Food not only nourishes our bodies, it feeds our minds. We know what we eat can make or break our moods and affect our decision-making. And in the United States, no brains carry more weight than the judicious minds behind the country’s highest court: the nine justices of the Supreme Court.
That’s why we started salivating when the Supreme Court released a cookbook stuffed with the judges’ favorite homemade recipes. What better way to feed your brain than to eat just like Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg? (Pair it with a book containing Ginsburg’s workout routines and you’re all set!)
Authored by Clare Cushman, director of publications for the Supreme Court Historical Society, Table for 9: Supreme Court Food Traditions & Recipes combines equal parts tried-and-true family recipes and tasty tidbits of the judges’ culinary lives. Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s jerky, a pasta sauce contributed by late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia’s wife Maureen, and an orange cake recipe whipped up by Ginsburg’s late husband Martin are among the delicious offerings featured.
More than 100 photos chronicle the court’s history of breaking bread together, capturing birthday celebrations (complete with cake, of course!), welcome and retirement dinners, and unscheduled lunch breaks behind the bench.
Here’s the cover of the cookbook, which contains a foreword written by Ginsburg herself.
According to Cushman, sharing meals makes for meaningful exchanges between justices in and out of the courtroom.
In the case of Ginsburg and Scalia, for example, food proved the essential ingredient to their unlikely friendship.
Alex Wong / Getty Images
“Justice Scalia would go shoot game — such as venison — and then bring it back for Martin Ginsburg, husband of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to cook it [into venison stew,]” Cushman told Mic, adding the families were close friends and even spent New Year’s Eve together on occasion.
Ginsburg and Scalia friends? Guilty as charged!
As Ginsburg wrote in the cookbook’s foreword, “Food in good company has sustained Supreme Court justices through the ages.”
Now that’s some delicious food for thought.
https://hellogiggles.com/reviews-coverage/books/supreme-court-cookbook-ruth-bader-ginsburg/