First Lady Michelle Obama, Desiree Rogers preview White House dinner tonight. Menu. Pool reports(2)

*After the menus been planned how many days ahead Do you start preparing?
Comerford said, "It takes only two days, but the planning stage is the longest stage, and of course connecting with the growers, the purveyors...for any menu to be successful those are the key relationships....So pretty much this whole menu is built on American relationships."

After the tasting meal, Mrs. Obama said they wanted to mix and match foods they sampled and she said of the White House chefs, "They made all our kooky ideas make sense."

After a lull in the questions, Mrs. Obama prodded the students.
"Don't be afraid," she said, suggesting they "sort of think of the professional questions that you have, you know how do you.. One of the questions that I have is 'how do you become executive (I think she said chef.)

That prompted one of the shy students to ask, "Are you taking interns?"

Chef Comerford said they are open for part time help. (Apply to White House Usher's office)

*The D.C. restaurant scene. How much do you partner....with people in the area?
Comerford said relations with other chefs in the area are cordial, "we kind of like, chitchat a bit and we visit their places and we ask questions, so, trying to like take you know, like some ideas20from them...share your ideas, that exchange, I mean, you grow as a chef."

*Normal day?
Chef Comerford said, "somebody will open up the kitchen to cook breakfast and take care of the First Family...Sasha and Malia are going to school early in the morning. We have to be up there before they kind of go to the kitchen.....Somebody else will come in and take care of what needs to be taken care of for lunch because Mrs. Obama likes to have her lunch a certain way and we have actually have introduced some dishes you will enjoy for years to come. And then there will be another ... chef to come in to cook dinner....in between that we have a support staff that we have to feed; we have events that we have to contend with, menu writing, purveying, you know staffing people, it's not just the cooking itself."

*Mrs. Obama, what is your favorite thing that staff makes?
"There's some mean waffles and g rits that are made in the morning that's become a regular staple for some of us; I don't eat waffles every day...the soups and salads that Chris has made for lunchs....some light, healthy salads and, you know being able to make a soup that tastes creamy without being creamy because that is something that we work on, 'how do we keep the calories down but keep the flavors up."'

She went on to praise the creamed spinach on the menu tonight, "that is an amazing spinach, a creamed spinach without cream. There is no way you would eat that and not think that it wasn't filled with cream and cheese."

Comerford said this is how she does it ....Sauteed spinach, olive oil and shallots last minute whipped into a puree...keeps all the nutritional value in it....

"It's delicious," Comerford said.

Said Mrs. Obama, "Sasha still didn9 9t like it."

*Local produce?
Chef Comerford: They partner with local growers, farmer and purveyors. For security reasons, vendors "don't know that it is going directly here." From Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland.


As the event closed, the students, as mentioned in first pool report, were served desert.
Mrs. Obama said the press should take a taste.
Your pooler, in the line of duty, sampled two pieces of dark chocolate with carmel inside. Very tasty.
Mrs. Obama posed for pictures with the students.

QUOTES FROM STUDENTS AT THE EVENT.
Afterwards, Patrici a Alonso, 23, of Silver Springs, Md., a pastry student, said she learned from the visit "the amount of planning that goes into this is tremendous." She was a lab tech a Walter Reed before enrolling in cooking school.

Kaitlin Giuffre, 22, of Bethesda, another pastry student who works in a Bethesda bakery said, "I guess I did not realize how much planning goes into every little detail of the menu."