Presidents' Day Dinner

American presidents rarely gather by the dozen. But that is what happened in our dining room last evening.

I spent a lot of my day preparing for their arrival. Unlike the White House that has a calligraphy department to handprint dinner invitations, I needed to make my own place name tags. Unless I miss my guess, the chief calligrapher's position remains secure, even if Biden sees the name tags I made for my dinner guests.

Inside each place name tag, I printed interesting tidbits about our presidents like, 

"Thomas Jefferson was fluent in English, Latin, Greek, Italian, French, and Spanish. He also spoke some Dutch and Arabic. Jefferson claimed Spanish was so easy that he learned it in 19 days at sea." 

And one more: 

"Jimmy Carter was a speed reader, having been recorded reading 2,000 words per minute. The average reading speed of most adults is 250 words per minute. Also, Harry S. Truman read every book in his hometown library."

I planned my menu days in advance, selecting president favorites from Wide Open Eats and Insider. The lists on those two sites vary. Wide Open Eats attributes fried apple pies to Franklin Pierce, for example, and the Insider says his favorite food was fried clams. But why wouldn't they vary? If you asked me last Saturday what my favorite food was, I might have honestly told you it is hot-from-the-oven Garlic Naan from Taj Mahal, an Indian restaurant John took me to on a date. But on a cold winter day with wind howling around the house, it wouldn't feel dishonest to say a hot bowl of chili is my comfort food. 

So two lists of presidential favorites make sense to me. Plus, it gave me more options to choose from. Our finalized menu looked like this:

The leather britches listed on the menu came from no one's closet. In Appalachia, green beans used to be strung up and dried to be preserved for winter. When they were rehydrated and cooked (often with fat or ham hocks), they gained a wrinkled, leathery appearance. Leather Britches, then, are dried green beans. Ours were imitation leather; I found out too late about the dried bean part. 

I also selected Hoppin' John, a rice and bean dish, because of its name. (When children are your target audience, recipes like Leather Britches and Hoppin' John look good on the menu.) I happened to have a ham hock in my freezer for the first time in my life. When simmered for a long time with the dried beans, it added a delightful flavor to the recipe, making Hoppin' John my favorite dish of the evening. 

At least three presidents listed apple desserts as a favorite food, so I felt it was fitting to end our meal with one of those. Apple Pan Dowdy is basically apple pie with the crust cut into squares and overlapped on top. I used this recipe from Martha Stewart and am sharing the picture from her site since I didn't take one of mine. It was good enough that I understood why John Adams chose this as his fave.

Rutherford Hayes banned alcohol from the White House, which earned his wife the name "Lemonade Lucy." That's how we picked lemonade for our beverage. And I should note how fun it was to make Mamie Eisenhower's fudge using her recipe. It makes a lot--plenty to share with friends. 

Our Presidents' Day Dinner was a great education for our whole family. Ken Albala, a professor who teaches a course on the Great Courses Plus, says that just as you can learn much about history through art, so you can learn much about history through food. I agreed with him when I read about Abe Lincoln treating honey like a delicacy all his life because it was one luxury in a poverty-stricken childhood. Andrew Johnson naming rice and dried beans as a favorite food and Donald Trump famously serving McDonalds to guests in the White House also verify that U.S. history can be mapped through foods our presidents enjoy. 

Here is a fun fact to end on: 

"America is only as old as four presidents' lives. President Biden was alive at the same time as Herbert Hoover, who was alive at the same time as Andrew Johnson, who was alive at the same time as John Adams, who was 40 when America was born."

--Philip Bump, The Washington Post

Credits to Katrina Lee for the dinner idea and for going out of her way to send me the photo props. You can see her Presidents' Day Dinner on her website, katrinahooverlee.com.