Adele Ferguson: So, what's on the menu at big-ticket dinners?

THERE’S something really wrong in this country when we have so many people out of work and unable to realize the American dream of owning your own home because of sky-high prices, yet we have a president jetting all over the country day after day meeting and dining with people eager and able to pay up to $40,000 for the privilege.

Barack Obama picked up $15 million at one of those $40,000 a plate feasts at the home of actor George Clooney, and during that same weekend ate in Seattle with 50 couples who forked over $35,800 apiece and sat down at two $35,000 a plate meals in San Francisco.

I WAS CURIOUS what they’d feed somebody for that kind of money but the menu was hard to come by. My computer junkie daughter dug around until she came up with the info that the Clooney get together featured Peking style roast duckling cooked by Wolfgang Puck, plus duo of lamb and beef cheeks in a recipe especially created by the chef for the occasion. The 150 guests dined at 15 round tables in the Clooney basketball court.

At first my daughter reported the meal had been tuna tartare but she had stumbled onto the menu for a special pre-Mother’s Day tea hosted by First Lady Michele Obama and Vice President Joe Biden for military mothers, grandmothers and children.

Besides the raw tuna which I wouldn’t think would go over well with children, they served tiny finger sandwiches, blueberry scones with White House jams, coconut cake and cookies shaped like the First Dog, Bo.

The President also made a stop at the Paramount Theater while he was here where brunch was served at from $1,000 to $2,000. Guests could have their pictures taken with the president for $7,000 or $10,000 for a couple.

INCIDENTALLY, I ran across in my journal some menus for previous meals for visiting dignitaries you might find interesting.

Dinner with Queen Elizabeth II May, 2007, in the George Bush White House was spring pea soup, Dover sole almondine, roasted artichokes, saddle of spring lamb with chanterelle sauce, arugula with champagne dressing, English farmhouse cheeses, petit fors with a sugar replica of the queen’s 1953 coronation rose.

A Bush luncheon for French President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 consisted of hamburgers, hot dogs, baked beans, Maine corn on the cob, fresh tomatoes, Maine blueberry pie.

The Bushes also entertained China’s President Hu Jintao with what was described as a “Quintessential America meal” capped with apple pie and vanilla ice cream and washed down with Washington wines, a 2005 Columbia Valley Quilceda Creek Cabernet and a 2008 Poet’s Leap Botrytis Reisling. They started with a D’Anjou pear salad, poached Maine lobster, a canapé of shrimp from Massachusetts and smoked rainbow trout from Idaho with orange glaze carrots and black trumpet mushrooms.

The main course was a dry aged rib eye with crisp onions, double stuffed potatoes and creamed spinach.

At a dinner the State Department gave in D.C. for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olinert, the meal was keyed to kosher and Muslim dietary restrictions: Entrees of either red and yellow beet salad with curried mango dressing or honey-soy glazed sea bass with cabbage, snow peas and mushrooms.

I was invited once to a luncheon the Booth Gardners gave at the mansion which included some burly state troopers who paled at the sight of what looked like roasted swallows with teensy baby zucchini and carrots. But that’s another story.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)