November 10, 2025 • 38 mins
I’m often asked who would be my dream guest on Ruthie’s Table 4, and this episode with Vice President Kamala Harris is top of the list.
Vice President of The United States, candidate for President, Kamala Harris is passionate about food, and an excellent cook.
She gives us her special recipes for Thanksgiving collard greens, her mother's Smorgasbord and her 'world famous' bolognese.
We discuss the politics of food, the joy of food and expressing love through food - a dream come true.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Ruthie's table for in collaboration with me
and em intelligent style for busy women. On the very
first page of Vice President Carmela Harris's dramatic and compelling
book A hundred and Seven Days, she mentions food four times.
I often say that I look at life and art
(00:22):
through the lens of food, and I think this is
one of the many things she and I share.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
We met at a wedding last summer. Drinking our pre
dinner cocktails. She turned to me and said, Ruthie, you
know what I'd really like to do. I'd like to
meet the chefs. Walking in with her to the kitchen
with something I will always remember, every one put down
their knives, their pots, their pants, Amazed at seeing her there.
(00:48):
She spoke seriously about cooking, praising them for delicious food,
asking them genuine and respectful questions. I'm often asked, who
would be my dream guest on Ruthie's table. Well, she's
sitting right next to me here in the River Cafe.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Oh my goodness, thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
We would you like to tell everybody what you had
for breakfast when you came to the River Cafe this morning?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
I have the most exquisite breakfast, a beautiful slice of
home baked bread that was toasted just to perfection with Brada,
just a nice slice that was melting and just kind
of just being. And then the most exquisite slices of
(01:41):
cured anchovy with slices on the side of heirloom tomato.
I was in heaven. I was in heaven.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
You're here in London and you're here for my book tour.
First of all, thank you for writing this book. Think
that the the way that you did this, with the diary,
with the ups and the downs and the inns and
the outs and the excitement and the it takes you
really urge everyone to read this because it's it's a
it's knowledge, it's you know, and as you say, for
(02:14):
young people who want to, you know, go into this
world and understand more. I think it's, uh, it's a
textbook as well.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I wrote the book in a way that I was
very honest and forthright and handed. Yeah, and I am
not in the interest of shocking anyone, but just being factual.
I think there's so much about all these processes, but
in particular running for president, where it's it's very opaque
(02:47):
and unless you're in the inside as a part of it,
you can't really see or understand all the nuance and
variables that are at play. So I decided to write
the book to really give people a behind the scenes look.
In fact, like the tour of your kitchen Just now,
(03:07):
I say.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
People always want to know, how does you know the
sea bass come out at the same time as the lamb?
How does how does it all work? And you see
the process, but we don't. I don't know how a
campaign works. I don't know how you produce a television show.
I don't know how the taxi driver knows how to
get from it. You know, it's a process we all
want to know.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
And that's what I and the choreography, which is and
and the other reason I wrote the book is it
is those one hundred and seven days are a part
of American's history, and it was very important to me
that my voice is present in the way that history
tells the story of those days. Think about it. It
(03:47):
was unprecedented, Ruthie. We had sitting president of the United
States running for reelection. He decides to drop out three
and a half months before the election. The sitting vice
president takes up the mantle against a former president who
had been running for ten years, with one hundred and
(04:09):
seven days to go, And so I wrote the books
stylistically like a journal. Most of the one hundred and
seven days our chapters, each of them a chapter based
on the extraordinary experience that I had meeting people around
(04:29):
the country who expect and want to be seen and heard,
whose stories must be known and told. And then all
of the palace intrigue that is a part of politics
and all of that. Part of what I've been doing
in the tour is people write me from all over
the world, and I've been pulling out letters from the
(04:53):
various cities where we're in the book tour of people
who live in that place and inviting them to on
my friends and family list. And it's been really great
because these are people with no expectation of I mean,
half the time, I'm sure you're never going to read this,
but I do. And one of those individuals, a young man,
(05:16):
what he said to me about the book, which was
very helpful to me. He said, you know, he followed
the election very closely those one hundred and seven days,
and he said he needed closure, and the book going
through it. The intensity of each day helped him process
(05:38):
it in a way that gives him and I hope
that this is part of my attention, gives anyone who
reads it an ability to be reminded of the light
that everyone has and that no election can take away
that sense of optimism and dare I say joy that
(06:02):
we each have and we can't forget it even though
we are seeing so much that is I mean, you know,
the words can go on and on about how awful
it is, but in the midst of this darkness, of
this moment, I hope that reading the book also reminds
(06:23):
people of the light that they carry that cannot be
dampened or diminished by any one person or election.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
I was going to ask you how being on a
book tour does is feels different to you from being
on a campaign when you stop off in a city
as you did in this book, and describe what it
was like to arrive in a town and do a
you know, a an event of speech, a raw you know, rallies,
and the difference between going to the festival hall or
(07:08):
to Birmingham, Alabama and talking about now, when you're not campaigning,
what is that like?
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Well, part of what I'm enjoying about this moment is
I'm not because I'm also pulling. I'm out doing meetings
with groups of people in the cities where I'm doing
the book tour, and what I'm enjoying about it is
(07:35):
I am there not to talk, but to listen. That's
why I'm convening these groups, a lot of them are
under the age of forty. Because I also think that
if we're thinking about how we are going to understand
and articulate the stakes of this moment, we have to
(07:56):
be intentional about seeing it through the eyes of people
who are going to be living with this for decades
to come. And so what I'm enjoying about it is that,
unlike the campaign, I also have the luxury of being
able to sit down with people. I think they know
(08:19):
that if they're invited to come, it's going to be
a real conversation and a safe place, and people are
talking about their fears and their hopes and their frustrations,
their anger, their joy and that I mean, Ruthie. That's
been so helpful to me because I just feel right
(08:41):
now we're all carrying an incredible amount of distrust and
we have to work on the relationships of trust and
also understand that the nature of the relationship of trust
is that it's reciprocal. You give and you receive trust.
And I think that's some of the deep and important
(09:02):
work that we all have to do.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
We were talking about Denmark, Yeah, we were talking about
the happiness factor, and in the study, it was actually
a conversation about a woman who left her a Danish
woman who came to New York and left her baby
outside the cafe and she could see the pram and
she was arrested because you want to protect a baby
being left outside. But from her town in Denmark, she
(09:28):
described that that's kind of what you do. You trust
somebody not to take your baby, but you also trust
education to provide good school lunches. You trusted coming to
your country to be how's you have a health care system?
And do you think that trust has in our country
(09:48):
in the United States? Do finding that people not only
not trust their neighbor not to have a gun or
to be there for them if they have an accident,
but to trust government to take care of them.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Yeah, but yes, but I think that it's not a
new phenomena for populations of people and I'll speak for
the American people to have a healthy level of skepticism
about whether the government is working in a way that
(10:22):
works for them. The people to be frustrated with the
bureaucracy of government, with the politics. That's not new, but
I do think that in particular, since the pandemic, we've
seen it increase at a pretty significant level. I actually
(10:45):
think that part of the challenge we have is we
are not talking enough about the trauma that so many
people experienced because of the pandemic. People lost family members
to COVID, They lost their livelihood, they lost some people
lost their home, small business owners lost their businesses. Our
(11:07):
children lost significant phases of not only their education but socialization.
And it was as though the rug got pulled out
from under people. And whereas you thought that there were
some basic things about the system, however you define it,
that would always exist, the pandemic upended it all and
(11:29):
I think left people with a greater level of skepticism,
and skepticism I think is a symptom of distrust. And
so some people then say, well, how is it that
more people aren't taking to the streets about what we're
saying happen in the last nine months. I mean, I
(11:51):
think that there are many people who are feeling like, yeah,
we know that the system does dollars work for us,
So why is anybody surprised now? And so if we're
going to deal with the reality of where we are
beyond that one election, I think this is this is
part of the work we have to do, which is
(12:13):
to encourage these difficult conversations about issues like trust and
to address issues like trauma, to address, of course issues
that are about whether government is actually working for the people,
and do we need to re examine, especially in the
(12:35):
aftermath that there will be of this current administration. And
while then we are looking at a big pile of debris,
maybe it's not about rebuilding. Maybe it's transformative, and it's
not because I actually I write about this in the book,
I think that when that day comes, we cannot afford
and let us make sure we do not think about
(12:57):
what to do in a way that is burdened by
some nostalgia to recreate a system that was flawed, and instead,
let's have some honest conversations about what was not working
and then see the opportunity we might have to actually
and sadly start from scratch with some stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
You grew up in a family of trust, you know,
reading about your family and father, your grandmother's incredible people.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
I mean, you know which, I feel very blessed in
terms of how I grew up and in particular my childhood,
because every signal, every message that was sent and that
I received, was you are important, you are loved. You know.
(13:50):
I grew up in an environment where people told us
we were special. We weren't particularly special, what we believed them.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Special, doll.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Like we we can and should do more of that
as a society in terms of the signals we send
to the children. Right. I grew up and this is
what I talked about at the convention, where I had
a family by blood and I had a family by love,
where my mother created a family that included people who
(14:31):
were not blood relatives but they were our family. I mean,
walking through your kitchen, I was reminding my uncle Freddie,
who was not my uncle by blood, but he was
my uncle in every way. He had a basement apartment
in Harlem. He used to work with the Studio Museum
in Harlem, and we'd go visit Uncle Freddy in his
(14:52):
basement apartment in Harlem, and Uncle Freddie loved to cook.
But his kitchen was maybe the size of this table.
And and so Uncle Freddy would wash everything as soon
as he used it. If he used his books, it
could washed it literally because there was.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
It's great, but you're about to go and tell the chefs.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
But you know I love to cook, send family dinner.
It's like non negotiables. And the kids have now coined
the term after dinner. Let's Uncle Freddy's kitchen, right. But
people like my uncle Freddy, people like my uncle Sherman
who taught us.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Was Uncle Sherman an uncle or.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
He was not an uncle by blood, but he has
an uncle. And Uncle Sherman sat us down, my sister
Maya and me when we were like, I don't know,
six seven, and he said, you guys are going to
learn how to play chess because the chess board is
like life, and they're going to be many different pieces
(15:56):
on the board that moved differently and they're all on
the same board. And part of learning how to play
chess is you will learn that you have to think
about any step you take, the ramifications of it.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Three steps out.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
This is the family that.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Both of them passed away. It's I actually write about
that in the book too. It's so many of them
died far too young, far too young.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, you also have kind of multi cultural cooking family.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
So you have a mother, my mother from Indian India
and southern and South Indiana.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
There's a difference between your absolutely right India northern huf
food and culture in India. Yeah, you had Jamaica and
you had your well later on, your.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Husband, my husband who is Jewish, and also my second
mother who was from Louisiana. Yea, and part of that
whole migration of black folks from the South who went west.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
And and that's a regional I always say in our country,
the regional food is from the South. I mean, if
you're in Vermont, you might have maple syrup, which you
might not find in Idaho. But basically it is kind
of the same. But Southern cooking has such a regionality too.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
But see here's here's one of the things I learned
early on about the universality of it all through food.
Miss Shelton, who was our second mother, the neighbor. The
neighbor and my mother both loved to cook okra okra.
My mother would cook it with mustard seeds and turmeric.
(17:36):
Southern Indian Miss Shelton would cook it with dried shrimp
and hot sausages and bell peppers and tomatoes. And I
have all those recipes.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
And did you prefer one to the other?
Speaker 3 (17:48):
I love them both.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
You love them both? Did you make your own? How
do you make up? You know what?
Speaker 3 (17:52):
I Here's the thing I have to deal with is
that my husband does not like what he calls slimy food.
It doesn't like zucchini, he doesn't like he doesn't like
egg plant. Although I've been starting to sneak it into asaka.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
You didn't know that Musaka.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Had well trick. You have to cook it the right way,
otherwise it will be rubbery.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
You know, when I came to this country, I went
into a green grocer and I asked for egg plan.
They brought me a dozen eggs. So, if everybody listening,
we're talking. So you had people who were passionate about
food and food identity and and and.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
And like my mother was, she was a scientist. She
loved to cook. She loved the chemistry food. So for example,
and she was, you know, unlike this guy in the
White House, she understood that scientific research is obviously a
passion that is about improving the human condition. That scientific
(18:51):
research in its best is going to be pure reviewed.
It will be a collaborative effort among nations. So my mother,
for example, had colleagues from all over the world. And
I remember, in particular the Brescianis from Italy and Franco
(19:12):
Breciani and his kids, Marco and Paolo and Megan, and
we used to go and visit with the Brescianis, and
no we go to the they lived in Toronto, and
my mother would take my sister and me and we'd
go visit with them, and they and Tira, the mother,
the wife, this long table where we would sit for
(19:35):
hours and just course after course after course, and conversation
and passionate conversation and good arguments, and people would get
up and walk away and come back for hours. So
my mother, actually she would cook with Tira, and my
mother was a great Italian cook in addition to South
(19:58):
Indian food. She got on this kick for quite some
time about us making Chinese food, like we would sit
on the floor and make bows and then we would
do wan tons and we would So she loved cooking
in the kitchen. It was the center of all activity.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Was it big?
Speaker 3 (20:21):
It was?
Speaker 2 (20:22):
It was?
Speaker 3 (20:23):
It was, it was. It felt big to me.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yeah, it wasn't in there.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
We would eat in there and and and my mother
said to me when I was young, and you can
tell the kids that like to eat good food, right,
And my mother said to me, I'll never forget. She said,
you like to eat good food, you better learn how
to cook.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
I agree, because I can't ask me why why do
I start cooking? There's a point either. If you don't
have the money to go out to a restaurant every
night and you want to eat, well, well, then you
learned to you know, you learn to cook.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
I have apron I got it from a friend, and
it says I like to cook the food people like
to eat.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
So when did you start cooking when I was from
the beginning?
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Well, I remember one of the first things that I
would make where we would wake up early, mommy's sleeping,
and I would make scrambled eggs and I'd make it
into a circle on a plate, and then I would
cut monterey jack or cheddar cheese to make a smiley
face melted on top of this.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
What age are we talking about?
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Six. And here's the thing about that. My mother did
not like eating breakfast. I was like, don't talk about it.
Of course you had a cup of coffee, right, But.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Tell me about a day in your house. Would you
all have breakfast? How many were you in the house.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
It was the three of us, my mother and my
sister and me because my parents divorced when I was five,
And it was usually my mother would start cooking, like
Saturday morning they make for the week, and I'd wake
up kind of just smelling the food and just kind
(22:26):
of just half asleep going into the kitchen. And and
you know that's the thing about cooking, right, it really
is all the senses. It's literally all the senses. It
includes the sense of sound, sound, and of course smell
and sight and flavor and taste. It's all of those things.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Would she repeat, did you know that Monday was lasagna
on Tuesday?
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Would she not? She would? Sometimes she would because she
worked long day. She always fresh bake cookies, cake in
the house. She was phenomenal and and she loved she
loved to cook. And sometimes she would look at us
and she'd say, okay, girls, tonight we are having smogashboard.
(23:13):
We get so damn excited about smogast board. Do you
know what smogt board was?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
That's a Danish well open sandwiches or some of what
it was. What it was.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Is that she would take cookie cutters and cut the
bread into heart and flower shapes. She'd get those those
toothpicks with the little colors on them, and she'd put
little mayonnaise in a thing, mustard in a thing, and
pull out all the leftovers.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
And we were having smallest.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
All the leftovers. But it was fun.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
It was fun, sounds amazing. She was a scientist.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
She was a breast cancer research and she actually was
responsible for breakthroughs and breast cancers.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
So would you come home from school and would the
cookies be there?
Speaker 3 (24:04):
The cookies would be there. Why we're so called latch
kid kids. But then Miss Shelton two doors and so
if mommy was working late, we would go and have
dinner and Miss Shelton's and she cooked oh everything from
okra to oh my god. She made the most incredible gumbo.
That was on special occasions. She used to do a
(24:25):
cabbage in like a Dutch of a heavy bottomed pot
and she would just cook it, cook it down and it.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Was just so good.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
It's that thing of vegetables being cooked for that's very Italian. Yeah, yes,
we always say that Italians, right, No, right, we never
you sort of cook it and then as olive oil.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
And that's exactly what happened with the cabbage. And it
was so delicious. It's just full of flavor. I mean
she cooked with and I still retain I have. I
love my spices, but there are certain things that I
just still hold on to and you can't take it
away from me. One of them Lowry's seasoning salt.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Oh Lowry as.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
In the Yes, yeah, I only pull it out for
some stuff, but it's it's that.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
But if you you grew up in this where you had,
you know, your mother cooking and being you know, telling
you how much you would loved and having dinners and
having Miss Shelton and having Freddy, And what was it
like to leave this? I mean when you suddenly became
seventeen or eighteen and went to university and you you
went to Howard? Did I went to Howard?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
And what was that?
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Was that?
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Ed?
Speaker 2 (25:37):
It prepared you.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
All of my friends, in particular my girlfriends in college,
they also like to cook My first roommate was Cape
Verdian and there was there was a whole dish, you know,
and there's a.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Was Kate Virgianot, who's.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
There's you know, the whole population of Cape Verdian's outside
of Massachusetts. I didn't know that, Yes, and that's where
she was from. And so she would make this dish
and I don't remember the name of it, but with
like lima beans and all that, and it was very
it was delicious. Where did you have a fun We
we had a little kitchen in the dorm in our yes,
in our dorm. And then another of my girlfriends, Gwen,
(26:21):
who was from Detroit, she had a different version of
making collar greens than I did.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Yeah, that's very American colored greens. You know, colored greens
are Southern.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
It's a big leaf green and it's very sturdy, and
then you have to cook it down. In fact, someone
recently told the story. When I was campaigning in Iowa
in twenty nineteen, our family we decided we needed to
stay in Iowa for Thanksgiving to campaign. But I was
(26:53):
in South Carolina the day before and I always make greens,
collared greens for Thanksgiving. There was no call of greens
to be found in Iowa. So I like a good
country woman, but bags of fresh call of greens in
South Carolina and walk through the airport. I did not
(27:15):
care who saw me. And when I got on the plane,
some of the people on the plane who were from
South Carolina.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Two boats in South Carolina. So you could call a greens.
You're in college, you major own meals?
Speaker 3 (27:33):
You well, sometimes I was on the meal plan.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
We haven't talked about restaurants.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Did you for to eat out in restaurants in school?
I mean we did growing up. We would go from
special occasions and it was always an adventure in terms
of where we would go, right and what kind of
you know, what we would choose.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
And so working, what was that like when you were
suddenly working.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Well you know then I mean in my twenties, going
out it was you know, socialism, So it was you know,
fun meeting with friends in San Francisco, which it has
an incredible foods It was the Bayry altogether, so open
in San Francisco, so the nineties nineties and incredible food
scene and again eclectic by some people's standards, right, and
(28:25):
I mean everything from you know, the best barbecue you
can imagine to incredible sushi. We would go like Sundays
or Saturdays for dim sum, all of those.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, and the farm to table and.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
We had the fact and Alice ad her cookbook was
probably early on the artisty started. Yeah, I have so
my bowlin aisy, my world famous bolan is, according to me,
is hybrid of Alice and Marcella. Yeah, so I do
(29:01):
for example, I do the panchetta.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Okay, this could be your recipe read yeah, all right,
we're gonna now hear a recipe.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
For okay's title Tla Harrison's world Famous bowlin.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Okay, I like the I like the low key why not? Okay,
so tell us how to make this?
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Okay, So I start with my Dutch oven little crusette,
just nice and I have had it forever.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Color is orange.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
I have two actually because when I was back and forth,
one is white and one is blue. But the oval right, panchetta.
So then I do my mare past. So I do
very small chopping of onion, of celery, of carrot there.
Then I do garlic after, you know, because I don't
(29:54):
want it to burn. Then I do a combination of
beef and pork. Then I do you know, there's a
theory about whether you should do the wine first or
the milk first. I am of the school that you
should do the milk first. Okay, So I do the
milk then. And also I sage and time. And I
(30:14):
have a beautiful oh I do. I have an herb garden,
and my bay leaf tree is just it's just the
most beautiful thing you have ever seen. I bring bay
leaf to people as gifts. I just put a nice
fancy ribbon on it, and then I let it reduce
around the milk. And then I do pretty much a
whole bottle of wine white.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
I describe the wine.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
I do a white, and I usually do I mean,
you know, not super expensive. I know you're supposed to
do whatever you drink, but I you know, and.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
This would be for how many people?
Speaker 3 (30:45):
I do often three times the recipe so I can
freeze some, okay. Then I do a combination of a
little bit of tomato paste and Saint Marzano tomatoes, and
then I cook it for hours and hours.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
How many hours?
Speaker 3 (30:59):
I usually about five?
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Okay, are you stirring it every half an hour or so?
Very low heat?
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Yeah, no, it's very low heat. It just did very
light summer rental. The oil starts to write and then
it's just it's fantastic, and then I will freeze like
two thirds of it because it's such a production, and
I usually do I usually do like a linguine era.
(31:27):
I don't do spaghetti. I'd like a flat pond.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yea, I like it. You know.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
I do painting a lot too.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, that's nice too.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Yeah. Well, this is the thing so I actually talk
about in the book. So, having been the first woman
Vice president of the United States, part of what I
never talked about publicly but do kind of reveal in
the book is forty eight vice president of the United
States were men. We lived in the Vice President's residence,
and we're supported by naval enlisted AIDS. And if I
(31:59):
was on a trip to come, I came to the
UK to talk about the future safety of AI. I
went to the Indo Pacific many times, so on and
so on. If I was out of the house, they
all left to travel with me and nobody would cook
(32:20):
for Doug. So as Vice President of the United States,
I made a few times a big pot of bowlin
aisy to freeze containers so that my husband could eat.
When I was doing the business of the United States
of America.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Okay, we can preserve that, so you can channel that.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
So that was that was That was one of the
occasions in which I would freeze out.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Only one more story than that is that when we
talked to Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell too. We had
two podcasts. One with Alistair, they described that if you
were Downing Street and you wanted lunch, somebody had to
get down to Predamache and bring back the sandwiches.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
You know that that you know, and I just think
you see behind the.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Cross. I just keeps holding France up as a as.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
The best, one of the best dinners ever.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Going to ask you, was.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
There the cheese, of course, Oh the cheese. It was
so just yeah, everything everything was just exquisite, just the
detail and the beauty of it.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
No, it's true. Mark Carney told me the other day
that they were on a train. If you go to Ukraine,
you absolutely have to take the train on a trip.
And Canadians had a car, the British had a car,
the French had a car. And he said that, you know,
the Canadians just brought some stuff in Poland and put
(33:49):
on the train. The British had nothing, and then they
went into the French car and they had cheese and wine,
and there was a incredible fox gras and he said,
it's just each each train carriage was so specifically clear
about the country's attitude to culture and food.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Culture.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Yes, and state dinners. Because I was going to ask
you about when you were actually vice president. The schedule.
I can only imagine. Would you stop flunch? Would you
have working lunches? Did it very I.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Almost always ate lunch at my desk.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
What would that be?
Speaker 3 (34:27):
It would be a combination of maybe like fish and
vegetables or a salad, or.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Was it like the West Wing. Did you do dinner
formal dinners?
Speaker 3 (34:37):
We did diners, which I unless it was family. Yeah, yeah,
we did. We did a lot of formal dinners. I
would go down to the kitchen, to the industrial kitchen
and cook with them and also share with them technique.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Really uh huh.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
The first person and I actually talked about in the
book that I hosted for a meal was then Chancellor
Angle and Merkel.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Would you do the menus? Would you say this is
what we.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Would I would work with my yeah, social secretary and
plan the menus every one of them, though pretty much
I participated in planning State dinners were just magnificent and beautiful.
And you know, this was a beautiful aspect of the
power of diplomacy, which we call soft power. And sadly,
(35:24):
the current occupant of the White House, I think does
not appreciate the significance of that power.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
We goes back to a childhood they getting together over food,
meeting over food. This morning, media to the house. And
that's something on your plate. And you said, the act
of actually putting something on somebody else's plate. Try this beautiful.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
It is an act of love, it truly is. It
is a gesture of of kindness. It is a gesture
of caring. You know, there's nothing like and I told you,
like just there is nothing like sitting at a table
and someone prepares a plate for you and puts it
in front of you from the kitchen that you can see.
(36:14):
There is nothing like that.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
We have to do more of that. Yes, we are going, yes, yea.
My last question always on these conversations is is there
a food that you would go for when you need comfort?
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Pasta pasta all day long, pasta all day long. And
I have in my garden a lot of beautiful basil.
And sometimes I just make a big, big batch of pesto,
and but I freeze it without the cheese. And I
(36:49):
have this thing almost like an ice tray. Each slot
is a cup worth of liquid. And so I make
a big batch of pesto one cup, and then I
freeze these bricks and then you just defrosted, and then I.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Do, and then you have the cheese. You are such
a good cook. Well, you really are a good cook.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
I am in awe. You're getting you are? You know?
Speaker 2 (37:13):
The little it's you know, you know people who are
good cooks because they love food. But your detail, you know,
it's like the way you are in this book. It's
the way you run a campaign. It's the way you
talk to my granddaughter. It's a way you come on
this podcast. There's a rigor, there's a passion, but there
is knowledge and generosity. So you are great cooks and
we're going to cook together.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
I'm so looking forward to that. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Let's go do it with you. Thank you. Ruthie's Table
for is proud to support Leukemia UK. Their Cartwill for
a Cure campaign raises funds for vital research and more
effective and kinder treatments for a cube my Lloyd leukemia.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Please donate and to Doucello search cartwheel.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
For pure.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Ruthie's Table four was produced by Alex Bell and zad
Rogers with Susanna Hilock, Andrew Sang and Bella Sellini.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
This has been an atomized production for iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Ruthie's Table four in collaboration with Me and M Intelligence
Style for Busy Women
You're listening to Ruthie's table for in collaboration with me
and em intelligent style for busy women. On the very
first page of Vice President Carmela Harris's dramatic and compelling
book A hundred and Seven Days, she mentions food four times.
I often say that I look at life and art
(00:22):
through the lens of food, and I think this is
one of the many things she and I share.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
We met at a wedding last summer. Drinking our pre
dinner cocktails. She turned to me and said, Ruthie, you
know what I'd really like to do. I'd like to
meet the chefs. Walking in with her to the kitchen
with something I will always remember, every one put down
their knives, their pots, their pants, Amazed at seeing her there.
(00:48):
She spoke seriously about cooking, praising them for delicious food,
asking them genuine and respectful questions. I'm often asked, who
would be my dream guest on Ruthie's table. Well, she's
sitting right next to me here in the River Cafe.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Oh my goodness, thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
We would you like to tell everybody what you had
for breakfast when you came to the River Cafe this morning?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
I have the most exquisite breakfast, a beautiful slice of
home baked bread that was toasted just to perfection with Brada,
just a nice slice that was melting and just kind
of just being. And then the most exquisite slices of
(01:41):
cured anchovy with slices on the side of heirloom tomato.
I was in heaven. I was in heaven.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
You're here in London and you're here for my book tour.
First of all, thank you for writing this book. Think
that the the way that you did this, with the diary,
with the ups and the downs and the inns and
the outs and the excitement and the it takes you
really urge everyone to read this because it's it's a
it's knowledge, it's you know, and as you say, for
(02:14):
young people who want to, you know, go into this
world and understand more. I think it's, uh, it's a
textbook as well.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I wrote the book in a way that I was
very honest and forthright and handed. Yeah, and I am
not in the interest of shocking anyone, but just being factual.
I think there's so much about all these processes, but
in particular running for president, where it's it's very opaque
(02:47):
and unless you're in the inside as a part of it,
you can't really see or understand all the nuance and
variables that are at play. So I decided to write
the book to really give people a behind the scenes look.
In fact, like the tour of your kitchen Just now,
(03:07):
I say.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
People always want to know, how does you know the
sea bass come out at the same time as the lamb?
How does how does it all work? And you see
the process, but we don't. I don't know how a
campaign works. I don't know how you produce a television show.
I don't know how the taxi driver knows how to
get from it. You know, it's a process we all
want to know.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
And that's what I and the choreography, which is and
and the other reason I wrote the book is it
is those one hundred and seven days are a part
of American's history, and it was very important to me
that my voice is present in the way that history
tells the story of those days. Think about it. It
(03:47):
was unprecedented, Ruthie. We had sitting president of the United
States running for reelection. He decides to drop out three
and a half months before the election. The sitting vice
president takes up the mantle against a former president who
had been running for ten years, with one hundred and
(04:09):
seven days to go, And so I wrote the books
stylistically like a journal. Most of the one hundred and
seven days our chapters, each of them a chapter based
on the extraordinary experience that I had meeting people around
(04:29):
the country who expect and want to be seen and heard,
whose stories must be known and told. And then all
of the palace intrigue that is a part of politics
and all of that. Part of what I've been doing
in the tour is people write me from all over
the world, and I've been pulling out letters from the
(04:53):
various cities where we're in the book tour of people
who live in that place and inviting them to on
my friends and family list. And it's been really great
because these are people with no expectation of I mean,
half the time, I'm sure you're never going to read this,
but I do. And one of those individuals, a young man,
(05:16):
what he said to me about the book, which was
very helpful to me. He said, you know, he followed
the election very closely those one hundred and seven days,
and he said he needed closure, and the book going
through it. The intensity of each day helped him process
(05:38):
it in a way that gives him and I hope
that this is part of my attention, gives anyone who
reads it an ability to be reminded of the light
that everyone has and that no election can take away
that sense of optimism and dare I say joy that
(06:02):
we each have and we can't forget it even though
we are seeing so much that is I mean, you know,
the words can go on and on about how awful
it is, but in the midst of this darkness, of
this moment, I hope that reading the book also reminds
(06:23):
people of the light that they carry that cannot be
dampened or diminished by any one person or election.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
I was going to ask you how being on a
book tour does is feels different to you from being
on a campaign when you stop off in a city
as you did in this book, and describe what it
was like to arrive in a town and do a
you know, a an event of speech, a raw you know, rallies,
and the difference between going to the festival hall or
(07:08):
to Birmingham, Alabama and talking about now, when you're not campaigning,
what is that like?
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Well, part of what I'm enjoying about this moment is
I'm not because I'm also pulling. I'm out doing meetings
with groups of people in the cities where I'm doing
the book tour, and what I'm enjoying about it is
(07:35):
I am there not to talk, but to listen. That's
why I'm convening these groups, a lot of them are
under the age of forty. Because I also think that
if we're thinking about how we are going to understand
and articulate the stakes of this moment, we have to
(07:56):
be intentional about seeing it through the eyes of people
who are going to be living with this for decades
to come. And so what I'm enjoying about it is that,
unlike the campaign, I also have the luxury of being
able to sit down with people. I think they know
(08:19):
that if they're invited to come, it's going to be
a real conversation and a safe place, and people are
talking about their fears and their hopes and their frustrations,
their anger, their joy and that I mean, Ruthie. That's
been so helpful to me because I just feel right
(08:41):
now we're all carrying an incredible amount of distrust and
we have to work on the relationships of trust and
also understand that the nature of the relationship of trust
is that it's reciprocal. You give and you receive trust.
And I think that's some of the deep and important
(09:02):
work that we all have to do.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
We were talking about Denmark, Yeah, we were talking about
the happiness factor, and in the study, it was actually
a conversation about a woman who left her a Danish
woman who came to New York and left her baby
outside the cafe and she could see the pram and
she was arrested because you want to protect a baby
being left outside. But from her town in Denmark, she
(09:28):
described that that's kind of what you do. You trust
somebody not to take your baby, but you also trust
education to provide good school lunches. You trusted coming to
your country to be how's you have a health care system?
And do you think that trust has in our country
(09:48):
in the United States? Do finding that people not only
not trust their neighbor not to have a gun or
to be there for them if they have an accident,
but to trust government to take care of them.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Yeah, but yes, but I think that it's not a
new phenomena for populations of people and I'll speak for
the American people to have a healthy level of skepticism
about whether the government is working in a way that
(10:22):
works for them. The people to be frustrated with the
bureaucracy of government, with the politics. That's not new, but
I do think that in particular, since the pandemic, we've
seen it increase at a pretty significant level. I actually
(10:45):
think that part of the challenge we have is we
are not talking enough about the trauma that so many
people experienced because of the pandemic. People lost family members
to COVID, They lost their livelihood, they lost some people
lost their home, small business owners lost their businesses. Our
(11:07):
children lost significant phases of not only their education but socialization.
And it was as though the rug got pulled out
from under people. And whereas you thought that there were
some basic things about the system, however you define it,
that would always exist, the pandemic upended it all and
(11:29):
I think left people with a greater level of skepticism,
and skepticism I think is a symptom of distrust. And
so some people then say, well, how is it that
more people aren't taking to the streets about what we're
saying happen in the last nine months. I mean, I
(11:51):
think that there are many people who are feeling like, yeah,
we know that the system does dollars work for us,
So why is anybody surprised now? And so if we're
going to deal with the reality of where we are
beyond that one election, I think this is this is
part of the work we have to do, which is
(12:13):
to encourage these difficult conversations about issues like trust and
to address issues like trauma, to address, of course issues
that are about whether government is actually working for the people,
and do we need to re examine, especially in the
(12:35):
aftermath that there will be of this current administration. And
while then we are looking at a big pile of debris,
maybe it's not about rebuilding. Maybe it's transformative, and it's
not because I actually I write about this in the book,
I think that when that day comes, we cannot afford
and let us make sure we do not think about
(12:57):
what to do in a way that is burdened by
some nostalgia to recreate a system that was flawed, and instead,
let's have some honest conversations about what was not working
and then see the opportunity we might have to actually
and sadly start from scratch with some stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
You grew up in a family of trust, you know,
reading about your family and father, your grandmother's incredible people.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
I mean, you know which, I feel very blessed in
terms of how I grew up and in particular my childhood,
because every signal, every message that was sent and that
I received, was you are important, you are loved. You know.
(13:50):
I grew up in an environment where people told us
we were special. We weren't particularly special, what we believed them.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Special, doll.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Like we we can and should do more of that
as a society in terms of the signals we send
to the children. Right. I grew up and this is
what I talked about at the convention, where I had
a family by blood and I had a family by love,
where my mother created a family that included people who
(14:31):
were not blood relatives but they were our family. I mean,
walking through your kitchen, I was reminding my uncle Freddie,
who was not my uncle by blood, but he was
my uncle in every way. He had a basement apartment
in Harlem. He used to work with the Studio Museum
in Harlem, and we'd go visit Uncle Freddy in his
(14:52):
basement apartment in Harlem, and Uncle Freddie loved to cook.
But his kitchen was maybe the size of this table.
And and so Uncle Freddy would wash everything as soon
as he used it. If he used his books, it
could washed it literally because there was.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
It's great, but you're about to go and tell the chefs.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
But you know I love to cook, send family dinner.
It's like non negotiables. And the kids have now coined
the term after dinner. Let's Uncle Freddy's kitchen, right. But
people like my uncle Freddy, people like my uncle Sherman
who taught us.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Was Uncle Sherman an uncle or.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
He was not an uncle by blood, but he has
an uncle. And Uncle Sherman sat us down, my sister
Maya and me when we were like, I don't know,
six seven, and he said, you guys are going to
learn how to play chess because the chess board is
like life, and they're going to be many different pieces
(15:56):
on the board that moved differently and they're all on
the same board. And part of learning how to play
chess is you will learn that you have to think
about any step you take, the ramifications of it.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Three steps out.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
This is the family that.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Both of them passed away. It's I actually write about
that in the book too. It's so many of them
died far too young, far too young.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, you also have kind of multi cultural cooking family.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
So you have a mother, my mother from Indian India
and southern and South Indiana.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
There's a difference between your absolutely right India northern huf
food and culture in India. Yeah, you had Jamaica and
you had your well later on, your.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Husband, my husband who is Jewish, and also my second
mother who was from Louisiana. Yea, and part of that
whole migration of black folks from the South who went west.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
And and that's a regional I always say in our country,
the regional food is from the South. I mean, if
you're in Vermont, you might have maple syrup, which you
might not find in Idaho. But basically it is kind
of the same. But Southern cooking has such a regionality too.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
But see here's here's one of the things I learned
early on about the universality of it all through food.
Miss Shelton, who was our second mother, the neighbor. The
neighbor and my mother both loved to cook okra okra.
My mother would cook it with mustard seeds and turmeric.
(17:36):
Southern Indian Miss Shelton would cook it with dried shrimp
and hot sausages and bell peppers and tomatoes. And I
have all those recipes.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
And did you prefer one to the other?
Speaker 3 (17:48):
I love them both.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
You love them both? Did you make your own? How
do you make up? You know what?
Speaker 3 (17:52):
I Here's the thing I have to deal with is
that my husband does not like what he calls slimy food.
It doesn't like zucchini, he doesn't like he doesn't like
egg plant. Although I've been starting to sneak it into asaka.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
You didn't know that Musaka.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Had well trick. You have to cook it the right way,
otherwise it will be rubbery.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
You know, when I came to this country, I went
into a green grocer and I asked for egg plan.
They brought me a dozen eggs. So, if everybody listening,
we're talking. So you had people who were passionate about
food and food identity and and and.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
And like my mother was, she was a scientist. She
loved to cook. She loved the chemistry food. So for example,
and she was, you know, unlike this guy in the
White House, she understood that scientific research is obviously a
passion that is about improving the human condition. That scientific
(18:51):
research in its best is going to be pure reviewed.
It will be a collaborative effort among nations. So my mother,
for example, had colleagues from all over the world. And
I remember, in particular the Brescianis from Italy and Franco
(19:12):
Breciani and his kids, Marco and Paolo and Megan, and
we used to go and visit with the Brescianis, and
no we go to the they lived in Toronto, and
my mother would take my sister and me and we'd
go visit with them, and they and Tira, the mother,
the wife, this long table where we would sit for
(19:35):
hours and just course after course after course, and conversation
and passionate conversation and good arguments, and people would get
up and walk away and come back for hours. So
my mother, actually she would cook with Tira, and my
mother was a great Italian cook in addition to South
(19:58):
Indian food. She got on this kick for quite some
time about us making Chinese food, like we would sit
on the floor and make bows and then we would
do wan tons and we would So she loved cooking
in the kitchen. It was the center of all activity.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Was it big?
Speaker 3 (20:21):
It was?
Speaker 2 (20:22):
It was?
Speaker 3 (20:23):
It was, it was. It felt big to me.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yeah, it wasn't in there.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
We would eat in there and and and my mother
said to me when I was young, and you can
tell the kids that like to eat good food, right,
And my mother said to me, I'll never forget. She said,
you like to eat good food, you better learn how
to cook.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
I agree, because I can't ask me why why do
I start cooking? There's a point either. If you don't
have the money to go out to a restaurant every
night and you want to eat, well, well, then you
learned to you know, you learn to cook.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
I have apron I got it from a friend, and
it says I like to cook the food people like
to eat.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
So when did you start cooking when I was from
the beginning?
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Well, I remember one of the first things that I
would make where we would wake up early, mommy's sleeping,
and I would make scrambled eggs and I'd make it
into a circle on a plate, and then I would
cut monterey jack or cheddar cheese to make a smiley
face melted on top of this.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
What age are we talking about?
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Six. And here's the thing about that. My mother did
not like eating breakfast. I was like, don't talk about it.
Of course you had a cup of coffee, right, But.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Tell me about a day in your house. Would you
all have breakfast? How many were you in the house.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
It was the three of us, my mother and my
sister and me because my parents divorced when I was five,
And it was usually my mother would start cooking, like
Saturday morning they make for the week, and I'd wake
up kind of just smelling the food and just kind
(22:26):
of just half asleep going into the kitchen. And and
you know that's the thing about cooking, right, it really
is all the senses. It's literally all the senses. It
includes the sense of sound, sound, and of course smell
and sight and flavor and taste. It's all of those things.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Would she repeat, did you know that Monday was lasagna
on Tuesday?
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Would she not? She would? Sometimes she would because she
worked long day. She always fresh bake cookies, cake in
the house. She was phenomenal and and she loved she
loved to cook. And sometimes she would look at us
and she'd say, okay, girls, tonight we are having smogashboard.
(23:13):
We get so damn excited about smogast board. Do you
know what smogt board was?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
That's a Danish well open sandwiches or some of what
it was. What it was.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Is that she would take cookie cutters and cut the
bread into heart and flower shapes. She'd get those those
toothpicks with the little colors on them, and she'd put
little mayonnaise in a thing, mustard in a thing, and
pull out all the leftovers.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
And we were having smallest.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
All the leftovers. But it was fun.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
It was fun, sounds amazing. She was a scientist.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
She was a breast cancer research and she actually was
responsible for breakthroughs and breast cancers.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
So would you come home from school and would the
cookies be there?
Speaker 3 (24:04):
The cookies would be there. Why we're so called latch
kid kids. But then Miss Shelton two doors and so
if mommy was working late, we would go and have
dinner and Miss Shelton's and she cooked oh everything from
okra to oh my god. She made the most incredible gumbo.
That was on special occasions. She used to do a
(24:25):
cabbage in like a Dutch of a heavy bottomed pot
and she would just cook it, cook it down and it.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Was just so good.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
It's that thing of vegetables being cooked for that's very Italian. Yeah, yes,
we always say that Italians, right, No, right, we never
you sort of cook it and then as olive oil.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
And that's exactly what happened with the cabbage. And it
was so delicious. It's just full of flavor. I mean
she cooked with and I still retain I have. I
love my spices, but there are certain things that I
just still hold on to and you can't take it
away from me. One of them Lowry's seasoning salt.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Oh Lowry as.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
In the Yes, yeah, I only pull it out for
some stuff, but it's it's that.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
But if you you grew up in this where you had,
you know, your mother cooking and being you know, telling
you how much you would loved and having dinners and
having Miss Shelton and having Freddy, And what was it
like to leave this? I mean when you suddenly became
seventeen or eighteen and went to university and you you
went to Howard? Did I went to Howard?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
And what was that?
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Was that?
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Ed?
Speaker 2 (25:37):
It prepared you.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
All of my friends, in particular my girlfriends in college,
they also like to cook My first roommate was Cape
Verdian and there was there was a whole dish, you know,
and there's a.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Was Kate Virgianot, who's.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
There's you know, the whole population of Cape Verdian's outside
of Massachusetts. I didn't know that, Yes, and that's where
she was from. And so she would make this dish
and I don't remember the name of it, but with
like lima beans and all that, and it was very
it was delicious. Where did you have a fun We
we had a little kitchen in the dorm in our yes,
in our dorm. And then another of my girlfriends, Gwen,
(26:21):
who was from Detroit, she had a different version of
making collar greens than I did.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Yeah, that's very American colored greens. You know, colored greens
are Southern.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
It's a big leaf green and it's very sturdy, and
then you have to cook it down. In fact, someone
recently told the story. When I was campaigning in Iowa
in twenty nineteen, our family we decided we needed to
stay in Iowa for Thanksgiving to campaign. But I was
(26:53):
in South Carolina the day before and I always make greens,
collared greens for Thanksgiving. There was no call of greens
to be found in Iowa. So I like a good
country woman, but bags of fresh call of greens in
South Carolina and walk through the airport. I did not
(27:15):
care who saw me. And when I got on the plane,
some of the people on the plane who were from
South Carolina.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Two boats in South Carolina. So you could call a greens.
You're in college, you major own meals?
Speaker 3 (27:33):
You well, sometimes I was on the meal plan.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
We haven't talked about restaurants.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Did you for to eat out in restaurants in school?
I mean we did growing up. We would go from
special occasions and it was always an adventure in terms
of where we would go, right and what kind of
you know, what we would choose.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
And so working, what was that like when you were
suddenly working.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Well you know then I mean in my twenties, going
out it was you know, socialism, So it was you know,
fun meeting with friends in San Francisco, which it has
an incredible foods It was the Bayry altogether, so open
in San Francisco, so the nineties nineties and incredible food
scene and again eclectic by some people's standards, right, and
(28:25):
I mean everything from you know, the best barbecue you
can imagine to incredible sushi. We would go like Sundays
or Saturdays for dim sum, all of those.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, and the farm to table and.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
We had the fact and Alice ad her cookbook was
probably early on the artisty started. Yeah, I have so
my bowlin aisy, my world famous bolan is, according to me,
is hybrid of Alice and Marcella. Yeah, so I do
(29:01):
for example, I do the panchetta.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Okay, this could be your recipe read yeah, all right,
we're gonna now hear a recipe.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
For okay's title Tla Harrison's world Famous bowlin.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Okay, I like the I like the low key why not? Okay,
so tell us how to make this?
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Okay, So I start with my Dutch oven little crusette,
just nice and I have had it forever.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Color is orange.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
I have two actually because when I was back and forth,
one is white and one is blue. But the oval right, panchetta.
So then I do my mare past. So I do
very small chopping of onion, of celery, of carrot there.
Then I do garlic after, you know, because I don't
(29:54):
want it to burn. Then I do a combination of
beef and pork. Then I do you know, there's a
theory about whether you should do the wine first or
the milk first. I am of the school that you
should do the milk first. Okay, So I do the
milk then. And also I sage and time. And I
(30:14):
have a beautiful oh I do. I have an herb garden,
and my bay leaf tree is just it's just the
most beautiful thing you have ever seen. I bring bay
leaf to people as gifts. I just put a nice
fancy ribbon on it, and then I let it reduce
around the milk. And then I do pretty much a
whole bottle of wine white.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
I describe the wine.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
I do a white, and I usually do I mean,
you know, not super expensive. I know you're supposed to
do whatever you drink, but I you know, and.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
This would be for how many people?
Speaker 3 (30:45):
I do often three times the recipe so I can
freeze some, okay. Then I do a combination of a
little bit of tomato paste and Saint Marzano tomatoes, and
then I cook it for hours and hours.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
How many hours?
Speaker 3 (30:59):
I usually about five?
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Okay, are you stirring it every half an hour or so?
Very low heat?
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Yeah, no, it's very low heat. It just did very
light summer rental. The oil starts to write and then
it's just it's fantastic, and then I will freeze like
two thirds of it because it's such a production, and
I usually do I usually do like a linguine era.
(31:27):
I don't do spaghetti. I'd like a flat pond.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yea, I like it. You know.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
I do painting a lot too.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, that's nice too.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Yeah. Well, this is the thing so I actually talk
about in the book. So, having been the first woman
Vice president of the United States, part of what I
never talked about publicly but do kind of reveal in
the book is forty eight vice president of the United
States were men. We lived in the Vice President's residence,
and we're supported by naval enlisted AIDS. And if I
(31:59):
was on a trip to come, I came to the
UK to talk about the future safety of AI. I
went to the Indo Pacific many times, so on and
so on. If I was out of the house, they
all left to travel with me and nobody would cook
(32:20):
for Doug. So as Vice President of the United States,
I made a few times a big pot of bowlin
aisy to freeze containers so that my husband could eat.
When I was doing the business of the United States
of America.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Okay, we can preserve that, so you can channel that.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
So that was that was That was one of the
occasions in which I would freeze out.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Only one more story than that is that when we
talked to Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell too. We had
two podcasts. One with Alistair, they described that if you
were Downing Street and you wanted lunch, somebody had to
get down to Predamache and bring back the sandwiches.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
You know that that you know, and I just think
you see behind the.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Cross. I just keeps holding France up as a as.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
The best, one of the best dinners ever.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Going to ask you, was.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
There the cheese, of course, Oh the cheese. It was
so just yeah, everything everything was just exquisite, just the
detail and the beauty of it.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
No, it's true. Mark Carney told me the other day
that they were on a train. If you go to Ukraine,
you absolutely have to take the train on a trip.
And Canadians had a car, the British had a car,
the French had a car. And he said that, you know,
the Canadians just brought some stuff in Poland and put
(33:49):
on the train. The British had nothing, and then they
went into the French car and they had cheese and wine,
and there was a incredible fox gras and he said,
it's just each each train carriage was so specifically clear
about the country's attitude to culture and food.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Culture.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Yes, and state dinners. Because I was going to ask
you about when you were actually vice president. The schedule.
I can only imagine. Would you stop flunch? Would you
have working lunches? Did it very I.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Almost always ate lunch at my desk.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
What would that be?
Speaker 3 (34:27):
It would be a combination of maybe like fish and
vegetables or a salad, or.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Was it like the West Wing. Did you do dinner
formal dinners?
Speaker 3 (34:37):
We did diners, which I unless it was family. Yeah, yeah,
we did. We did a lot of formal dinners. I
would go down to the kitchen, to the industrial kitchen
and cook with them and also share with them technique.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Really uh huh.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
The first person and I actually talked about in the
book that I hosted for a meal was then Chancellor
Angle and Merkel.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Would you do the menus? Would you say this is
what we.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Would I would work with my yeah, social secretary and
plan the menus every one of them, though pretty much
I participated in planning State dinners were just magnificent and beautiful.
And you know, this was a beautiful aspect of the
power of diplomacy, which we call soft power. And sadly,
(35:24):
the current occupant of the White House, I think does
not appreciate the significance of that power.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
We goes back to a childhood they getting together over food,
meeting over food. This morning, media to the house. And
that's something on your plate. And you said, the act
of actually putting something on somebody else's plate. Try this beautiful.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
It is an act of love, it truly is. It
is a gesture of of kindness. It is a gesture
of caring. You know, there's nothing like and I told you,
like just there is nothing like sitting at a table
and someone prepares a plate for you and puts it
in front of you from the kitchen that you can see.
(36:14):
There is nothing like that.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
We have to do more of that. Yes, we are going, yes, yea.
My last question always on these conversations is is there
a food that you would go for when you need comfort?
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Pasta pasta all day long, pasta all day long. And
I have in my garden a lot of beautiful basil.
And sometimes I just make a big, big batch of pesto,
and but I freeze it without the cheese. And I
(36:49):
have this thing almost like an ice tray. Each slot
is a cup worth of liquid. And so I make
a big batch of pesto one cup, and then I
freeze these bricks and then you just defrosted, and then I.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Do, and then you have the cheese. You are such
a good cook. Well, you really are a good cook.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
I am in awe. You're getting you are? You know?
Speaker 2 (37:13):
The little it's you know, you know people who are
good cooks because they love food. But your detail, you know,
it's like the way you are in this book. It's
the way you run a campaign. It's the way you
talk to my granddaughter. It's a way you come on
this podcast. There's a rigor, there's a passion, but there
is knowledge and generosity. So you are great cooks and
we're going to cook together.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
I'm so looking forward to that. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Let's go do it with you. Thank you. Ruthie's Table
for is proud to support Leukemia UK. Their Cartwill for
a Cure campaign raises funds for vital research and more
effective and kinder treatments for a cube my Lloyd leukemia.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Please donate and to Doucello search cartwheel.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
For pure.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Ruthie's Table four was produced by Alex Bell and zad
Rogers with Susanna Hilock, Andrew Sang and Bella Sellini.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
This has been an atomized production for iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Ruthie's Table four in collaboration with Me and M Intelligence
Style for Busy Women
Host
Ruth Rogers
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