Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios.
A few weeks ago, a very special person came to dinner at our home, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. Before greeting the other guests, Nancy and I talked together about food and politics, food and family, food in her Italian American childhood, and being the mother of five children. We also spent quite a lot of time talking about our shared passion for chocolate ice cream. Is it sev? What time is it the seventh? Okay, well they want.
Us to not time to eat yet, but I can't wait.
I can't wait up tonight we're having two chocolate Okay.
I was thinking that can make that my whole meal.
I won't.
My husband and I got married. We lived in New York now New York for me. When I was a young girl, a child really, our family would go to New York regularly. We'd go to plays, we'd go to dinner. All that New York was like heaven. So here we were young, married in Manhattan. Paul was working but we didn't have children yet.
The first year and what kind of restaurants would you seek out.
We had shall we say, champagne taste and beer bottled purses, so we didn't say that and go. We would go to the best restaurants as if we were entitled, almost or we would just go to the neighborhood Italian Americans on New York or something, or the corner place to have whatever it was. But New York was great because, for example, if you wanted to have chopped chicken livers, oh my gosh, the best place in the world for chopped chicken. You know, anything you wanted, the best was
there carry out that would be. But we were largely into dining out. Then we had children, and then it was more than me.
And so when you when you were bringing up the children, did you follow your mother's footsteps? Did you have somebody helping? No?
No, we had no help none. I mean, that was a different world. When you have five children in six years, help doesn't come anywhere near your house. They take detours you.
Help wouldn't come near you.
Oh my gosh, why would they.
You could go work with somebody with one child or two children, why would they going to work with somebody with five children?
So how did you do it?
It was intense. It was intense, but I would love to do it all over again. It was the most glorious thing.
Even lived in an apartment in New York. Or was that time we were in San francisc.
No, well, we had four children in New York.
We did.
We left New York.
We had four children, the oldest was four, and we had a lovely apartment in Beakman Place, and then we moved to San Francisco and had a big home. I mean, we didn't realize how small our apartment was until we moved into a home in San Francisco, and that was lovely.
And then we had our fifth child there.
And how did you cook for five children? Did you both cook? Did you cook? How did you feed them healthily?
They'll not say that I was a great cook. I mean it was standard fair. And then as they got older, I just got tired of washing pots and pants. I didn't want to wash anymore pots and pans. So I developed a practice where I would go to some place, say MacArthur Park, which was a restaurant then that the greatest ribs okay. Or we go to Lorocas which was a seafood place. Or we go to Chinatown, taking duck and I would make a salad, and I would bring
home this food. And it wasn't strictly carry out like.
Fast food.
It was delicious food from these restaurants. We have this meal Linen's salad. So when I went to Congress, my youngest daughter, Alexandra, she said, mother, I'm so proud of you because you're a pioneer. I said, really, because I'm a woman member of Congress. She said, no, Remember when you used to cook and then you stopped. Well, now a lot of people stop cooking, but you were the first to stop.
Oh good, that's good that you pioneer. Oh it is a liberation, isn't it. It can be creative cooking. It can be exciting, it can be relaxing. I think affair.
Yeah, it's a lovely thing.
But three times day, every day, and with five children, five will get you ten every time because they bring So it's a thing.
Yeah.
But the pots got me, the pots and pants that got me.
So you got you got that's good. And then the children got older. You then became more and more involved in politics and participates.
Always said, we're in school all day.
How did food fit into that life? I mean, how did it fit into working and being a working mother.
Well, the children would call it child labor. But we would have many events at our home all the time, and we always had food.
You know, the Democrats.
It was about people coming together, people coming so we would always have food so that kids would help prepare.
And they say to.
This day, you know, for every salmon on a bagel, we'd eat one and put one on the tray, and these little ones. And when we would have dinners. I hope none of our guests hear this, but here's how we would do it. Say we have like many many people coming to dinner. Once we had nearly two hundred, we had a big house. We bought one of those pools, you know, those little pools that children. You inflate it, fill it with water and wash the lettuce in there.
Then you put it in a pillowcase, tie a knot in it, and you put it on the spin cycle.
The dishes in the washing machine. The washing washing machine.
We have to be very careful because sometimes while we tell people and they get it mixed up, they put it in the dryer. That doesn't work. Had to be in the spin cycle of the washing machine and come out crispy. You have to have a big thing to wash the lettuce and spin cycle.
Have Edie Vachel taken on that recipe for us, No, I.
Don't think so.
I think that they don't entertain one hundred people at a time.
So I think shopping is a hard thing to do. Don't you think getting this shopping done well.
We have a little motto.
If I don't have to shop for it, cook it, or clean it up, I'm all in for it, whatever it is.
But that's not your life.
It's very important. It's an art. I remember fascinating my grandchildren by having them put a mountain of flour. Each had their mountain of flour, break eggs and net, mix it up this that and net, let it sit, roll it out neat, you know, put us through the machine and in the pot of water, and they're eating pasta that was a mound of flour with an egg in the middle.
They had their own individual.
Cooking in a restaurant, I say, people say to me, how can you cook for two hundred people? And I can't cook for eight? And I go, I don't think I can cook for eight. It's much harder, you know, because in a restaurant. It's so collaborative. You have somebody chopping the barsa and somebody helping you pick the crab. I think for a lot of people cooking at home as a performance, and you know, and it's quite hard to entertain. You feel that you are being judged or
is it good enough? Or well is it hot? It's the old thing and it keeping it hot. Yeah, that's a challenge in a restaurant too. And so what about the Washington moving from San Francisco is a very food city. I mean you have Alice Walters, you had Judy Rogers, you have women chef, you have so many different types of food. So was it a big wrench going from such a food city to Washington.
Let me just say I live in San Francisco, I work in Washington, Okay, And I was always working because San Francisco is three hours earlier, so when other people might go out to dinner, it was at seven o'clos four o'clock in the afternoon in San Francisco. So I was really always working. And people would say, what's a
good restaurant. I mean, I'm the worst person to ask, but there are some wonderful restaurants in Washington that I can now and look forward to, you know, just putting work on the shelf.
What do you like about a restaurant? What do you look for in a restaurant? Is it the food? Is it the welcome, is it the descort? What?
First and foremost, it's the food. And it's very, very important that there'd be a tablecloth. The tablecloth is not only a tablecloth, it's absorbed sound. So it's little calmer when you have that. Now there are many restaurants that don't have tablecloths, that are wonderful restaurants. But I'm always happy when I have a tablecloth, still at this point in life. And I especially still like Italian food. But
of course I like friend. I like all you know, good food, just like they're all different kinds of music, from classical to rap whatever. Just as long as it's good, it's good. And same thing with food. Well, we have California, we have you know, the Mexican influence, we have the we have every kind of food you can imagine in the world.
In San Francisco.
So have great farms. And I think Alice has done great. She's farmed to the table. She's a force.
This I mean unbelievable. Yeah, she's fabulous in every way.
Do you ever work at a restaurant? Would you take somebody out and work over dinner or do you find that you kind of work when you work and you eat when you eat?
I like just to enjoy dinner. Now, maybe that's being Italian.
I don't know.
I'm a big believer in putting things on the shelf. There's an expression in Latin a jay kuadaj. Just do what you're doing if you're dining, if you're eating, and then even if it means you have to split the eating out and I'll work then, But I don't want to do them together, especially since some times your conversations can become.
Contentious.
I mean, I don't mean in a negative way, but it's like, why are we talking about this now? I'm trying to eat my dinner.
And what about How does food fit into your work life? Do you stop always for lunch? Do you have a sandwich at your desk? Does it depend on the day my work? No food?
Well, I have a salad maybe at my desk, but like on Wednesdays, I have now for a long time now, it's been a pick up lunch for my members. I wish that I could be having them for dinner more and stuff that we really can't because of COVID for a long time, and some of the restaurants that would be able to handle that scale just don't even exist any I mean, some of them have moved on. But the food is not an important part of my life in DC.
In DC, when you travel, do you look forward to having a state dinner or lunch? Is it something that you think about on your foreign trips? What did you have for lunch today? In London?
Today we had a beautiful lunch hosted by the Speaker of the Househoil. It was lovely in every way and he told me that they have a cook there at the House of Commons, and it was beautiful in every way. It was a lovely, lovely dining experience. It wasn't just eating lunch. It was a dining experience.
How many of you were there?
Maybe one table, probably at least forty people at the table, big long table, beautiful, beautiful flowers, beautiful food.
It was. It was lovely.
AND's London's come a long way, baby, I mean from when we would come here when we were young.
Now you have everything yeah, you have everything.
It's really really good restaurants in London very much. Where were you last night?
Last night we were at IV How good that nice?
I love Scott's.
Yeah. And we have to get you to the River Cafe.
Oh yeah, all of the River Cafe too. You're in there.
You come to myrowng time. One thing we have to get. We're closed on Sunday nights, so you're forgiven for last time. But we would love you to come.
And I like Wolsey because it has a lot of we love it.
I want to chocolate.
That's why I go there. I mean, yeah, one of the reasons.
That's a great restaurant I think London has. Definitely there's so many different types again, different types of restaurants, and that's one of the heartbreaking things about Brexit, you know, is that we want to encourage different cultures and being open and that's something we we must we mustn't forget. We share values, we share concern for inequality, the fact that there are children who are going to bed hungry
in Britain and in the United States. That we know that during the pandemic, certainly in this country, school shot a lot of children that was their main meal, and so being in a position of influence and policy, what do you feel about the question of child hunger, of hunger, yes, well you know homeless people queuing up for food.
Well, I always say to members of Congress, know your why. I'll tell people your why. Why do you think you should be in Congress? What has motivated you? And my why why I went from the kitchen to the Congress, from housewives to house speaker was that one in five children in America goes to sleep hungry at night. That
I couldn't handle it. It was just that we had five children, and you think one of these children will not have food, will not will go to sleep hungry at night in America now and take it globally, and it's sinful. It's sinful any place. It's immoral. And that was my motivation and all that that implied. If they were hungry, they weren't learning to their capacity, they were not feeling that their needs were being met, and their families were just not able to meet their families' needs.
And it is a kitchen table issue for some families. Are they going to be able to put food on the table, pay the rent, pay the utility, bill pay for their children to go to school if that required
some payment. So the food issue, that one in five children living in poverty going to sleep hungry at night was my why, and so we all every step of the way, have worked for policy to alleviate that, to not only supply food, food programs, launch protos and that, but also to improve the standard of living of people so that they didn't have to choose between paying the rent or feeding their children at dinner or taking a turn eating.
And when you went into Congress, I just will say, what was it one in five, how many years ago?
And it's still the same.
And that's really what's so tragic, because no matter how you try to do one thing and another, all kinds of things come along. My also when I went to Congress was to fight HIV AIDS, and that was my first speech on the floor of the House was about AIDS. So you have all these challenges, and right now with COVID, when we're talking about the Southern hemisphere and that people are like, I have to worry about feeding my family before I worry about what else is going on in the world.
And it's still a challenge.
It shouldn't be and again, it's it isn't even an issue, it's a value.
It's an ethic.
It's a value that goes way back. The concern, you know, for looking after children is something that is just eight years old. It's something that is a principle forever. And in a way, it was very much feeding your children and taking care of them. And then we became as we advanced, we knew that we had to also educate them and we also had to treat them in a certain we had to love them, we had to you know,
show them different environments. But that we still haven't achieved the feeding of children.
And when you think of it, Ruthie, when you think that, when we're raising our own children, it's about nutrition and you know, feeding the right thing, and then these.
Other children.
We have urban deserts in terms of you go to the store and it's all process food. It's not fresh vegetables or fresh fish, this, that and the other thing. So these children are not even getting the nutrition even if they're getting fed.
And adults, you know, Steve McQueen, the director, told me that he was in Chicago and there were no vegetable stores in poor areas. So it's something that we all need to keep.
Just for one example, in Flint, Michigan, when they had the water crisis, it gives me chills just to even think about what it meant for those children. They were drinking water that was harmful to them, but not only that, it hurt their development in the rest. And we had scientists and doctors who would come to us and say, the only way out is for these children to have fresh food and vegetables.
And you know all.
This, and if you go there, there might be one store someplace that might not be near where they are, whatever it is that would supply that. Now we're getting a little more informed to that. You have to have stores that are farmers' markets and things like that where people can get fresh, fresh food. But it is directly related to the development of their brains.
And this is how we should judge a society and the value we place in the future of our children.
So it's not only a value, it's an art.
And that's what I was going. We're coming and they're all waiting for us upstairs. But before we do, go upstairs and eat and talk and greet the people who are all waiting for you. In London, I would say that we agree that food is values, food is an art, food is family, food is memories. It is also comfort. And there's a food and I can probably guess what your answer is going to be, but there is a food that we turn to when we just need comfort.
And Nancy Pelosi, my friend, what would be your comfort food?
Ice cream? No, dark, very dark. The older I get, the darker the ice cream.
I would say that you were ever predictable, but I did predict that answer.
Thank you so much, thank you, thank you, thank you, love you, love you to thank you.
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River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.