Representative Tim Wirth's "White House Cracker Mess"

The name is a little on the nose. Not sure if Timbo was taking shots at the administration at the time — was he calling Ronald Reagan a cracker? We’ll never know. If so, pretty cold. What we do know is that Tim Wirth served this dish to his children and he served it to himself, and it’s going to make you very, very upset.

Chef Tim Wirth

Democratic Senator from Colorado

Favorite Food/Homespun Recipe: Homespun Recipe

Notable:

working under Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton; seeming like a pretty decent guy

Quotable:

“Having a hearing is educational. Having a hearing with television cameras is useful. Having a hearing with two rows of television cameras is Heaven.”

As always, I followed the recipe word for word, no alterations:

INGREDIENTS

Saltines

water

butter

INSTRUCTIONS

1) Soak saltine crackers in cold water until soggy.

Have to wash off all that spicy salt! This does not take long. I dropped a whole sleeve of saltines into a bowl of water, pushed them around for a moment and they were waterlogged. FAST. I strained them out and plopped them (it?) onto a sheet pan for the next step in this very short process.

2) Brush with butter and bake for an hour at 325 degrees.

Brushing this with butter felt like trying to paint ice cream. How can you brush something that is essentially a pile of slop? Nevertheless, I spread it out into a layer of saltine paste and tried.

Voila! If you want to actually watch me attempt to eat it, go to the Cookin’ with Congress Instagram or TikTok. In fact, you don’t even need a TikTok account to watch the videos — just go to the website on your laptop like my mom does. Wow. What a…mess. Does it look like a pile of flaked skin? Absolutely. Could I have simply toasted the crackers and then buttered them? Absolutely. Would I present this to my children? C’mon now.

Verdict:

I essentially unmade and remade a cracker.