Hey, Milkstreet Radio listeners, for our Thanksgiving episode this year, we want to tackle your

greatest Thanksgiving cooking challenges, savory and sweet. So if you need a new side dish, for example,

or help with your pie dough, we're here to help. Email us at questions at milkstreetradio.com.

One more time. Thanksgiving questions, please send them to questions at milkstreetradio.com.

Thanks.

This is Milk Street Radio from PRX.

I'm your host, Christopher Kimball.

While in office, Franklin Roosevelt thought a lot about food.

He craved fish-cooked-in-clay, had pheasins flown to him from Scotland,

and also had a taste for buffalo tongue.

And yet, his White House kitchen had a very different reputation.

Ernest Hemingway describes this dinner as one of the worst he's ever had.

You know, limp beans, a very thin worst he's ever had. You know, a limp beans,

a very thin soup, and he says, you know, I will not be going back there ever again.

Today, Alex Prudome shares food stories from presidential history, from what went so wrong under

FDR, to the meals that shaped American politics.

Jefferson convenes this wonderful dinner with James Madison and Alexander Hamilton,

and it's only a slight exaggeration to say that this particular dinner saved the Republic.

That's coming up later on the show.

First, it's my conversation with the late Raghavan Ayer.

I had the privilege of speaking with him in January about his book On the Curry Trail,

chasing the flavor that seduced the world.

...