July 19, 2022 • 22 mins
Valerie Biden Owen’s family are typical Americans in some ways, but not that typical. Her brother Joe is the President of the United States. In today's River Cafe Table 4 she and Ruthie will be talking about food and family, from the kitchen table of her childhood home to the White House dining room and Air Force One.
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home.
On Ruthie’s Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers.
Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks.
Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation.
For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
and Adami Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I have three brothers. My brother Joe is the eldest.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
I'm Valerie, the second and the only girl, and then
my brother Jimmy, and then the baby is Frankie. And
we are a typical mid twentieth century American family.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
Valerie Biden's family are typical Americans in some ways, but
not that typical. Her brother Joe is President Biden. And
in today's River Cafe Table four, we'll be talking about
food and family from the kitchen table to the White House.
When President Biden's first wife died in a tragic accident,
(00:47):
Valerie stepped up to support her nephew's beau and hunter
ice cream, hot dogs, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, vows.
Food memories are made up of American classics. But we'll
begin right now with her favorite recipe from the River Cafe.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
It's quick sweet tomato sauce.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Serve six to eight, three tablespoons olive oil, three garlic
cloves peeled and cut into slivers. Two one kilogram jars
peeled plum tomato drained of their juices, A handful of
fresh basil or oregano leaves. Heat one to two tablespoons
of the olive oil in a large pan and fry
(01:30):
the garlic until it is soft.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
But not brown.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Add the tomatoes with some sea salt and black pepper,
and cook fiercely, stirring constantly to prevent the tomatoes from
sticking as they break up. As they cook, the tomatoes
will release their juices when the liquid has evaporated. Add
the remaining olive oil, the basil or oregano, and more
seasoning if necessary.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Serve hot and I.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Always use the basil, and it's spectacular. It makes me
smile because every family dinner, we all sit down and
we have spaghetti and meat balls with tomato sauce, tell
the same stories and laugh at the same jokes as
if it's the first time we ever heard them.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Can I ask you about food at the White House?
What's it like when you go to eat with your brother.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
At the White House?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Joe the President and First Lady aka Joe and Jill.
They don't have breakfast served. That's a time when you
can get up and go to the small kitchen and
have coffee or cereal and not have people around, you know,
who are very gracious and want to take care of you.
But it's just a quiet time lunch. My brother is
(02:42):
rather a pedestrian eater like I. He'll have a ponifish salad,
ponfish sandwich or a chicken salad sandwich, and always if
we can, tomato soup. They make great tomato basil soup.
And then dinner, normal dinner that they suits set and
(03:03):
it's usually Jill, my sister in law, is very conscious
of help. I mean she's she's what I want to
be when I when you grow up.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yes, when I grow up.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
And generally she has a fish meal salmon and a
crust and delicious. But Joe and I said, oh we're
eating healthy again. Okay.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Do you share a lot of time over food?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
It's almost always over a meal.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Especially since my you know brother, when he travels now
it's an entourage and it's generally and it's an inconvenience
to other people. I mean, it's for his safety and
he's very we're very appreciative, but it inconveniences other people,
you know, to go in in the arrest.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
So we don't go to restaurants very often.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
We either at his house or my house and Jimmy
Biden's house. Frankie, our youngest, is in Florida, so not
at his house. But we sit and again tell the
same old stories. We poke fun at each other, and
you know, in I have found that in a family
(04:17):
that's close or a large family, your place in the
family stays the same if you're sixty years old or
if you're six years old. Once the baby, always the baby,
you know, once the middle, always the middle, once the
eldest always and once the only which is of course
me and I would have it no other way. I love,
I love, love love growing up with my three brothers.
(04:39):
They were a gift to me. I always say that
I earned my husband, but my brothers were a gift.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
What was food like in the Biden household growing up?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Food was we always had enough of it to begin with,
but it was ordinary. We didn't dine, we ate, but
we always ate together every night. We grew up in
a middle class Irish Catholic background.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
My brothers.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
As the first born, he was born in Scranton, but
by the time I guess he was eight years old,
my father got work and moved to back home to Delaware,
where dad was from.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
But what did your father do.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
My father was a car salesman and then he ended
up managing mostly Chevrolet dealerships, different ones here in Delaware.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
He come home for dinner. My father.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
The one thing about him was he had insisted upon
impeccable table manners. My brother Jimmy probably has a left
elbow that's still weak from my father smacking it, you know.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
When he put it on the table.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
So we had to know what the right knife and
fork were and how to pass our dishes. And that
was the only thing he was absolutely stern about. And
he thought it represented good matters.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
And I think it is very telling the way people
are considerate in a way, if that's what matters are
at the table, and how things have changed. When I
talked to Nancy Pelosi, she said that she'd never sat
down in her child at a table where there wasn't
a tablecloth. Was that the Biden household as well?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Well?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
What Mom and Dad had on the dining room table
was a piece of glass that was fitted that covered
the table so it would save the wood. And we
always had place met and we always had napkins. And
Mom was an ordinary cook in the best sense of
the word. I mean, we were Hamburger's hot dogs. My
(06:43):
favorite dish at the time was pot roast. You would
always make that for me for my birthday.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
But there were certain rituals.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Sunday morning after Mass, we would come home and Dad
always made hotcakes.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
That was a big deal.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
There are three foods that I never ate when I
was a child, and I don't know why, but I
didn't like hotcakes, and I didn't like hot dogs, and
I didn't like cam oh the h Yeah, and my
mother never made me eat them. So everybody would have
hot hotcakes with maple syrup.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I had my cheerios and milk.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
The second ritual was because we were a Catholic family,
we didn't eat meat on Friday, so on Fridays we
had missus Paul's frozen fish sticks, which meant that all
four children grew up to really dislike fish, I mean
because we had to eat it. But more often than
(07:38):
that Mom would substitute. And that's when we had spaghetti.
Mom made her homemade spaghetti sauce.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
What was that? Can I ask you what that was?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Big kansa tomato sauce.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
I think she would put in a pork chop, but
I never I was not in the kitchen. I was
out playing ball with my with my brothers. We came in,
you know, Mom had dinner ready. We sat down and
ate and there were no chores, like we didn't have
to clean up after the table or because Mom would
always say, my job is to be the mom, and
(08:10):
your job is to be the students.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Go do your homework.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
The big deal in the house of food was if
things were good on Saturday night, we would my brother
and I would ride our bike, or if it were bad,
Mom would drive us up to the local Custlers pharmacy
where they had ice cream, and we would get a
(08:34):
half gallon of Briar's ice cream and the ice cream
was vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Nobody liked strawberry. I think
Jimmy I think Jimmy Biden was the only one to
eat the strawberry. But that was the big deal. We'd
had the half gallon of ice cream and we would
watch at Sullivan Joe on Sunday night.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
And then when you went to college, did you cook
for yourself? You no longer had your mother saying go
and study. What did you do for food?
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Then? Well, I had a meal ticket, and at the time,
everybody lived on campus all four years, so I didn't
have an apartment where I had to experiment. You know,
there was a meal ticket and we ate normal college food.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
What college did you go to?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Where was the University of Delaware, Delaware about fifty minutes
from our home. But to me, I had graduated from
Ursuline Academy for Young Girls. But I thought I had
died and gone to heaven. I went to the University
of Delaware, five thousand undergraduates, co ed, and I was
(09:39):
in a brand new world and I loved every single
minute of it. And my big brother Joey was there too.
He was a junior when I was a freshman, and
I was there because because of him, I was a
good student and I got in Delaware. But my mom
and dad were not able to afford room and board,
(10:03):
which is what the essence of college was. And I
desperately wanted to go in room and board, and my
dad told me, Toney, look, I can't swing it. You know,
you could commute. And my brother in that right after
that called a family meeting with mom and dad, and respectfully,
we were very, very aware of my father's dignity and
(10:26):
it pained him that he wasn't able to send us
both to room and board. But my brother said, Dad,
I've thought about this, and here's what I proposed. Vo's
a good kid, She's smarter than I. She deserves college
more than I do. So I'm going to drop out
this coming semester in September. I'm going to work for
(10:48):
the year, save money so that I can go back
the next year, so that Voo could take my place,
because she should be able to go to Delaware. She's
earned it, ye, my father said. My father called my
brother champ and he said, Champion can't do that because
my dad was as in that generation and that time,
(11:09):
in mid nineteen sixties, my dad assumed that I would
get married and have children and that you know, the
man had to be was the breadwinner.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
And he said, you know, you have to raise a.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Family and support a family, and VAL's not going to
have to do that. She'll have her pick of whatever
she wants. But my brother said, no, he wanted to
do it that way. And somehow, long story short, Ruthin
And it was late August, right before school started. My
father somehow managed to get alone another loan and I
(11:44):
went to the university with my brother, and as I said,
I realized what a gift it was from my parents,
and I squeezed every single thing I could out of
the school.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
I loved it.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
You were thrust at a very young age into cooking
for young children, taking care of your brother's children.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
I jumped into domestic life, and you know what. I
had a very close friend. Her name was Maureen. She
had two young boys who were close in age to
bow and hunt, and she would give me quick, down
and dirty recipes.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You know that they like this, and they like that.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
She used to make scalop potatoes and she said, get
brock worst, which I didn't know. They were fat hot
dogs as far as I was concerned, and put them
on top. And that was a great dish, an easy dish.
And I did that and I served it. We used
to have a lazy Susan in the kitchen and I
served it. Nobody told me to take the skin off
(12:54):
the brock wars. So when I took it off and
went to serve it to the boys.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
It flew off the table. They said, Aunt vaol. I
mean it was always a little bit of you.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
But you were twenty. You were twenty six. You know,
cut yourself some slack. I mean that is very very young.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
When I got the boys and started to cook, I
wasn't a cook.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I mean I was an eater.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
So I made probably most nights of the week chicken breast,
which I boiled interesting boiled sucken breast.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
And came to be known as my rubber chicken.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
And boiled chicken breast. And meat loaf was another thing
that I made. And I would try in the beginning
now and I'm trying when I had the boys, I'm
trying to be healthy, and I tried making flounder and
telling them that it was chicken oh.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
In their favorite dish.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
And all of both friends who called me aunt vol
when you know this whole, these kids who all grew
up together. Specialty was egg in the cup, and that
was a soft bailled egg. And I never had a time, Ruthie,
I had an instinct exactly when it was right.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
That's very that's impressive because it's really hard to make
a good soft boiled egg. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
I would put it in the cup along with some shell,
always a little bit of shell, some salt and pepper butter,
and I would break up toast and put it in
an egg in the cup, and that was bowen hunts.
My children and all their kids. That was that was
a favorite meal. Aunt found didn't really screw that one
up much.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
It's very traditional. It's very English. I think they call
it as a fellow American. It's called soldiers, isn't it.
They'd make the little sticks of bread and then you
tip it into the egg.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yo that I would give my children with tang and
what they call they called uh, I would sing it, do.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
It with a ting tang kong.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
That was the drink of astronauts.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
But it was, I mean, it was.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
It was a terrible time, Ruthie, a terrible tragedy, but
it was also a time of healing.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
And there was joy.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
These boys they loved me full throttle, and I love
them and uh, and they healed Joe and we healed
as a family, I mean, and there was there was joy.
And as I said, five years later, Joe was able
to come out of it because he met this wonderful woman,
(15:25):
Joe Jacobs, and fell in love.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
So Uh.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
The best thing that my memories of raising being with
the boys would My brother bought me a jeep to
travel around with the boys, and we were up high
and we would look out the window and.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
We had a passer by.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
We'd be at a stop signer or a red light,
and the boys would look out and we'd see the person,
and then we'd go off and we would spin magical
tales like where they were going? What do we think
that they were doing? The jeep was like a magic
carper ride. And we always had peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches and ting tang tong in the backseat, okay for
(16:05):
an emergency.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
If this was a food of everyday life, and you
describe the meals around the table after school and before homework,
did your parents ever or did your family ever go
to restaurants.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
A graduation or first communion or something like that. But
we would always have a tray and you know, bring
it help. The big thing that we did in Delaware
that we always brought home where hoggies or subs we
call them.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
And that's when the.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Family gets together, if it's lunchtime or even going into dinner,
it's either hogies where we all grab them go out
and sit in the porch on the picnic table, or
when we sit down to dinner.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
It's spaghetti and meatballs. And now it's my.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Spaghetti sauce, which is very similar to your quick suite
tomato sauce. At the risk of sounding preachy, but again
from our parents, there was family, and there's faith, and
(17:13):
there was a responsibility to each other. And then that
went to moved over to the community at large. And
there are so many people who are in need of food,
which is a travesty in this country. And I'm very
(17:33):
happy that I'm able to work with the Ministry of Caring.
We have three places throughout the city that serve food,
and it's over a hundred churches and synagogues and religious
groups and that do that. And I think, I mean,
it's just so obvious if we if we don't have nutrition,
(17:54):
then we don't have energy. And we don't have energy,
we don't have power, we don't have an ability to
think and to be on our feet. If we have
food shortages, we.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Fall into political problems where you have to cross borders
to go.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
You know, politics is the art and signs of living
together peacefully. While we tussle over the allocation of scarce
resources and with climate change, with our scarce resources, with
the fact that in America, only less and two percent
of our families, our farm and ranchers. We have to
be more vigilant and we have to be aware that
(18:36):
we are our brother's keeper.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
I'm really glad we talked about this because talking to
a woman who is campaigned, who is political, who is active,
who has values, you just defined politics in a certain
way of caring for each other. But politics is also active.
It should be the role of a government to make
sure that every child is fed when they go to
(19:00):
start their day at school, that they go home to
a house where there is food, that there's access to food.
And when we look at the poverty in the United States,
it is shocking that our children are hungry. I know
that the President has tried to push laws through is
working on it. It must be one of the great
(19:20):
concerns of his political life.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
And it all comes under the umbrella of health and
health for every American should be a right and not
a privilege.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
And what was food like on the campaign trail?
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Well, very very rarely did we get to go to
a nice restaurant. The truth is the food on a
campaign is grab and grow. Applebee's is a great I
presume great restaurant, but one I never ever want to
walk into again, because every meeting in Iowa was that
(19:55):
Applebee's and we had fried food and fried food and
whatever it was. It reminds me of campaigning. And I'm
not disparaging Applebee's. I just it reminds me of sitting
trying to talk a county chair into supporting my brother.
The foods were what, you know what. We would pick
(20:16):
up those fruit bars that were supposed to give me
energy and nutrition, but mostly it was Coca cola, a
Hamburger grabbing on the road. And then any and I
mean this in the best sense, any local Italian restaurant
was really good. My choice of restaurants would either be
(20:36):
Italian or Greek.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
I love both of those foods.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
I suppose. My last question to you is to say,
if food is alleviates hunger and food is an expression
of love, it is also comfort. And so if you
were having a day where you just looked at a
meal or food as comfort, is there a food that
you would choose to give you that comfort.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (20:59):
I would have a rigatoni with red sauce, and if
I were particularly adventuresome, I would chop a salad because
I know how to make oil and moneager dressing. That's
one of the few things I do know that I'm
good at. And I would have a salad and I
would have some French bread with butter. I would have
(21:21):
a coke first, and this just shows you how unrefined
I am. I would have my glass of wine after
because I wouldn't want to mess.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Up either taste.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
I know it's supposed to have wine and it's supposed
to reflect and augment the food. I just want the
red sauce.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
Well, you can have whatever you want. Val Biden, you
can have whatever you want. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
I'm going to come see you.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
Okay, we'll waity for you. We're going to get that
dive coke and red tomato sauce and glass of white
wine ready for you. To visit the online shop of
the cafe, go to shop Therivercafe dot co dot Ukka.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and
Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
and Adami Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I have three brothers. My brother Joe is the eldest.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
I'm Valerie, the second and the only girl, and then
my brother Jimmy, and then the baby is Frankie. And
we are a typical mid twentieth century American family.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
Valerie Biden's family are typical Americans in some ways, but
not that typical. Her brother Joe is President Biden. And
in today's River Cafe Table four, we'll be talking about
food and family from the kitchen table to the White House.
When President Biden's first wife died in a tragic accident,
(00:47):
Valerie stepped up to support her nephew's beau and hunter
ice cream, hot dogs, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, vows.
Food memories are made up of American classics. But we'll
begin right now with her favorite recipe from the River Cafe.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
It's quick sweet tomato sauce.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Serve six to eight, three tablespoons olive oil, three garlic
cloves peeled and cut into slivers. Two one kilogram jars
peeled plum tomato drained of their juices, A handful of
fresh basil or oregano leaves. Heat one to two tablespoons
of the olive oil in a large pan and fry
(01:30):
the garlic until it is soft.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
But not brown.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Add the tomatoes with some sea salt and black pepper,
and cook fiercely, stirring constantly to prevent the tomatoes from
sticking as they break up. As they cook, the tomatoes
will release their juices when the liquid has evaporated. Add
the remaining olive oil, the basil or oregano, and more
seasoning if necessary.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Serve hot and I.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Always use the basil, and it's spectacular. It makes me
smile because every family dinner, we all sit down and
we have spaghetti and meat balls with tomato sauce, tell
the same stories and laugh at the same jokes as
if it's the first time we ever heard them.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Can I ask you about food at the White House?
What's it like when you go to eat with your brother.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
At the White House?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Joe the President and First Lady aka Joe and Jill.
They don't have breakfast served. That's a time when you
can get up and go to the small kitchen and
have coffee or cereal and not have people around, you know,
who are very gracious and want to take care of you.
But it's just a quiet time lunch. My brother is
(02:42):
rather a pedestrian eater like I. He'll have a ponifish salad,
ponfish sandwich or a chicken salad sandwich, and always if
we can, tomato soup. They make great tomato basil soup.
And then dinner, normal dinner that they suits set and
(03:03):
it's usually Jill, my sister in law, is very conscious
of help. I mean she's she's what I want to
be when I when you grow up.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yes, when I grow up.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
And generally she has a fish meal salmon and a
crust and delicious. But Joe and I said, oh we're
eating healthy again. Okay.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Do you share a lot of time over food?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
It's almost always over a meal.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Especially since my you know brother, when he travels now
it's an entourage and it's generally and it's an inconvenience
to other people. I mean, it's for his safety and
he's very we're very appreciative, but it inconveniences other people,
you know, to go in in the arrest.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
So we don't go to restaurants very often.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
We either at his house or my house and Jimmy
Biden's house. Frankie, our youngest, is in Florida, so not
at his house. But we sit and again tell the
same old stories. We poke fun at each other, and
you know, in I have found that in a family
(04:17):
that's close or a large family, your place in the
family stays the same if you're sixty years old or
if you're six years old. Once the baby, always the baby,
you know, once the middle, always the middle, once the
eldest always and once the only which is of course
me and I would have it no other way. I love,
I love, love love growing up with my three brothers.
(04:39):
They were a gift to me. I always say that
I earned my husband, but my brothers were a gift.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
What was food like in the Biden household growing up?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Food was we always had enough of it to begin with,
but it was ordinary. We didn't dine, we ate, but
we always ate together every night. We grew up in
a middle class Irish Catholic background.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
My brothers.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
As the first born, he was born in Scranton, but
by the time I guess he was eight years old,
my father got work and moved to back home to Delaware,
where dad was from.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
But what did your father do.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
My father was a car salesman and then he ended
up managing mostly Chevrolet dealerships, different ones here in Delaware.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
He come home for dinner. My father.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
The one thing about him was he had insisted upon
impeccable table manners. My brother Jimmy probably has a left
elbow that's still weak from my father smacking it, you know.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
When he put it on the table.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
So we had to know what the right knife and
fork were and how to pass our dishes. And that
was the only thing he was absolutely stern about. And
he thought it represented good matters.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
And I think it is very telling the way people
are considerate in a way, if that's what matters are
at the table, and how things have changed. When I
talked to Nancy Pelosi, she said that she'd never sat
down in her child at a table where there wasn't
a tablecloth. Was that the Biden household as well?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Well?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
What Mom and Dad had on the dining room table
was a piece of glass that was fitted that covered
the table so it would save the wood. And we
always had place met and we always had napkins. And
Mom was an ordinary cook in the best sense of
the word. I mean, we were Hamburger's hot dogs. My
(06:43):
favorite dish at the time was pot roast. You would
always make that for me for my birthday.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
But there were certain rituals.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Sunday morning after Mass, we would come home and Dad
always made hotcakes.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
That was a big deal.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
There are three foods that I never ate when I
was a child, and I don't know why, but I
didn't like hotcakes, and I didn't like hot dogs, and
I didn't like cam oh the h Yeah, and my
mother never made me eat them. So everybody would have
hot hotcakes with maple syrup.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I had my cheerios and milk.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
The second ritual was because we were a Catholic family,
we didn't eat meat on Friday, so on Fridays we
had missus Paul's frozen fish sticks, which meant that all
four children grew up to really dislike fish, I mean
because we had to eat it. But more often than
(07:38):
that Mom would substitute. And that's when we had spaghetti.
Mom made her homemade spaghetti sauce.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
What was that? Can I ask you what that was?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Big kansa tomato sauce.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
I think she would put in a pork chop, but
I never I was not in the kitchen. I was
out playing ball with my with my brothers. We came in,
you know, Mom had dinner ready. We sat down and
ate and there were no chores, like we didn't have
to clean up after the table or because Mom would
always say, my job is to be the mom, and
(08:10):
your job is to be the students.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Go do your homework.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
The big deal in the house of food was if
things were good on Saturday night, we would my brother
and I would ride our bike, or if it were bad,
Mom would drive us up to the local Custlers pharmacy
where they had ice cream, and we would get a
(08:34):
half gallon of Briar's ice cream and the ice cream
was vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Nobody liked strawberry. I think
Jimmy I think Jimmy Biden was the only one to
eat the strawberry. But that was the big deal. We'd
had the half gallon of ice cream and we would
watch at Sullivan Joe on Sunday night.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
And then when you went to college, did you cook
for yourself? You no longer had your mother saying go
and study. What did you do for food?
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Then? Well, I had a meal ticket, and at the time,
everybody lived on campus all four years, so I didn't
have an apartment where I had to experiment. You know,
there was a meal ticket and we ate normal college food.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
What college did you go to?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Where was the University of Delaware, Delaware about fifty minutes
from our home. But to me, I had graduated from
Ursuline Academy for Young Girls. But I thought I had
died and gone to heaven. I went to the University
of Delaware, five thousand undergraduates, co ed, and I was
(09:39):
in a brand new world and I loved every single
minute of it. And my big brother Joey was there too.
He was a junior when I was a freshman, and
I was there because because of him, I was a
good student and I got in Delaware. But my mom
and dad were not able to afford room and board,
(10:03):
which is what the essence of college was. And I
desperately wanted to go in room and board, and my
dad told me, Toney, look, I can't swing it. You know,
you could commute. And my brother in that right after
that called a family meeting with mom and dad, and respectfully,
we were very, very aware of my father's dignity and
(10:26):
it pained him that he wasn't able to send us
both to room and board. But my brother said, Dad,
I've thought about this, and here's what I proposed. Vo's
a good kid, She's smarter than I. She deserves college
more than I do. So I'm going to drop out
this coming semester in September. I'm going to work for
(10:48):
the year, save money so that I can go back
the next year, so that Voo could take my place,
because she should be able to go to Delaware. She's
earned it, ye, my father said. My father called my
brother champ and he said, Champion can't do that because
my dad was as in that generation and that time,
(11:09):
in mid nineteen sixties, my dad assumed that I would
get married and have children and that you know, the
man had to be was the breadwinner.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
And he said, you know, you have to raise a.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Family and support a family, and VAL's not going to
have to do that. She'll have her pick of whatever
she wants. But my brother said, no, he wanted to
do it that way. And somehow, long story short, Ruthin
And it was late August, right before school started. My
father somehow managed to get alone another loan and I
(11:44):
went to the university with my brother, and as I said,
I realized what a gift it was from my parents,
and I squeezed every single thing I could out of
the school.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
I loved it.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
You were thrust at a very young age into cooking
for young children, taking care of your brother's children.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
I jumped into domestic life, and you know what. I
had a very close friend. Her name was Maureen. She
had two young boys who were close in age to
bow and hunt, and she would give me quick, down
and dirty recipes.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You know that they like this, and they like that.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
She used to make scalop potatoes and she said, get
brock worst, which I didn't know. They were fat hot
dogs as far as I was concerned, and put them
on top. And that was a great dish, an easy dish.
And I did that and I served it. We used
to have a lazy Susan in the kitchen and I
served it. Nobody told me to take the skin off
(12:54):
the brock wars. So when I took it off and
went to serve it to the boys.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
It flew off the table. They said, Aunt vaol. I
mean it was always a little bit of you.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
But you were twenty. You were twenty six. You know,
cut yourself some slack. I mean that is very very young.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
When I got the boys and started to cook, I
wasn't a cook.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I mean I was an eater.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
So I made probably most nights of the week chicken breast,
which I boiled interesting boiled sucken breast.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
And came to be known as my rubber chicken.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
And boiled chicken breast. And meat loaf was another thing
that I made. And I would try in the beginning
now and I'm trying when I had the boys, I'm
trying to be healthy, and I tried making flounder and
telling them that it was chicken oh.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
In their favorite dish.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
And all of both friends who called me aunt vol
when you know this whole, these kids who all grew
up together. Specialty was egg in the cup, and that
was a soft bailled egg. And I never had a time, Ruthie,
I had an instinct exactly when it was right.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
That's very that's impressive because it's really hard to make
a good soft boiled egg. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
I would put it in the cup along with some shell,
always a little bit of shell, some salt and pepper butter,
and I would break up toast and put it in
an egg in the cup, and that was bowen hunts.
My children and all their kids. That was that was
a favorite meal. Aunt found didn't really screw that one
up much.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
It's very traditional. It's very English. I think they call
it as a fellow American. It's called soldiers, isn't it.
They'd make the little sticks of bread and then you
tip it into the egg.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yo that I would give my children with tang and
what they call they called uh, I would sing it, do.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
It with a ting tang kong.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
That was the drink of astronauts.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
But it was, I mean, it was.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
It was a terrible time, Ruthie, a terrible tragedy, but
it was also a time of healing.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
And there was joy.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
These boys they loved me full throttle, and I love
them and uh, and they healed Joe and we healed
as a family, I mean, and there was there was joy.
And as I said, five years later, Joe was able
to come out of it because he met this wonderful woman,
(15:25):
Joe Jacobs, and fell in love.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
So Uh.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
The best thing that my memories of raising being with
the boys would My brother bought me a jeep to
travel around with the boys, and we were up high
and we would look out the window and.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
We had a passer by.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
We'd be at a stop signer or a red light,
and the boys would look out and we'd see the person,
and then we'd go off and we would spin magical
tales like where they were going? What do we think
that they were doing? The jeep was like a magic
carper ride. And we always had peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches and ting tang tong in the backseat, okay for
(16:05):
an emergency.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
If this was a food of everyday life, and you
describe the meals around the table after school and before homework,
did your parents ever or did your family ever go
to restaurants.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
A graduation or first communion or something like that. But
we would always have a tray and you know, bring
it help. The big thing that we did in Delaware
that we always brought home where hoggies or subs we
call them.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
And that's when the.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Family gets together, if it's lunchtime or even going into dinner,
it's either hogies where we all grab them go out
and sit in the porch on the picnic table, or
when we sit down to dinner.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
It's spaghetti and meatballs. And now it's my.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Spaghetti sauce, which is very similar to your quick suite
tomato sauce. At the risk of sounding preachy, but again
from our parents, there was family, and there's faith, and
(17:13):
there was a responsibility to each other. And then that
went to moved over to the community at large. And
there are so many people who are in need of food,
which is a travesty in this country. And I'm very
(17:33):
happy that I'm able to work with the Ministry of Caring.
We have three places throughout the city that serve food,
and it's over a hundred churches and synagogues and religious
groups and that do that. And I think, I mean,
it's just so obvious if we if we don't have nutrition,
(17:54):
then we don't have energy. And we don't have energy,
we don't have power, we don't have an ability to
think and to be on our feet. If we have
food shortages, we.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Fall into political problems where you have to cross borders
to go.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
You know, politics is the art and signs of living
together peacefully. While we tussle over the allocation of scarce
resources and with climate change, with our scarce resources, with
the fact that in America, only less and two percent
of our families, our farm and ranchers. We have to
be more vigilant and we have to be aware that
(18:36):
we are our brother's keeper.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
I'm really glad we talked about this because talking to
a woman who is campaigned, who is political, who is active,
who has values, you just defined politics in a certain
way of caring for each other. But politics is also active.
It should be the role of a government to make
sure that every child is fed when they go to
(19:00):
start their day at school, that they go home to
a house where there is food, that there's access to food.
And when we look at the poverty in the United States,
it is shocking that our children are hungry. I know
that the President has tried to push laws through is
working on it. It must be one of the great
(19:20):
concerns of his political life.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
And it all comes under the umbrella of health and
health for every American should be a right and not
a privilege.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
And what was food like on the campaign trail?
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Well, very very rarely did we get to go to
a nice restaurant. The truth is the food on a
campaign is grab and grow. Applebee's is a great I
presume great restaurant, but one I never ever want to
walk into again, because every meeting in Iowa was that
(19:55):
Applebee's and we had fried food and fried food and
whatever it was. It reminds me of campaigning. And I'm
not disparaging Applebee's. I just it reminds me of sitting
trying to talk a county chair into supporting my brother.
The foods were what, you know what. We would pick
(20:16):
up those fruit bars that were supposed to give me
energy and nutrition, but mostly it was Coca cola, a
Hamburger grabbing on the road. And then any and I
mean this in the best sense, any local Italian restaurant
was really good. My choice of restaurants would either be
(20:36):
Italian or Greek.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
I love both of those foods.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
I suppose. My last question to you is to say,
if food is alleviates hunger and food is an expression
of love, it is also comfort. And so if you
were having a day where you just looked at a
meal or food as comfort, is there a food that
you would choose to give you that comfort.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (20:59):
I would have a rigatoni with red sauce, and if
I were particularly adventuresome, I would chop a salad because
I know how to make oil and moneager dressing. That's
one of the few things I do know that I'm
good at. And I would have a salad and I
would have some French bread with butter. I would have
(21:21):
a coke first, and this just shows you how unrefined
I am. I would have my glass of wine after
because I wouldn't want to mess.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Up either taste.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
I know it's supposed to have wine and it's supposed
to reflect and augment the food. I just want the
red sauce.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
Well, you can have whatever you want. Val Biden, you
can have whatever you want. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
I'm going to come see you.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
Okay, we'll waity for you. We're going to get that
dive coke and red tomato sauce and glass of white
wine ready for you. To visit the online shop of
the cafe, go to shop Therivercafe dot co dot Ukka.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and
Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com