That sounds like a political statement, but it isn’t meant as one. Bill Yosses is the executive pastry chef at the White House. (Do our tax dollars really provide for an executive pastry chef? Surely there is a bakery down the street somewhere in Washington D.C. that can provide cakes and cookies!) Nevertheless, Mr. Yosses is resigning because First Lady Michelle Obama has fundamentally changed his job duties. She wants her pastry chef to make healthier desserts.
Laura Bush hired Bill Yosses to make his famous cookie plates and sugar sculptures. In 2009, Michelle Obama asked him to make healthier plates with smaller portions. Yosses did his best, replacing butter with fruit puree, and sugar with honey and agave. Now, he has decided to resign.
The pastry chef said, “I don’t want to demonize cream, butter, sugar and eggs.” Something tells me that the fruit puree cookies with honey and agave just didn’t meet his culinary standards. I would tend to agree. If a person is going to eat a cookie, it ought to taste like butter, sugar and eggs.
Michelle Obama said she was, “Incredibly sad to see Bill Yosses go” and Bill Yosses said his leaving was a “bittersweet decision.” (Could that be an inside jab on the kind of chocolate he was allowed to use?)
Maybe I am feeling a little cranky today because of the annual get ready for spring/summer diet that I have chosen. I have been eating rabbit food, chicken and fish for a couple of weeks and, the promise that this diet would rid me of my desire for all things fattening, has not come to pass. I want one of Mr. Yosses’ cookies, and not the Michelle Obama edition!
I am actually a fan of what Mrs. Obama is trying to do. There is no doubt that our country needs to adopt healthier habits. But, I don’t think physical health is the only problem we have in this country. We need to adopt healthier habits spiritually as well.
I don’t want to demonize cream, butter, sugar and eggs for cookies. It isn’t the occasional delicious cookie that is the problem. It is the over-indulgence of said cookies and other such things that is causing the rate of diabetes to soar in our nation.
At some point in our history we became convinced that we deserve to have whatever we want, whenever we want, in any quantity we want. Many of us have grown sluggish physically and we have also grown sluggish spiritually.
Paul taught Timothy to, “Do your best to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). Our spiritual lives require a strong knowledge of God’s word and of God’s Holy Spirit. If we want to be healthy physically and spiritually, it is going to require a commitment to work hard and set godly priorities.
So . . .physically we need to:
Eat smart, eat less and exercise each day. Almost every diet leads to that same road.
If we want to be stronger spiritually we need to:
Know what God has said.
Go wherever God has led.
Keep yourselves biblically well fed. (Come to think of it, the Bible is the one thing we should over-indulge on!)
I’m sorry for the Obama family’s loss. A good executive pastry chef is probably hard to replace. I would send them a care package but I don’t have any recipes with agave and I bet the Secret Service would make sure the butter, cream and egg cookies never made it to the oval office. Oh well, she probably has hired a new executive pastry chef by now anyway – and I bet he or she has agave.
I wish you all a healthy, happy Lenten season!
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