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Natalie Cole
Governors' Dinner

It's not always as easy as it looks -- this business of being the First Host and Hostess. What the President and First Lady eat and who they invite to the White House can make as much a political statement as a campaign promise. So if you think you know a lot about political history, test your knowledge of presidential gastronomy.
  1. Which president opened the White House doors to the public to consume a huge cheese weighing 1,400 pounds?
    Abraham Lincoln
    Franklin Roosevelt
    John Adams
    Andrew Jackson

  2. Tired of the same old "White House fare" who said, "My stomach positively rebels and this does not help my relations with foreign powers"?
    Franklin Roosevelt
    Thomas Jefferson
    John Adams
    Jimmy Carter

  3. Who was the first African-American to dine at the White House?
    Booker T. Washington
    Martin Luther King, Jr.
    W.E.B. DuBois
    Harriet Tubman

  4. Which White house couple preferred to dine on TV trays rather than the formal dinning rooms of the White House?
    Roslyn and Jimmy Carter
    Nancy and Ronald Reagan
    Pat and Richard Nixon
    Betty and Gerald Ford

  5. Who said, "You see what a wise wife I have!" after agreeing to her suggestion of combining dinner with business? The breaking of bread with legislators led to an agreement on a tariff bill.
    Woodrow Wilson
    Lesley Ann Warren
    James Madison
    James Polk

  6. Who said "I must go to dinner, but I wish it was to eat a pickled herring, a Swiss cheese and a chop at Louis' instead of the French stuff I shall find"?
    Roslyn Carter
    Grover Cleveland
    Bill Clinton
    Laura Bush

  7. Who was Lemonade Lucy?
    Chief refreshment maker during the Warren presidency
    Lucy Ware Webb, wife of President Hayes
    Temperance advocate, niece and White House hostess to bachelor President Buchanan
    A fictional character made up by the White House press corps.

  8. Who was invited to the White house to spend Christmas and ended up staying for 24 days?
    Winston Churchill
    Jimmy Carter's brother, Bill
    Queen Elizabeth II
    Prince Charles

  9. Why was First Lady Ida Saxton McKinley afraid to entertain?
    She was shy.
    She stuttered.
    She had epilepsy.
    She didn't speak English.

  10. At a White House dinner which president told a group of Nobel Prize winners that "this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever gathered together in the White House with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone"?
    Bill Clinton
    John F. Kennedy
    Ronald Reagan
    Lyndon Johnson


A production of WETA, Washington D.C.
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