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The President's Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas - Paperback | Diverse Reads

The President's Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas

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An NAACP Image Award Finalist for Outstanding Literary Work—Non Fiction

James Beard award–winning author Adrian Miller vividly tells the stories of the African Americans who worked in the presidential food service as chefs, personal cooks, butlers, stewards, and servers for every First Family since George and Martha Washington. Miller brings together the names and words of more than 150 black men and women who played remarkable roles in unforgettable events in the nation's history. Daisy McAfee Bonner, for example, FDR's cook at his Warm Springs retreat, described the president's final day on earth in 1945, when he was struck down just as his lunchtime cheese souffle emerged from the oven. Sorrowfully, but with a cook's pride, she recalled, "He never ate that souffle, but it never fell until the minute he died."

A treasury of information about cooking techniques and equipment, the book includes twenty recipes for which black chefs were celebrated. From Samuel Fraunces's "onions done in the Brazilian way" for George Washington to Zephyr Wright's popovers, beloved by LBJ's family, Miller highlights African Americans' contributions to our shared American foodways. Surveying the labor of enslaved people during the antebellum period and the gradual opening of employment after Emancipation, Miller highlights how food-related work slowly became professionalized and the important part African Americans played in that process. His chronicle of the daily table in the White House proclaims a fascinating new American story.

ISBN-13: 9781469647678

Media Type: Paperback(Reprint)

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press

Publication Date: 05-07-2018

Pages: 296

Product Dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

Adrian Miller—author of Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time, which won a James Beard Foundation book award—worked as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton. He is a certified Kansas City Barbecue Society judge and former Southern Foodways Alliance board member. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

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From the Publisher

The President's Kitchen Cabinet brings history alive by tracing the people and foods that appeared at White House events large and small, personal and formal. The research is impeccable, the stories are vivid and thrilling, and the food detailed and delicious. If you love the history of our nation's first home as I do, you will devour this book.— Bill Yosses, former executive pastry chef at the White House and coauthor of The Perfect Finish