Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Adami Studios.
Speaker 2: I have three brothers. My brother Joe is the eldest.
Speaker 3: I'm Valerie, the second and the only girl, and then
Speaker 3: my brother Jimmy, and then the baby is Frankie. And
Speaker 3: we are a typical mid twentieth century American family.
Speaker 4: Valerie Biden's family are typical Americans in some ways, but
Speaker 4: not that typical. Her brother Joe is President Biden. And
Speaker 4: in today's River Cafe Table four, we'll be talking about
Speaker 4: food and family from the kitchen table to the White House.
Speaker 4: When President Biden's first wife died in a tragic accident,
Speaker 4: Valerie stepped up to support her nephew's beau and hunter
Speaker 4: ice cream, hot dogs, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, vows.
Speaker 4: Food memories are made up of American classics. But we'll
Speaker 4: begin right now with her favorite recipe from the River Cafe.
Speaker 2: It's quick sweet tomato sauce.
Speaker 3: Serve six to eight, three tablespoons olive oil, three garlic
Speaker 3: cloves peeled and cut into slivers. Two one kilogram jars
Speaker 3: peeled plum tomato drained of their juices, A handful of
Speaker 3: fresh basil or oregano leaves. Heat one to two tablespoons
Speaker 3: of the olive oil in a large pan and fry
Speaker 3: the garlic until it is soft.
Speaker 2: But not brown.
Speaker 3: Add the tomatoes with some sea salt and black pepper,
Speaker 3: and cook fiercely, stirring constantly to prevent the tomatoes from
Speaker 3: sticking as they break up. As they cook, the tomatoes
Speaker 3: will release their juices when the liquid has evaporated. Add
Speaker 3: the remaining olive oil, the basil or oregano, and more
Speaker 3: seasoning if necessary.
Speaker 2: Serve hot and I.
Speaker 3: Always use the basil, and it's spectacular. It makes me
Speaker 3: smile because every family dinner, we all sit down and
Speaker 3: we have spaghetti and meat balls with tomato sauce, tell
Speaker 3: the same stories and laugh at the same jokes as
Speaker 3: if it's the first time we ever heard them.
Speaker 4: Can I ask you about food at the White House?
Speaker 4: What's it like when you go to eat with your brother.
Speaker 2: At the White House?
Speaker 3: Joe the President and First Lady aka Joe and Jill.
Speaker 3: They don't have breakfast served. That's a time when you
Speaker 3: can get up and go to the small kitchen and
Speaker 3: have coffee or cereal and not have people around, you know,
Speaker 3: who are very gracious and want to take care of you.
Speaker 3: But it's just a quiet time lunch. My brother is
Speaker 3: rather a pedestrian eater like I. He'll have a ponifish salad,
Speaker 3: ponfish sandwich or a chicken salad sandwich, and always if
Speaker 3: we can, tomato soup. They make great tomato basil soup.
Speaker 3: And then dinner, normal dinner that they suits set and
Speaker 3: it's usually Jill, my sister in law, is very conscious
Speaker 3: of help. I mean she's she's what I want to
Speaker 3: be when I when you grow up.
Speaker 2: Yes, when I grow up.
Speaker 3: And generally she has a fish meal salmon and a
Speaker 3: crust and delicious. But Joe and I said, oh we're
Speaker 3: eating healthy again. Okay.
Speaker 4: Do you share a lot of time over food?
Speaker 2: It's almost always over a meal.
Speaker 3: Especially since my you know brother, when he travels now
Speaker 3: it's an entourage and it's generally and it's an inconvenience
Speaker 3: to other people. I mean, it's for his safety and
Speaker 3: he's very we're very appreciative, but it inconveniences other people,
Speaker 3: you know, to go in in the arrest.
Speaker 2: So we don't go to restaurants very often.
Speaker 3: We either at his house or my house and Jimmy
Speaker 3: Biden's house. Frankie, our youngest, is in Florida, so not
Speaker 3: at his house. But we sit and again tell the
Speaker 3: same old stories. We poke fun at each other, and
Speaker 3: you know, in I have found that in a family
Speaker 3: that's close or a large family, your place in the
Speaker 3: family stays the same if you're sixty years old or
Speaker 3: if you're six years old. Once the baby, always the baby,
Speaker 3: you know, once the middle, always the middle, once the
Speaker 3: eldest always and once the only which is of course
Speaker 3: me and I would have it no other way. I love,
Speaker 3: I love, love love growing up with my three brothers.
Speaker 3: They were a gift to me. I always say that
Speaker 3: I earned my husband, but my brothers were a gift.
Speaker 4: What was food like in the Biden household growing up?
Speaker 3: Food was we always had enough of it to begin with,
Speaker 3: but it was ordinary. We didn't dine, we ate, but
Speaker 3: we always ate together every night. We grew up in
Speaker 3: a middle class Irish Catholic background.
Speaker 2: My brothers.
Speaker 3: As the first born, he was born in Scranton, but
Speaker 3: by the time I guess he was eight years old,
Speaker 3: my father got work and moved to back home to Delaware,
Speaker 3: where dad was from.
Speaker 4: But what did your father do.
Speaker 3: My father was a car salesman and then he ended
Speaker 3: up managing mostly Chevrolet dealerships, different ones here in Delaware.
Speaker 2: He come home for dinner. My father.
Speaker 3: The one thing about him was he had insisted upon
Speaker 3: impeccable table manners. My brother Jimmy probably has a left
Speaker 3: elbow that's still weak from my father smacking it, you know.
Speaker 2: When he put it on the table.
Speaker 3: So we had to know what the right knife and
Speaker 3: fork were and how to pass our dishes. And that
Speaker 3: was the only thing he was absolutely stern about. And
Speaker 3: he thought it represented good matters.
Speaker 4: And I think it is very telling the way people
Speaker 4: are considerate in a way, if that's what matters are
Speaker 4: at the table, and how things have changed. When I
Speaker 4: talked to Nancy Pelosi, she said that she'd never sat
Speaker 4: down in her child at a table where there wasn't
Speaker 4: a tablecloth. Was that the Biden household as well?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: What Mom and Dad had on the dining room table
Speaker 3: was a piece of glass that was fitted that covered
Speaker 3: the table so it would save the wood. And we
Speaker 3: always had place met and we always had napkins. And
Speaker 3: Mom was an ordinary cook in the best sense of
Speaker 3: the word. I mean, we were Hamburger's hot dogs. My
Speaker 3: favorite dish at the time was pot roast. You would
Speaker 3: always make that for me for my birthday.
Speaker 2: But there were certain rituals.
Speaker 3: Sunday morning after Mass, we would come home and Dad
Speaker 3: always made hotcakes.
Speaker 2: That was a big deal.
Speaker 3: There are three foods that I never ate when I
Speaker 3: was a child, and I don't know why, but I
Speaker 3: didn't like hotcakes, and I didn't like hot dogs, and
Speaker 3: I didn't like cam oh the h Yeah, and my
Speaker 3: mother never made me eat them. So everybody would have
Speaker 3: hot hotcakes with maple syrup.
Speaker 2: I had my cheerios and milk.
Speaker 3: The second ritual was because we were a Catholic family,
Speaker 3: we didn't eat meat on Friday, so on Fridays we
Speaker 3: had missus Paul's frozen fish sticks, which meant that all
Speaker 3: four children grew up to really dislike fish, I mean
Speaker 3: because we had to eat it. But more often than
Speaker 3: that Mom would substitute. And that's when we had spaghetti.
Speaker 3: Mom made her homemade spaghetti sauce.
Speaker 4: What was that? Can I ask you what that was?
Speaker 2: Big kansa tomato sauce.
Speaker 3: I think she would put in a pork chop, but
Speaker 3: I never I was not in the kitchen. I was
Speaker 3: out playing ball with my with my brothers. We came in,
Speaker 3: you know, Mom had dinner ready. We sat down and
Speaker 3: ate and there were no chores, like we didn't have
Speaker 3: to clean up after the table or because Mom would
Speaker 3: always say, my job is to be the mom, and
Speaker 3: your job is to be the students.
Speaker 2: Go do your homework.
Speaker 3: The big deal in the house of food was if
Speaker 3: things were good on Saturday night, we would my brother
Speaker 3: and I would ride our bike, or if it were bad,
Speaker 3: Mom would drive us up to the local Custlers pharmacy
Speaker 3: where they had ice cream, and we would get a
Speaker 3: half gallon of Briar's ice cream and the ice cream
Speaker 3: was vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Nobody liked strawberry. I think
Speaker 3: Jimmy I think Jimmy Biden was the only one to
Speaker 3: eat the strawberry. But that was the big deal. We'd
Speaker 3: had the half gallon of ice cream and we would
Speaker 3: watch at Sullivan Joe on Sunday night.
Speaker 4: And then when you went to college, did you cook
Speaker 4: for yourself? You no longer had your mother saying go
Speaker 4: and study. What did you do for food?
Speaker 3: Then? Well, I had a meal ticket, and at the time,
Speaker 3: everybody lived on campus all four years, so I didn't
Speaker 3: have an apartment where I had to experiment. You know,
Speaker 3: there was a meal ticket and we ate normal college food.
Speaker 4: What college did you go to?
Speaker 3: Where was the University of Delaware, Delaware about fifty minutes
Speaker 3: from our home. But to me, I had graduated from
Speaker 3: Ursuline Academy for Young Girls. But I thought I had
Speaker 3: died and gone to heaven. I went to the University
Speaker 3: of Delaware, five thousand undergraduates, co ed, and I was
Speaker 3: in a brand new world and I loved every single
Speaker 3: minute of it. And my big brother Joey was there too.
Speaker 3: He was a junior when I was a freshman, and
Speaker 3: I was there because because of him, I was a
Speaker 3: good student and I got in Delaware. But my mom
Speaker 3: and dad were not able to afford room and board,
Speaker 3: which is what the essence of college was. And I
Speaker 3: desperately wanted to go in room and board, and my
Speaker 3: dad told me, Toney, look, I can't swing it. You know,
Speaker 3: you could commute. And my brother in that right after
Speaker 3: that called a family meeting with mom and dad, and respectfully,
Speaker 3: we were very, very aware of my father's dignity and
Speaker 3: it pained him that he wasn't able to send us
Speaker 3: both to room and board. But my brother said, Dad,
Speaker 3: I've thought about this, and here's what I proposed. Vo's
Speaker 3: a good kid, She's smarter than I. She deserves college
Speaker 3: more than I do. So I'm going to drop out
Speaker 3: this coming semester in September. I'm going to work for
Speaker 3: the year, save money so that I can go back
Speaker 3: the next year, so that Voo could take my place,
Speaker 3: because she should be able to go to Delaware. She's
Speaker 3: earned it, ye, my father said. My father called my
Speaker 3: brother champ and he said, Champion can't do that because
Speaker 3: my dad was as in that generation and that time,
Speaker 3: in mid nineteen sixties, my dad assumed that I would
Speaker 3: get married and have children and that you know, the
Speaker 3: man had to be was the breadwinner.
Speaker 2: And he said, you know, you have to raise a.
Speaker 3: Family and support a family, and VAL's not going to
Speaker 3: have to do that. She'll have her pick of whatever
Speaker 3: she wants. But my brother said, no, he wanted to
Speaker 3: do it that way. And somehow, long story short, Ruthin
Speaker 3: And it was late August, right before school started. My
Speaker 3: father somehow managed to get alone another loan and I
Speaker 3: went to the university with my brother, and as I said,
Speaker 3: I realized what a gift it was from my parents,
Speaker 3: and I squeezed every single thing I could out of
Speaker 3: the school.
Speaker 2: I loved it.
Speaker 4: You were thrust at a very young age into cooking
Speaker 4: for young children, taking care of your brother's children.
Speaker 3: I jumped into domestic life, and you know what. I
Speaker 3: had a very close friend. Her name was Maureen. She
Speaker 3: had two young boys who were close in age to
Speaker 3: bow and hunt, and she would give me quick, down
Speaker 3: and dirty recipes.
Speaker 2: You know that they like this, and they like that.
Speaker 3: She used to make scalop potatoes and she said, get
Speaker 3: brock worst, which I didn't know. They were fat hot
Speaker 3: dogs as far as I was concerned, and put them
Speaker 3: on top. And that was a great dish, an easy dish.
Speaker 3: And I did that and I served it. We used
Speaker 3: to have a lazy Susan in the kitchen and I
Speaker 3: served it. Nobody told me to take the skin off
Speaker 3: the brock wars. So when I took it off and
Speaker 3: went to serve it to the boys.
Speaker 2: It flew off the table. They said, Aunt vaol. I
Speaker 2: mean it was always a little bit of you.
Speaker 4: But you were twenty. You were twenty six. You know,
Speaker 4: cut yourself some slack. I mean that is very very young.
Speaker 3: When I got the boys and started to cook, I
Speaker 3: wasn't a cook.
Speaker 2: I mean I was an eater.
Speaker 3: So I made probably most nights of the week chicken breast,
Speaker 3: which I boiled interesting boiled sucken breast.
Speaker 2: And came to be known as my rubber chicken.
Speaker 3: And boiled chicken breast. And meat loaf was another thing
Speaker 3: that I made. And I would try in the beginning
Speaker 3: now and I'm trying when I had the boys, I'm
Speaker 3: trying to be healthy, and I tried making flounder and
Speaker 3: telling them that it was chicken oh.
Speaker 2: In their favorite dish.
Speaker 3: And all of both friends who called me aunt vol
Speaker 3: when you know this whole, these kids who all grew
Speaker 3: up together. Specialty was egg in the cup, and that
Speaker 3: was a soft bailled egg. And I never had a time, Ruthie,
Speaker 3: I had an instinct exactly when it was right.
Speaker 4: That's very that's impressive because it's really hard to make
Speaker 4: a good soft boiled egg. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I would put it in the cup along with some shell,
Speaker 3: always a little bit of shell, some salt and pepper butter,
Speaker 3: and I would break up toast and put it in
Speaker 3: an egg in the cup, and that was bowen hunts.
Speaker 3: My children and all their kids. That was that was
Speaker 3: a favorite meal. Aunt found didn't really screw that one
Speaker 3: up much.
Speaker 4: It's very traditional. It's very English. I think they call
Speaker 4: it as a fellow American. It's called soldiers, isn't it.
Speaker 4: They'd make the little sticks of bread and then you
Speaker 4: tip it into the egg.
Speaker 3: Yo that I would give my children with tang and
Speaker 3: what they call they called uh, I would sing it, do.
Speaker 2: It with a ting tang kong.
Speaker 3: That was the drink of astronauts.
Speaker 2: But it was, I mean, it was.
Speaker 3: It was a terrible time, Ruthie, a terrible tragedy, but
Speaker 3: it was also a time of healing.
Speaker 2: And there was joy.
Speaker 3: These boys they loved me full throttle, and I love
Speaker 3: them and uh, and they healed Joe and we healed
Speaker 3: as a family, I mean, and there was there was joy.
Speaker 3: And as I said, five years later, Joe was able
Speaker 3: to come out of it because he met this wonderful woman,
Speaker 3: Joe Jacobs, and fell in love.
Speaker 2: So Uh.
Speaker 3: The best thing that my memories of raising being with
Speaker 3: the boys would My brother bought me a jeep to
Speaker 3: travel around with the boys, and we were up high
Speaker 3: and we would look out the window and.
Speaker 2: We had a passer by.
Speaker 3: We'd be at a stop signer or a red light,
Speaker 3: and the boys would look out and we'd see the person,
Speaker 3: and then we'd go off and we would spin magical
Speaker 3: tales like where they were going? What do we think
Speaker 3: that they were doing? The jeep was like a magic
Speaker 3: carper ride. And we always had peanut butter and jelly
Speaker 3: sandwiches and ting tang tong in the backseat, okay for
Speaker 3: an emergency.
Speaker 4: If this was a food of everyday life, and you
Speaker 4: describe the meals around the table after school and before homework,
Speaker 4: did your parents ever or did your family ever go
Speaker 4: to restaurants.
Speaker 3: A graduation or first communion or something like that. But
Speaker 3: we would always have a tray and you know, bring
Speaker 3: it help. The big thing that we did in Delaware
Speaker 3: that we always brought home where hoggies or subs we
Speaker 3: call them.
Speaker 2: And that's when the.
Speaker 3: Family gets together, if it's lunchtime or even going into dinner,
Speaker 3: it's either hogies where we all grab them go out
Speaker 3: and sit in the porch on the picnic table, or
Speaker 3: when we sit down to dinner.
Speaker 2: It's spaghetti and meatballs. And now it's my.
Speaker 3: Spaghetti sauce, which is very similar to your quick suite
Speaker 3: tomato sauce. At the risk of sounding preachy, but again
Speaker 3: from our parents, there was family, and there's faith, and
Speaker 3: there was a responsibility to each other. And then that
Speaker 3: went to moved over to the community at large. And
Speaker 3: there are so many people who are in need of food,
Speaker 3: which is a travesty in this country. And I'm very
Speaker 3: happy that I'm able to work with the Ministry of Caring.
Speaker 3: We have three places throughout the city that serve food,
Speaker 3: and it's over a hundred churches and synagogues and religious
Speaker 3: groups and that do that. And I think, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just so obvious if we if we don't have nutrition,
Speaker 3: then we don't have energy. And we don't have energy,
Speaker 3: we don't have power, we don't have an ability to
Speaker 3: think and to be on our feet. If we have
Speaker 3: food shortages, we.
Speaker 2: Fall into political problems where you have to cross borders
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 3: You know, politics is the art and signs of living
Speaker 3: together peacefully. While we tussle over the allocation of scarce
Speaker 3: resources and with climate change, with our scarce resources, with
Speaker 3: the fact that in America, only less and two percent
Speaker 3: of our families, our farm and ranchers. We have to
Speaker 3: be more vigilant and we have to be aware that
Speaker 3: we are our brother's keeper.
Speaker 4: I'm really glad we talked about this because talking to
Speaker 4: a woman who is campaigned, who is political, who is active,
Speaker 4: who has values, you just defined politics in a certain
Speaker 4: way of caring for each other. But politics is also active.
Speaker 4: It should be the role of a government to make
Speaker 4: sure that every child is fed when they go to
Speaker 4: start their day at school, that they go home to
Speaker 4: a house where there is food, that there's access to food.
Speaker 4: And when we look at the poverty in the United States,
Speaker 4: it is shocking that our children are hungry. I know
Speaker 4: that the President has tried to push laws through is
Speaker 4: working on it. It must be one of the great
Speaker 4: concerns of his political life.
Speaker 3: And it all comes under the umbrella of health and
Speaker 3: health for every American should be a right and not
Speaker 3: a privilege.
Speaker 4: And what was food like on the campaign trail?
Speaker 3: Well, very very rarely did we get to go to
Speaker 3: a nice restaurant. The truth is the food on a
Speaker 3: campaign is grab and grow. Applebee's is a great I
Speaker 3: presume great restaurant, but one I never ever want to
Speaker 3: walk into again, because every meeting in Iowa was that
Speaker 3: Applebee's and we had fried food and fried food and
Speaker 3: whatever it was. It reminds me of campaigning. And I'm
Speaker 3: not disparaging Applebee's. I just it reminds me of sitting
Speaker 3: trying to talk a county chair into supporting my brother.
Speaker 3: The foods were what, you know what. We would pick
Speaker 3: up those fruit bars that were supposed to give me
Speaker 3: energy and nutrition, but mostly it was Coca cola, a
Speaker 3: Hamburger grabbing on the road. And then any and I
Speaker 3: mean this in the best sense, any local Italian restaurant
Speaker 3: was really good. My choice of restaurants would either be
Speaker 3: Italian or Greek.
Speaker 2: I love both of those foods.
Speaker 4: I suppose. My last question to you is to say,
Speaker 4: if food is alleviates hunger and food is an expression
Speaker 4: of love, it is also comfort. And so if you
Speaker 4: were having a day where you just looked at a
Speaker 4: meal or food as comfort, is there a food that
Speaker 4: you would choose to give you that comfort.
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I would have a rigatoni with red sauce, and if
Speaker 3: I were particularly adventuresome, I would chop a salad because
Speaker 3: I know how to make oil and moneager dressing. That's
Speaker 3: one of the few things I do know that I'm
Speaker 3: good at. And I would have a salad and I
Speaker 3: would have some French bread with butter. I would have
Speaker 3: a coke first, and this just shows you how unrefined
Speaker 3: I am. I would have my glass of wine after
Speaker 3: because I wouldn't want to mess.
Speaker 2: Up either taste.
Speaker 3: I know it's supposed to have wine and it's supposed
Speaker 3: to reflect and augment the food. I just want the
Speaker 3: red sauce.
Speaker 4: Well, you can have whatever you want. Val Biden, you
Speaker 4: can have whatever you want. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: I'm going to come see you.
Speaker 4: Okay, we'll waity for you. We're going to get that
Speaker 4: dive coke and red tomato sauce and glass of white
Speaker 4: wine ready for you. To visit the online shop of
Speaker 4: the cafe, go to shop Therivercafe dot co dot Ukka.
Speaker 1: River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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