The list, ping
Personal Cook?
Didn’t one of the Roman emperor’s make his horse a Senator or something to that effect?
Off to Google this very subject right now....
Why not, he is as unqualifed as the rest of 0bama’s staff.
/johnny
Beats head on desk.
Beats head on desk.
Beats head on desk.
Beats head on desk.
Beats head on desk.
Beats head on desk.
Beats head on desk.
Beats head on desk.
Beats head on desk.
TWICE a month, President Obama’s senior policy advisers gather at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to hash out strategies for improving the health of the country’s children. Among the assistant secretaries, chiefs of staff and senior aides sits an unlikely participant: a bald, intense young man who happens to be the newest White House chef.
His name is Sam Kass. And when he’s not grilling fish for the first family or tending tomatillos in the White House garden, he is pondering the details of child nutrition legislation, funding streams for the school lunch program and the best tactics to fight childhood obesity.
Part chef and part policy wonk, he is reinventing the role of official gastronome in the Executive Mansion. Indeed, Obama administration officials describe him as a vital conduit to the first family. “How do I get to the first lady, how do I try to transmit ideas and messages to her? Sam Kass,” said Kathleen Merrigan, the deputy agriculture secretary. “He’s been a real ally when we talk about farm to school.”
Mr. Kass, 29, forged a close bond with the Obamas while cooking for them and their children for about two years before they moved to Washington and has golfed with the president on Martha’s Vineyard. Behind the scenes, he attends briefings on child nutrition and health, has vetted nonprofits as potential partners for White House food initiatives and regularly peppers senior staff about policy matters. (“Do we have a toxicologist who specializes in colony collapse disorder?” Mr. Kass asked in a recent e-mail message about the Department of Agriculture’s position on honey bees, Ms. Merrigan recalled.)
While he is steeped in all matters locavore and was a moving force behind the White House garden, Mr. Kass has no formal culinary training and has never run a restaurant or hotel kitchen.
He has baked Swiss chard frittatas for students on the White House lawn, prepared chicken salad with red onions and toasted almonds at the Department of Agriculture’s cafeteria and sprinkled crab meal and ladybugs — instead of chemical fertilizers and pesticides — on the first lady’s garden.
Friends say he cooks primarily for the Obamas, while the executive chef, Cristeta Comerford, handles most formal gatherings.
(People magazine called Mr. Kass one of “Barack’s Beauties” in its list of 100 Most Beautiful people this year.)
“We find ourselves in a fight to salvage a food system that has been ravaged by an approach of quantity over quality,” he wrote. “The industry our society has built around food is harmful and unsustainable.”
Mr. Kass has toned down that kind of talk since he came to the White House in January. These days, he describes big agricultural producers and fertilizer and pesticide companies as “partners,” not obstacles to reform.
Mr. Kass and other officials say improving school lunches and widening access to farmers’ markets for people on government aid will benefit the poor. “He’s often the one who stops the conversation and says, ‘People will do this and won’t do that,’ ” said Jocelyn Frye, Mrs. Obama’s policy director, who has pronounced Mr. Kass’s collard greens and barbecued chicken “very good.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/dining/04kass.html
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People are losing jobs and we need this ‘policy wonk’ why?!
Obama, et al, are SO OUT OF TOUCH!
Does Michelle Obama even know how to cook?!
As a guy who’s been with them since Chicago, I would imagine this cook has seen and heard a lot. It may be that Obama really likes him, and wanted to promote him as a favor. But it could also be that the cook knows things about Obama that are best kept under the rug. A nice new title with a fat check attached to it could buy a fair amount of silence.
I think this may be Obama’s first appointment of someone with real world experience in his field.
Food Czar. we really shouldn’t be surprised, you know. it just isn’t that unusual with this bunch.
White House Chef Sam Kass mixes up Honey Crisp Apple Salad at the USDA Cafeteria...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj6pQhc99Gc
Oh, that is really, really hard to make a SALAD! /s
Da Chicago Way!
...... it fits the mold of people with no experience .