On lousy cooks
Scuttlebutt has it that Henrietta Nesbitt was a lousy cook. She was hired by Eleanor Roosevelt to cook in the White House based upon some imaginary culinary reputation she acquired around Hyde Park, New York.

It is a wonder President Franklin D. Roosevelt survived as long as he did. Mrs. Nesbitt was in charge of housekeeping at the White House and planned the menus, supposedly after talking with the First Lady. Unfortunately the First Lady was herself a terrible connoisseur of food whose taste ran from pedestrian to awful. There was a lot of food eaten out of cans during the Nesbitt years.

It fell to Bess Wallace Truman to put the situation right. Her daughter Margaret tells in the biography she wrote of her mother how Mrs. Nesbitt served brussels sprouts three nights in a row to President Truman, despite being told after the first serving that the feisty new man in the White House didn’t like the damn things. Bess was out of town at the time and Margaret called her and threatened to throw the sprouts at Mrs. Nesbitt. Bess came home and in quick order the rest of the staff was informed that Mrs. Nesbitt had retired.

In Amsterdam there is a restaurant called Mr. Coco’s where they advertise “lousy food and warm beer.” Currently they are soliciting applications for cooks and if you can tell the difference between a hamburger and a carrot you are considered qualified. From a distance it is hard to tell if this is “tongue in cheek” advertising or fair warning.
(Originally published in The Hanahan News, Hanahan, SC, May 15, 2002.

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