphere. (Watch the video below) Stunt vegetables as fuel for the pushback fireThis week, Mrs. Obama that the fight against childhood obesity to their signatures, the initiative, their legacy will be the manufacturer for their time in the White House. She has planned all sorts of new life projects, they’ll tell some of this coming Wednesday, when she spoke at the conference for a mayor in DC. Unfortunately, their work could have questions about food and the Food Network’s mishandling of the Iron Chef America episode dogging it forever, because nothing will ever dies on the Internet. It is disturbing to think that a TV show has potentially compromised the credibility of the First Lady’s with food, but many Americans simply do not like government interference with privacy, and eating is a very private and personal matter. Even if you animate to human well being, as the First Lady will do, it will be seen as the face of the Obama administration, and enable them the equivalent of government intervention, no matter how critical their project for the nation’s youth. ” It could be a lot of pushback, Dewey, and vegetables, such as the myths about lead contamination of the vegetable garden, but might well be raised again and again. Have given the enormous amount of attention the issue of vegetables has stunt this week, it is clear that the combination of food and the First Lady and credibility, a hot-button issue. Food Network has other issues of transparency, too. . . As a side note, since the struggle to clear the truth in food and food labeling, which were led by good food advocates for years, it is more than a little ironic that was the Food Network while promoting the values of the local, organic and sustainable foods, not revealing the truth about the use of the White House vegetables. And as mentioned earlier this week whether there is some doubt that one of the foods on Iron Chef America were actually used locally procured, such as Food Network claims. After four requests for a list of local farmers that were the source of the food fishery on Iron Chef America, Food Network publicist have not been to the information. Thanks to Mrs. Obama, the show was a rocket Reviews for Food Network. . . But even there, blocking the Food Network, too. Network publicist put out a smug press release, which claims almost twice as many viewers on Iron Chef America, as it really was, because they show combines the ratings for Iron Chef America, with others that aired during the night. Their real audience for the show – about 4th 6 million viewers – is far higher than the average audience of 1 5 million, but the Food Network, America would believe that she had nearly 8 million viewers. Here’s the Colbert Watercressgate video that only a little fun to come from the whole issue: The Colbert ReportMon – Thu 11:30 Clock / 10:30 cWatercressgatewww. colbertnation. comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorEconomyRelated: On 12 January, the question of the use of stunt vegetables began rocking the internet. White House Chef Cris Comerford blogs about their experiences on Iron Chef America here. The recipes for Comerford / staff in the White House are: Sweet Potato Pie, the winning dessert White House Kitchen Garden Herb Chicken with cauliflower gratin and braised Greens are here. A video clip of the assessment is here.

View full post on Obama Foodorama