The Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend, on stage at the Convention Center, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg appeared alive and well, followed by Jose Andres in conversation with Diane Rehm. The rest of the day was fun, but anticlimactic. What could top opening acts like those two?
About 1/3 of the audience for Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Nina Totenberg, Usher, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden
The estimate for the number of fans in the hall for Justice Ginsburg (affectionately known as (The Notorious) RBG) was somewhere between four to five thousand. Along with her two book collaborators, she spoke to Nina Totenberg of NPR about the highlights of her long and long-from-over career, inshallah. “I am alive, and on my way to being very well,” she declared, to overwhelming approval. A group of students had camped out at 3 a.m. to get seats. Many women and girls were wearing their sentiments on their shirts.
Molly and Clair MacDonald and Their Mother
She just had a round of radiation for recurring cancer, but recalled that she had gone parasailing in her 70’s: “like Icarus, but we didn’t get too close to the sun.”
Nina, RBG; Biographers Mary Hartnett and Wendy Williams
Ms. Totenberg engaged RBG in animated and affectionate conversation. Early in her career, she struck a modest blow for equality in marriage. When her son misbehaved in school, the administration would call her. Finally, she told them, “This child has two parents,” and firmly insisted they alternate calling her husband as well. The number of calls dropped dramatically, when they had to disturb a man at work!
And the culinary connection? Two cookbooks for RBG, one a collection of her late husband’s recipes (Chef Supreme: Martin Ginsburg), and another which mixes history with recipes, Table for 9, by Clare Cushman with a foreword by Justice Ginsburg. Both are published by the Supreme Court Historical Society. Jose Andres also has a new one: Vegetables Unleashed: A Cookbook.
Speaking of, his first words on stage were to apologize for not signing autographs after his talk. He was leaving immediately to head up hurricane relief. “We can recover out of anything, but we leave the politics out of it.” If only our politicians would listen to him.
Chef Jose and Diane Rehm
Chef Jose described how he made meals for disaster victims by listening to what they wanted to eat. Many sandwiches were made for immediate relief, but hot meals mean even more to those without the means to cook. The government drops MRE’s and think they have done the job. Have you ever tried one of those? “Don’t look for alien life on Jupiter – it’s right here on Earth!”
Diane asked him about his new cookbook. It’s a follow-up to his vegetable-forward lunch spot, Beefsteak (the tomato, not the cow: such a great semantic trompe l’oeil). He spoke to the amount of food waste in our agricultural and distribution system. “Be nice to the ugly vegetables – they are often the best ones. Bring them into your home – be nice to them!” And then, presumably, eat them.
Jose Describes a Beefsteak Tomato Sandwich
His opinion of the Farm Bill echoes that of many of the small farmers and chefs speaking out about it, that its support of commodity crops over vegetables (which the Bill calls “specialty crops,” a semantic crime in itself), is a force driving the cost of healthy food higher than processed, junk food. Chef Jose is a human dynamo seeking to right many food- and hunger-related wrongs at once. I hope he can keep it up for a long time to come.
Meanwhile, in another part of the Convention Center, the Parade of the States held a lovely surprise for a food writer. This collection of booths, full of librarians representing each state in the country, is always great fun. Besides browsing the assortment of tchotchkes they bring for the kids (so I can be assured of getting my yearly allotment of bookmarks), I love engaging librarians from all over the country to learn how they are advancing the cause of literacy.
They call their initiative “Route 1 Reads Cookbooks.” A collaboration of 16 states and the District of Columbia, this exclusive club’s members consist of every state Route 1 runs through. Each highlights one cookbook indicative of their state. They range from Maine’s The Lost Kitchen Cookbook, a book originating from a restaurant so exclusive that reservations are open for only two weeks a year by postcard, to New York’s Storied Bars of New York, Where Literary Luminaries Go to Drink, a two-fer if ever there was one. I had lots of fun going from booth to booth, meeting librarians and collecting postcards with recipes from each state.
Route 1 Reads Massachusetts
Route 1 Reads Delaware
Route 1 Reads New Hampshire
Route 1 Reads Virginia
Also in the exhibit area, the Library of Congress Manuscript Division had a few culinary items among their displays: a postcard with a reproduction of Rosa Park’s “Recipe for featherlight pancakes,” which appears to be written on the back of an envelope; and a copy of Thomas Jefferson’s drawing of a macaroni machine and instructions for making pasta.
Rosa’s Recipe
Thomas Jefferson’s Macaroni Notes
And one more culinary marker: a nitro-brewed coffee dispenser, which charged by the ounce. It seemed popular. Was it a curiosity, or an indicator of cultural shift?
Cool Nitro Brew
