More Songs About Buildings and Food
One of the funnest stories this cycle has been the Caucus Book Club.
I meant to write about it this when it was first reported in the Register in March.
However, there was some buzz this past weekend when CBS and NPR picked up the story so I figured I better get in on the action
The club’s 583 members have 14 books on their reading list so far. The total assignment tops 3,000 pages, and more tomes are expected as new candidates join the race. The club's plan is to read one book every three weeks.
The initial reading list was arranged in alphabetical order — from Booker to Yang — among the candidates who were running on March 1. That’s when Andrea Phillips of Ankeny, the Iowa Democratic Party’s vice chair, launched the club.
The Register at the time pointed out that the group was starting with Cory Booker (well, there was no Rubin Askew or Bruce Babbitt, so the first name on the list was Joe Biden, who had not announced and thus went to the end of the list). Booker met with the group online and when asked, named James Baldwin’s “Fire Next Time” his favorite book.
It is a pretty fun idea, based on a near-tweet by Phillips. She had read Pete Buttigieg’s book but she wondered if she tweeted about it, would that be considered an endorsement? Would liking Pete be a slight to authors Harris, Sanders and Gillibrand to name three other authors?
In the NPR article, we find out that Julian Castro is a fan of The Godfather (“better than the movie”) and The Exorcist books
Also Attorney/Book Club Member Brad Hopkins likely speaks for many in the NPR article when he says “Weathers getting warmer here and even the most engaged Iowa voter would rather spend some time outside than with his nose in a bunch of books.” Bad news for authors named Warren and Yang.
I have a shelf full of the candidate-author book but near all of them have been gifts. Sure, there’s Jim Webb’s History of the Scots-Irish and a few books that I have for the autograph inside. Still, the ‘candidate book’ is generally a template that I have tried to avoid in recent years.
Speaking of Caucus themes, in Ladora (40 miles west of Iowa City), the Caucus Bistro is planned to open up this month, as reported by Iowa Public Radio.
The restaurant it replaces looks excellent (5 stars on both Yelp and TripAdvisor). It looks as even with menu item names like Lame Duck Flatbread, The Incumbent and The Mar-A-Lago club and pics of Jimmy Carter, among others and located in the towns Historic Bank Building. Like its predecessor, it may become destination dining.
Because I am friends with epicureans, I won’t complain, but my idea for the Caucus is something more populist.
I think of Ice Cream places like The Cone Shoppe in Monticello where Joe Biden visited in April or LeMars’s Blue Bunny Parlor, favorite of many candidates including Mike Huckabee and John McCain .
I think of comfort food places where you can get so full you can’t walk for $20 or less like the Machine Shed in Des Moines where Sarah Palin was greeted by “Run Sarah Run” chants in September of 2011 and Rick Santorum drew 150 people in that same year; or The Hamburg Inn near Iowa City, a bipartisan favorite of John Edwards and Chris Christie; or even Hickory Park in Ames, where in 2007, Mitt Romney catered his Straw Poll supporters (the favorite, Romney won the Poll easily, though not the next year’s Caucus).
Of course, the Caucuses have an unofficial restaurant. The pizza buffet chain is closely linked to the Caucus, so much so I suspect it seems a unique news item when it comes up as it has in the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times and the Seattle Times (2011) NPR (2015) the Des Moines Register and Fortune and ABC, CBS & NBC News(2016)
Pizza Ranch is fairly partisan which means you won’t see the usual headline this year, and you’re not likely to see any pictures of Carter (Boone Iowa’s Pizza Ranch renamed their dish “the Santorum Salad” for a time). Though, to be fair Amy Klobuchar and John Delaney have done Pizza Ranch events this cycle. Of course, back in 2015, Ex-Godfather’s CEO Herman Cain wouldn't be caught in one, prefering his usual stomping grounds.
Food does play a part in viral Caucus stories like in 2015 when the Register ran the headline “Huckabee event halts mans trip through Buffet”. This year’s similar story is “An Iowa woman interrupted a Kristen Gillibrand event for ranch dressing”, which is the perfect story for places like Vice and Eater, and Ranch Girl went viral.
The Washington Post reported: In a 17-second video shared on Twitter that had been viewed more than 689,000 times as of early Wednesday, the Iowa native could be seen working her way through the people surrounding the presidential hopeful. But when Gillibrand turned to her, Kinney, much to the delight of the crowd and the Internet, blurted, “Sorry, I’m just trying to get some ranch,” as she quickly disappeared into the throng of people.
Being someone who is only 5-2, I can’t really see over most people, so I was like, I’ll just have to push through,” she said, using a method that combined sliding and wiggling. “I was just a girl on a mission to get some ranch for me and my friends.”
From Bustle: “It’s one of those restaurants that make it homemade, which is very common in Iowa, to be honest. I was going down there to grab it — it’s not just me, a few of my other friends in Bible study enjoy the ranch — because it’s sort of my job in the group.”
For the record, I have had one friend who has run into Kirsten Gillibrand at a coffee shop and another met Elizabeth Warren at the airport. With 23 or so candidates, you almost can’t not run into one.
The best news story ever written about the Iowa Caucuses though, remains The Onion: Iowa Restaurant Patron Remembers Every Breakfast Ruined by Presidential Candidates
I meant to write about it this when it was first reported in the Register in March.
However, there was some buzz this past weekend when CBS and NPR picked up the story so I figured I better get in on the action
The club’s 583 members have 14 books on their reading list so far. The total assignment tops 3,000 pages, and more tomes are expected as new candidates join the race. The club's plan is to read one book every three weeks.
The initial reading list was arranged in alphabetical order — from Booker to Yang — among the candidates who were running on March 1. That’s when Andrea Phillips of Ankeny, the Iowa Democratic Party’s vice chair, launched the club.
The Register at the time pointed out that the group was starting with Cory Booker (well, there was no Rubin Askew or Bruce Babbitt, so the first name on the list was Joe Biden, who had not announced and thus went to the end of the list). Booker met with the group online and when asked, named James Baldwin’s “Fire Next Time” his favorite book.
It is a pretty fun idea, based on a near-tweet by Phillips. She had read Pete Buttigieg’s book but she wondered if she tweeted about it, would that be considered an endorsement? Would liking Pete be a slight to authors Harris, Sanders and Gillibrand to name three other authors?
In the NPR article, we find out that Julian Castro is a fan of The Godfather (“better than the movie”) and The Exorcist books
Also Attorney/Book Club Member Brad Hopkins likely speaks for many in the NPR article when he says “Weathers getting warmer here and even the most engaged Iowa voter would rather spend some time outside than with his nose in a bunch of books.” Bad news for authors named Warren and Yang.
I have a shelf full of the candidate-author book but near all of them have been gifts. Sure, there’s Jim Webb’s History of the Scots-Irish and a few books that I have for the autograph inside. Still, the ‘candidate book’ is generally a template that I have tried to avoid in recent years.
Speaking of Caucus themes, in Ladora (40 miles west of Iowa City), the Caucus Bistro is planned to open up this month, as reported by Iowa Public Radio.
The restaurant it replaces looks excellent (5 stars on both Yelp and TripAdvisor). It looks as even with menu item names like Lame Duck Flatbread, The Incumbent and The Mar-A-Lago club and pics of Jimmy Carter, among others and located in the towns Historic Bank Building. Like its predecessor, it may become destination dining.
Because I am friends with epicureans, I won’t complain, but my idea for the Caucus is something more populist.
I think of Ice Cream places like The Cone Shoppe in Monticello where Joe Biden visited in April or LeMars’s Blue Bunny Parlor, favorite of many candidates including Mike Huckabee and John McCain .
I think of comfort food places where you can get so full you can’t walk for $20 or less like the Machine Shed in Des Moines where Sarah Palin was greeted by “Run Sarah Run” chants in September of 2011 and Rick Santorum drew 150 people in that same year; or The Hamburg Inn near Iowa City, a bipartisan favorite of John Edwards and Chris Christie; or even Hickory Park in Ames, where in 2007, Mitt Romney catered his Straw Poll supporters (the favorite, Romney won the Poll easily, though not the next year’s Caucus).
Of course, the Caucuses have an unofficial restaurant. The pizza buffet chain is closely linked to the Caucus, so much so I suspect it seems a unique news item when it comes up as it has in the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times and the Seattle Times (2011) NPR (2015) the Des Moines Register and Fortune and ABC, CBS & NBC News(2016)
Pizza Ranch is fairly partisan which means you won’t see the usual headline this year, and you’re not likely to see any pictures of Carter (Boone Iowa’s Pizza Ranch renamed their dish “the Santorum Salad” for a time). Though, to be fair Amy Klobuchar and John Delaney have done Pizza Ranch events this cycle. Of course, back in 2015, Ex-Godfather’s CEO Herman Cain wouldn't be caught in one, prefering his usual stomping grounds.
Food does play a part in viral Caucus stories like in 2015 when the Register ran the headline “Huckabee event halts mans trip through Buffet”. This year’s similar story is “An Iowa woman interrupted a Kristen Gillibrand event for ranch dressing”, which is the perfect story for places like Vice and Eater, and Ranch Girl went viral.
The Washington Post reported: In a 17-second video shared on Twitter that had been viewed more than 689,000 times as of early Wednesday, the Iowa native could be seen working her way through the people surrounding the presidential hopeful. But when Gillibrand turned to her, Kinney, much to the delight of the crowd and the Internet, blurted, “Sorry, I’m just trying to get some ranch,” as she quickly disappeared into the throng of people.
Being someone who is only 5-2, I can’t really see over most people, so I was like, I’ll just have to push through,” she said, using a method that combined sliding and wiggling. “I was just a girl on a mission to get some ranch for me and my friends.”
From Bustle: “It’s one of those restaurants that make it homemade, which is very common in Iowa, to be honest. I was going down there to grab it — it’s not just me, a few of my other friends in Bible study enjoy the ranch — because it’s sort of my job in the group.”
For the record, I have had one friend who has run into Kirsten Gillibrand at a coffee shop and another met Elizabeth Warren at the airport. With 23 or so candidates, you almost can’t not run into one.
The best news story ever written about the Iowa Caucuses though, remains The Onion: Iowa Restaurant Patron Remembers Every Breakfast Ruined by Presidential Candidates
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