April 29, practitioner 2009 marked the first harvest!  One hundred days after moving into 1600 Pennsylania Avenue, malady and less than three weeks after Mrs. Obama and the Bancroft Elementary School kids planted the White House Kitchen Garden, medstore the Obamas enjoyed their first tastes of their homegrown garden.  (Actually, according to Jane Black, it sounds like the first salad was served to President Obama and his hungry starving economic advisors.  No word if Bo licked the plates clean.)

Oak leaf lettuce, red romaine, speckled lettuce, fennel were among the first varieties harvested.   Rhubarb was harvested as well, bound for a strawberry-rhubarb dessert sauce to be served at Miriam’s Kitchen’s annual fundraising gala.  Mmmmm!!!!  This is the first of many donations bound for Miriam’s Kitchen.  And it is in line with historical precedent.  During World War I, First Lady Edith Wilson donated wool from the White House flock of sheep (aka Living Lawnmowers) for the Red Cross, which they in turn auctioned off to sweater-knitters nationwide.

Read all the details at the Washington Post’s brand spanking new Food Blog, All We Can Eat.  Jane Black reports on The First Garden’s First Supper.

And get your own Oak Leaf Lettuce seeds and oh, so much more from Vermont’s finest High Mowing Organic Seeds or your seed purveyor of choice.  (Oak Leaf Lettuce photo credit: High Mowing Organic Seeds.)