Posted on 10/26/2010 2:53:15 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
You may never know which meal will be your last.
It could be one chosen by a caretaker or hospital staffer, served to you in your sickbed. Perhaps your last bite will be a deliberate choice, such as the vegetable soup that Adolf Hitler sipped before killing himself.
Or, it may be a random meal that you don’t expect to be your culinary goodbye — such as the Dover sole and champagne that Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed were served at the Ritz Hotel in Paris before a car crash took their lives.
Final meals hold a special fascination for Andrew Caldwell, a chef and historian who lives in Orlando, Fla. His book, “Their Last Suppers: Legends of History and Their Final Meals,” chronicles the last flavors savored by a host of historical figures and contemporary celebrities.
“Most things in life are written down. Even the Romans wrote everything down,” said Caldwell, who visited many of the death sites he writes about in the book to ensure accuracy.
“Finding out what people ate, it’s like looking over their shoulders, seeing how they lived,” he added.
Abraham Lincoln, for example, was “a simple guy. He liked chicken fricassee, oxtails, apple pie. He liked good home-cooked grub.”
Before going to Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, to see “Our American Cousin,” Lincoln feasted on a Good Friday dinner at the White House. The menu: mock turtle soup (with oxtail), roast Virginia fowl with chestnut stuffing, baked yams and cauliflower with cheese sauce.
He was shot that same night in the theater and died the next morning.
Other last meals, according to the book:
(Excerpt) Read more at wickedlocal.com ...
What did Bonnie Bailey have before Baretta blew her brains out?
Who gives a crud?
>> Martin Luther King Jr... last dinner: fried chicken, Louisiana hot sauce and vinegar, black-eyed peas, collard greens and cornbread.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
I should not laugh but she was a really creepy person and scam artist. I think they were at a local Italian restaurant.
Was her name Bonnie Blakley?
Rock Hudson’s ... bad meat, in the can ...
I think (”Lee”) Liberace had the same meal - ditto Freddie Mercury.
About last year on MLK day, some school served up this meal and was branded racist for it! Go figure!
A few days ago, at work, I had fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, and corn on the cob, served up by a *gasp* black guy.
I guess I should be filing complaints of EO violations.
I never figured out what is racist about fried chicken. Around here, it seems like everyone likes it, regardless of race.
I thought Liberace died in a car accident. I heard that he was rear ended.
IIRC, Liberace died of full-blown AIDS at age 67, a record yet to be equalled.
>> I never figured out what is racist about fried chicken.
I loves me some fried chicken! Really good fried chicken with really good french fries *is* to die for. And I’m not the least bit black, even if I did say I was on my census form. ;-)
Where I come from in the deep south, fried chicken, blackeye peas, collards, and cornbread is just a good meal, not a black or white thing.
Where I come from in the deep south, fried chicken, blackeye peas, collards, and cornbread is just a good meal, not a black or white thing.
Hell, you don't even need to be from the deep south to know fried chicken, cowpeas, greens, and cornbread is a damned good meal.
My household meal planning for the week just changed!
Is the world finally running out of things to talk about?
ping
My wife makes the best collards that I ever had, bar none! She makes a giant pot of collards and I cook the cornbread and we eat that all week.
Don’t ya just love that musty smell in the house that comes with cooking collard greens? ... No, I’m serious. I remember that smell from my first marriage, visiting my inlaws. I just love that smell cause it means ‘Good Eats’! Pour the juice from the black-eyed pea pot on the greens and the cronbread, add a sprinkle of malt vinegar on the greens, and dig in!
“Mama Cass — ham sandwich.”
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