Sunday 28th of April 2024

guess who's coming to dinner .....

guess who's coming to dinner .....

Barack Obama paid a visit to the Lincoln Memorial at the weekend, publicly honouring the man who inspired his career and whose legacy is to provide a major theme for the inauguration in eight days.

The President-elect took his family to the monument on Saturday night, where they admired the statue of the 16th President, before studying the inscriptions of his greatest speeches, including the Gettysburg Address.

It was the latest indication that Mr Obama intends to begin his presidency citing his hero, an opponent of slavery who led the abolitionist North during the Civil War of 1861-65.

He has decided to be sworn into office using Abraham Lincoln's bible, and will spend three days this week travelling by train from Philadelphia to Washington, following the final leg of an identical journey taken by Lincoln.

The theme of Mr Obama's inauguration week, "A New Birth of Freedom", was inspired by Lincoln's speeches, while the menu for the lunch following his swearing-in is a replica of the one enjoyed by his predecessor.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/obama-pays-public-tribute-to-lincolns-unifying-legacy-1301577.html

pie in the sky?...

Cuisine d'Abe on Obama's luncheon plate

In an inaugural rife with references to his hero Abraham Lincoln, US President Barack Obama is tucking into a luncheon menu of "Honest Abe's" favourites.

Lincoln, who grew up in what were then wild frontier states Kentucky and Illinois, had a taste for common woodland game and root vegetables, apples and apple cake.

Mr Obama, joined by officials including his incoming secretary of state Hillary Clinton, has been enjoying a meal of seafood stew served with a California Sauvignon blanc; a brace of pheasant and duck served with sour cherry chutney and molasses sweet potatoes, served with a California pinot noir; and apple cinnamon sponge cake served with a Califonia sparkling wine.

In the year that marks the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, Mr Obama has reached back repeatedly to the symbol of slavery's end and national healing, another lanky lawyer from Illinois who surmounted doubts about his political inexperience to win the presidency at a time of great crisis.

But foodwise, Mr Obama is his own man.

The new US President himself, while on the campaign trail, declared himself a devotee of that icon of American diners: pie.

---------------------

see toon at top and drink up cab sav....