One More Analysis of the Candidates: Their Favorite Meals

As you know, this blog is primarily about food but it also transcends food matters as the demands of current events dictate.

We’ve analyzed John McCain, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama and Joe Biden from virtually every angle. So why not go beyond their records and their claims, and take a look at what they like to eat.

McCain’s favorite meal is reported to be deep-fried turkey cooked in peanut oil. He’s also partial to pizza with pepperoni and onions. John likes to suggest that he is the king of straight talk. Apparently he is also in the running for being the champion of blasé meals. For a guy with 13 houses, you might think he’d install a gourmet kitchen in one of them: but apparently not. Suggestion though: make sure to keep those oil-filled turkey fryers outside. Not long ago, a guy out in Bastrop burned his house to the ground trying to deep-fry a turkey. Can we discern anything political from JM’s dining habits? Well, they are apparently kind of boring…

Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska, McCain’s running mate, and the darling of the conservative base of the Republican Party has said that her favorite dinner is “moose stew after a day of snow machining.”. Yum!

Say it ain’t so Sarah! Remember also that Palin, a mother of five, also fired the executive chef in one of her first moves as Governor. Perhaps he rebelled when he was ordered to stock the kitchen with freshly butchered moose meat. One can only suspect. But one thing is certain: Sarah Palin must indeed be a maverick as she claims. Who the hell else do you know who would eat moose stew? You betcha!

Now, moose meat is said to be lower in cholesterol and actually pretty healthy for you. That may be. But I’ll take a good Nebraska rib eye any day.

Barack Obama is said to like dishes like Chili and Shrimp n’ Grits. You have to be a cool customer to eat some of the burning chili dishes that some of the fanatical chili cooks whip up. And isn’t a cool customer under fire what we’re looking for in a president? And as for Shrimp and Grits, why it’s one of my favorite dishes! Now that means absolutely nothing to this discussion but I couldn’t resist throwing it in.

The Belmont on W. 6th makes a terrific version of this classic. It has been embraced both by red state good old boys and blue state libs. Great choice for Obama to (and forgive me for using one of the most regurgitated lines of the presidential campaign)”reach across the aisle” with.

Joe Biden is an emotional guy. You saw this in the debate with Palin. So it should come as no real surprise that his favorite meal is “Christmas or Thanksgiving” dinner. In fact, were it not for the pressing demands of the campaign, Biden strikes me as the type who would do the Clark Griswold “kith and kin” (from Christmas Vacation) Christmas dinner every night if he could. So it means he’s sentimental. I can live with that. I think we could all live with a little more of that in these harsh time.

So what have we learned from this? Probably not a hell of a lot. It’s clear that my political persuasions lean to the left, and for that, like Bill Ayers, I remain unapologetic. And speaking of Ayers, if you want to start really digging, you can probably find enough dirt on all four of the candidates to fill up the hole at the W construction site. With the mess this country is in, I suspect we should begin to examine the plans on the table to get us out of said mess. Bill Ayers, Charles Keating or whomever should be relegated to the dust heaps from which they have been so violently plucked by divisive spin doctors from each campaign.