Damned If I Know

Lady M welcomed this year’s winners of the fifth annual Healthy Lunchtime Challenge and Kids’ State Dinner contest to the White House last week. Ever the Fashion Icon and Busy Mom™ she sported an on trend “white floral number with black piping and dainty bows at the sleeves” - and caterpillar eyebrows:

Here’s one of the winning recipes, served at the luncheon, from Lily Radtke, Age 11. She calls it Asian in Arkansas:

“Ewww! Brown Rice Wrappers!?!  And Naked Soybeans? I wouldn’t feed that to the dog!”

For the Spring Rolls

4 ounces vermicelli rice noodles
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ pound shrimp, peeled, tails removed and deveined

8 brown-rice wrappers
8 basil leaves, whole
1 cup shredded carrots
1 cucumber, peeled and cut into thin strips
8 sprigs of mint, leaves chopped
Ponzu sauce, for dipping (optional)

Check out the link for the instructions and accompanying edamame salad and watermelon (Trigger Alert!) skewers. Or get all the yummy winning recipes from The 2016 Healthy Lunchtime Challenge E-Cookbook, it’s free! Just pay separate processing and handling (taxes).

Now I’m not looking to cause trouble butt I feel compelled to point out that it appears to me that the White House is not being particularly sensitive to cultural appropriation with this winning selection. May I remind you that just last November the snowflakes went into tilt mode when they were served culturally inappropriate Asian fare at Oberlin college?

And if you think that this was much ado about nuthin’, none other than Lena Dunham – Oberlin graduate, Girls star and world-wide recognized expert on cultural appropriation – has weighed in on the side of the snowflakes:

“There are now big conversations at Oberlin, where I went to college, about cultural appropriation and whether the dining hall sushi and Banh Mi disrespect certain cuisines,” the actress told Food & Wine. “The press reported it as, ‘How crazy are Oberlin kids?’ But to me, it was actually, ‘Right on.’”

She obviously, being a sensitive actor and all, felt Nguyen‘s pain:

“It was ridiculous,” Vietnamese freshman Diep Nguyen said. “How could they just throw out something completely different and label it as another country’s traditional food?”

Damned if I know.