From the Six Degrees of Obama Foodorama playbook:During Campaign Season, counter-culture 60's-era icon, musician and activist Wavy Gravy (at left) endorsed Bam, which surprised many people, since Mr. Gravy is notable for his preference to not support political figures. Mr. Gravy also once had a Ben & Jerry's ice cream named after him (the creatively titled Wavy Gravy, made with caramel & cashews), just like Bam (Yes Pecan!). The royalties from Mr. Gravy's ice cream enabled him to do all kinds of awesome things, like support a children's camp, before B & J stopped making it.
And suddenly gravy is all over the Bam landscape. Reporter Robert Toppo has collected letters of presidential advice for Barack from school children around the US in Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country. There's an excellent addition to the trope of professional foodies banging the pots at Bam to force him to announce every single thing he eats as a way of changing food policy in America:
I would fill the White House with chocolate and gravy (but not together) and mashed potatoes or maybe fill it with root beer. I'd drive through the White House on a boat. We'd make the floor out of mashed potatoes and the house would be filled with mashed potatoes.…I'd have a couch made out of pudding that you could eat with a giant spoon. And I'd have a pizza carpet.
We're pretty sure the six-year-old idea man who wrote this is working on a Food Politics column for Gourmet mag, because it's about as well reasoned as the Ruth Reichl/Alice Waters demand for White House chefs to become healthy-eats preachers from the "bully pulpit" of the kitchen at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Conversely, the kid could also be talking about the Economic Stimulus package....
Last night, Bam and the Senate reached a deal on the Stim package, which provides much-needed gravy to desperate citizens across the country. The current version of the bill is devoid of "pork," and expected to cost about the same as the $819 billion approved by the House, but far lower than the bill as amended on the Senate floor, which had grown to more than $930 billion. Yes pecan spend a lot and provide hope for change!*An excellent Wavy Gravy video is here.
Pic at top of post is from Barack Obama NOW!, the oldest Bam Blog on the net, snapped at San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in October, 2008.
