"This is the lunch that President Richard Nixon ate on August 8, 1974, just before going on national television to announce that he was resigning. White House photographer Robert Knudson captured it on film. The next day, Nixon boarded a plane for California."
Note: It is by pure chance that this post, like the previous post, contains the date August 8, 1974.
ADDED: Back in actual 1974, any mention of Nixon's cottage cheese would have required the assertion that Nixon put ketchup in his cottage cheese. The requirement was a necessary component of the template of contempt that we all knew so well back then. And I have not forgotten.
From the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum:
President Nixon's favorite breakfast usually consisted of cottage cheese (garnished with either ketchup and/or black pepper), fresh fruit, wheat germ, and coffee. President Nixon also enjoyed yogurt, which was flown in from California every day.
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20 comments:
Cottage cheese and canned fruit - standard school lunch fare back in the 60's
You mean there isn't one of him staring at himself in a mirror?
Ketchup on cottage cheese is actually pretty good. It masks the flavor of the cottage cheese.
My grandfather had ketchup on cottage cheese sometimes.
He grew up on a rural farm and ended up with a PhD in physics from Chicage in 1926.
People are jerks.
-XC
My first thought was Stephen Shore.
No fair only NPR types get to have all the fun. Can we get someone to snap the current guy's last meal in office?
That is some sad looking pineapple.
@rehajm
There are some hilariously depressing photos at that link.
I hated pineapple when I was growing up. I discovered much later in life that what I was eating was canned pineapple. I love pineapple now.
" template of contempt " That is a striking phrase and, so far as I know, original. It applies to many public and especially media attitudes toward individuals, classes and political groups.
It looks like a nice lunch. I hope that is skim milk. I also love cottage cheese on pineapple. It was a military favorite in every chow hall I ever attended.
The only political thing, I see, from the cook I presume, is a dull knife in which I suspect the President was to insert under his rib cage and wiggle it around to cut an artery, thus not bleeding all over the carpet with such a small incision.
Looks like whole milk to me.
alan markus said...Cottage cheese and canned fruit - standard school lunch fare back in the 60's
For me too. In Portland, each homeroom (4th through 6th grades) had to take turns in the kitchen during lunch. We were used to scoop and serve each kids tray, and also to put the trays and silverware through the automatic washer.
I never saw any pineapple/cottage cheese returned, but I did see a lot of peas and spinach returned, which I scraped un-eaten food into the big barrel before putting the tray in the washer.
I always wondered if the food barrel was used for anything. urp...
I always wondered if the food barrel was used for anything
Probably as pig slops.
That's sad. Couldn't we feed our presidents better food than that - even back then?
It doesn't look to me as if the president was getting enough calories, unless for dinner he had two T-bone steaks, three baked potatoes and half a quart of bourbon.
He probably had a bleeding ulcer.
I love cottage cheese with pineapple!!
Of course, most of the time I buy the fat-free cottage cheese which really wrecks the esthetic.
Would have thought two fingers of Dewars.
I was insulted impersonally by Richard Nixon at a campaign rally in sweaty September 1968 in North Carolina, when after arriving early and waiting in the hot sun for 3 hours to be in position for a handshake, the ratf**king bastard reached over my front-line 9-year-old self to shake the hand of an actual eligible voter. My head ended up jammed in the future president's very sweaty armpit, up under his jacket, until he moved on.
Nixon should have been impeached, convicted, removed from office, disgraced with jail time and never heard from again.
It would have encouraged the Clintons and Obamas of the world to be at least a bit more circumspect in their illicit behavior.
Oh, and Hillary, the next President of the US, is going to be worse than those three combined, by a margin uncomfortable to the country in the extreme.
I like ketchup on cottage cheese, but I like plain cottage cheese too.
The Nixons must have loved cottage cheese. According to J.B. West who was Chief Usher then, Pat Nixon ordered a bowl of it to eat in her bedroom for dinner the first night in the White House. Unfortunately, there was no cottage cheese in the White House kitchens.
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