First Harvest: The White House Kitchen Garden

July 6, 2009 | WASHINGTON -- It was harvest time for the first wave of crops from the local vegetable garden, so the kids who had helped plant it a few months earlier came back to visit recently. Working with a few professional supervisors under the eye of their host, they pulled up a big bounty: 73 pounds of lettuce, 12 pounds of peas and one cucumber (which had originally been white but was yellow by the time the kids got to it). And then they all went inside to cook, before returning to the garden to eat.

That wouldn't have been particularly newsworthy, of course, except that it all happened at the White House, and the host for the harvest lunch was Michelle Obama. "My hope is that [through] this garden, we can continue to make the connection between what we eat and how we feel and how healthy we are," she told the kids, all from a D.C. neighborhood about three miles from the executive mansion. The harvest a couple of weeks ago was the culmination of a few whirlwind months at the White House, taking the crop from seeds to salads amid a media frenzy.

— Full Story

Our First Lady on TIME Cover

Michelle Up Close is the featured article in this week's TIME Magazine. This story and a photo essay is available in full (and in more detail) online.
Story
Photo Essay.

Excerpt:

It was just two days after the Inauguration when an e-mail went around to Michelle Obama's staff, instructing everyone to be in the East Room of the White House at 3 that afternoon. The First Lady's advisers arrived to find the room filled with ushers and plumbers, electricians and maids and kitchen crew gathered in a huge circle, and Michelle in a T shirt and ponytail, very casual and very much in charge.

"This is my team that came with me from Chicago," Michelle said, pointing to her communications staff and policy people. "This is my team who works here already," she went on, indicating the ring of veterans around the room. Many of the household staff had served for decades; some had postponed retirement because they wanted to serve an African-American President. And so the two groups formed concentric rings and spent the next hour or so making sure that everyone had a chance to meet everyone else. I want you to know that you won't be judged based on whether they know your name, Michelle had warned her advisers. You'll be judged based on whether you know theirs.

... Few First Ladies have embedded themselves so quickly in the world's imagination. And none have traveled so far, not just from Chicago's South Side to the East Wing, but from the caricatured Angry Black Woman of last spring to her exalted status as a New American Icon, as if her arrival will magically reverse eight years of anti-American spitballing, elevate the black middle class, promote family values, give voice to the voiceless and inspire us all to live healthier, more generous lives.

The Obama's Bring Back the Victory Garden

I have really enjoyed my "Victory Garden" this season. I commonly call it my winter garden, but whatever you call it, having fresh veggies just a few steps from the back yard has really changed my eating habits. And for the good, I might add.

In fact, right now, I have a nice bean and vegetable soup in the slow cooker and it cost pennies to make. While the strawberries have finished producing for the time being and the lettuce has gone to seed, I still have pak choi, turnips, onions and kohlrabi still ready to use; watermelon, green beans, cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes freshly planted and potatoes that are ready to bloom and should produce about 65 pounds (from one, average Publix-purchased potato).

To top that off, I will have plenty of Mangoes in June, if the blooms are of any indication and my Avocado tree is covered with blooms (I think Avocados will be ready in August).
So you can just imagine my thrill that the Obama's have decided to put in a "Kitchen Garden" at the White House, with the help of neighboring school children, to provide fresh food to the White House kitchen and to feed the homeless.

— White House blog entry.