Notes on Dining with the Washingtons
and Culinary History

"So when we begin to understand how the president designed his gardens, arranged his dining rooms, and made a business of selling much of what his farm produced–all the while eschewing overindulgence and extravagance at the table–we not only learn more about him, but we also see how he interpreted and even influenced American food and dining." – Walter Shieb, forward to Dining with the Washingtons




On a second reading of Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, it becomes obvious just how revolutionary that book is as it reveals in a rational and measured way the very food system in which most of live, whether we then knew it or not. The revolutionary part really has come afterward, where now, unlike then, most of us do now have a much better sense that corn is king, for example, that the carbon footprint of large concern agriculture is enormous and often seeming irrational (the great example of the corn commodity transaction and distribution; the data of just how much 'petroleum' ruminants ultimately consume, etc., etc.), and that all of this just sort of happened, while we were not watching. Just to consider options for backtracking to turn an irrational food system to something that even resembles a rational one, has taken...ten years since the Omnivore's publication, and we're really not even close to solving concepts of big organic, carbon sequestration, the bankruptcy rate of rural farmers and right on down the line. In a word, the more you know, the more it all seems a mess. Finding a sort of snapshot of the food system from a previous generation, then, also seems like at least an interesting entry point to track either some of the difficulties always associated with the creation of food, or some of the ideals on which some of the practices aspired to achieve.  The book Dining with the Washingtons is one of the more overall thorough yet non-academic attempts at showing us a snapshot in time, of Mt. Vernon as both farm and hospitality center. As the chef Walter Shieb describes in the first paragraph of his forward to the culinary history book, he too did not quite know how to approach our first president in his own studies; there is the image, there is the historical epoch; there is the nation; there is the farm; and there is the real man. How to sort all of this out and disentangle it all with the hundreds of viewpoints available to interpret? My own interest might have less to do Washington himself – although that has been a very interesting route as well – but more as

a comparison, in my mind anyway, of food systems. To think, for example, that Mt. Vernon was an exceedingly diverse planting of crops (Washington actually eliminated tobacco at one point and relied upon wheat, with his own mill for processing), created all of the food that the plantation consumed, and offered surpluses to local community, quickly becomes a study in the 'local.' In fact, as one continues on in the reading, virtually every local ideal that we know hold up as values that we would like to aspire to engaging (slavery absolutely not included in this ideal), were common practice on this particular farm. In this, two strands of diverging attitudes and approaches to food, culture, family, become essential in understanding Dining with the Washingtons – that Washington himself was a dedicated and hands-on farmer who regularly be seen supervising or taking notes in the farm in drab clothes and plain speech, never over indulging meat, drink or sweets; and on the other side, living with certain luxuries that would only be available to the highest level of society. In other words, and quite telling, Washington lived a life that was surrounded by elegance but purposefully understatedly and with grace, humility, and generosity, the very characteristics that many might hold out values we would wish to see demonstrated by those who have. On that second reading of Omnivores, it is most disturbingly telling of the unfortunate circumstances of the large farm operators who do not find it possible to carry with them the most important luxury of them all – the luxury of being able to create your own food system which reflects personal values and autonomy.  To be stuck with corn as a mono crop and stuck inside the system of the feedlot is a lot less about caring farming practices and a lot more about commodity management. We know for certain that Washington would have rebuked this system and mounted a campaign against it. We get the sense he would have been victorious.