Pudding isn’t finger food at senior center

Come to the Charlotte Senior Center and celebrate spring with good food and good conversation. Monday Munch on March 27 features some presidential favorites.

Image by pamelasichel from Pixabay
Image by pamelasichel from Pixabay

When Columbia University persuaded Gen. Dwight Eisenhower to become its president, the Eisenhowers were asked to contribute a recipe for a cookbook, “What’s Cooking at Columbia.” Cookbook compilers expected something from Mamie, but she wasn’t much of a cook, and Ike sent his recipe for two-day vegetable soup, a soup he’d been cooking since childhood.

His recipe for soup was printed in newspapers of the day.

Noting how much Thomas Jefferson loved apples, Peter J. Hatch, director of the Monticello garden and grounds, points out that the apple is an apt symbol for the diversity and complexity of America’s melting pot culture. With its many variations, “there are almost as many apples as there are people, each with its own unique history.”

“Nomenclature of the Apple,” a 1905 publication of the Government Printing Office, listed the names of approximately 17,000 apple varieties that appeared in 19th century American publications. Hatch concluded, “The apple is to America as the potato is to Ireland or the olive to Italy.”

So, celebrate spring with the presidential favorites of chicken vegetable soup and apple pie at the Charlotte Senior Center.

Monday Munch, March 27
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. or until the food is gone.
Chicken vegetable soup, green salad, crusty bread and apple pie with ice cream.

Thursday, March 23
Grab-&-Go Menu. Pick up time 10-11 a.m.
Roast pork in sauce, mashed potatoes, peas & onions and oatmeal-raisin cookie.
Reminder: Advanced reservation for Grab-&-Go meals required by the Monday before by emailing or calling 802-425-6345

Monday Munch, April 3, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Menu to be announced. Go to the senior center “Good Eating” website for the menu.

Thursday, April 6
Grab-&-Go Menu. Pick up time 10-11 a.m.
Sweet-n-sour pork with sauce, brown rice with lentils and vegetables, green beans and Easter cake.

A recent feature in The Wall Street Journal revealed what volunteer cooks at the Charlotte Senior Center kitchen have in common with David Boulud, Michelin-starred chef and proprietor of 20 or so noted restaurants around the world. Boulud listed things in his kitchen he can’t live without: “a wood spatula, a peeler and a cast iron pot.”

We have it on good authority that some senior center cooks would add garlic press to the list.

Come join a volunteer cooking team at the Charlotte Senior Center, and you, too, can cook like David Boulud.

Note: The Charlotte Senior Center provides a full set of eating utensils, so you won’t have to eat like Ron DeSantis.

According to The Daily Beast, during a private plane trip from Tallahassee to Washington, D.C., in March 2019, this notably messy eater enjoyed his chocolate pudding dessert by using his fingers to eat it.

Let’s be generous — and assume that when he enjoyed a meal costing $8,000 at the famous French Laundry restaurant near San Francisco, he used utensils.

Finally, here’s Frank Sinatra with “high apple pie in the sky hopes”.