ROCKLAND, Maine — Scout Bookham said meeting first lady Michelle Obama was the thrill of her life.
The 9-year-old daughter of Daniel Bookham and Jessie Davis of Rockland won a trip to the White House by being selected as the Maine winner of the Healthy Lunchtime Challenge.
The young Bookham became Maine’s representative to the July 14 event at the White House by coming up with a recipe for quinoa chickpea salmon rolls and a salad.
The healthy lunchtime challenge, part of the Let’s Move program developed by Michelle Obama to help address the problem of childhood obesity, required youngsters to create a meal that was healthy, affordable and tasty. Competitors also had to include an ingredient that was related to their state.
In Scout’s recipe, the Maine ingredient she selected was blueberries. The blueberries were used in her spinach salad, which also had goat cheese and a blueberry dressing. Bookham said she had never made this dish before.
Maine may best be known, food-wise, as the home of lobsters, but that ingredient was eliminated because of the cost of the seafood.
“We had so much fun collaborating on this project,” Davis wrote in a Let’s Move blog post about her daughter’s winning entry, “and it was great to see how enthusiastic she was while fine-tuning her recipe, especially as she worked to get the salad dressing’s oil-to-vinegar ratio.”
Scout said her mother mentioned the lunchtime competition in February and asked her if she was interested in entering it. She was. The youngster said she doesn’t cook a lot but does eat healthy while enjoying junk food on occasion. Her favorite food is carrots.
In June, Davis received an email notifying the family that Scout had been selected to represent Maine. She informed her daughter by bringing out her suitcase and some cooking supplies.
Scout was one of 56 children from each state, territory and the District of Columbia to be invited to the White House. The family toured Washington, D.C., before the formal ceremony and got to see the exhibit of Julia Child’s kitchen at the Smithsonian Institution.
A formal state dinner was held for the young cooks, who were announced as each arrived. A Marine band performed during the event.
Scout said the highlight for her was meeting the first lady and having her photograph taken with Michelle Obama. After the photo was taken and she was walking away, Scout said she turned around and told the first lady that she was an amazing woman.
“She stopped, turned around and said, ‘No, you’re an amazing young woman,’” Scout recalled.
The students were encouraged to return to their communities and pay it forward in some way, Scout said.
She and her family have come up with the goal of having restaurants around the region offer the recipes from the cookbook produced with the 56 winning recipes. The money raised from these meals would then be donated to food pantries.
Davis said the children were asked why they entered the contest, and many of them talked about how they had cooked all their lives and learned recipes from their grandmothers. Scout’s reason was more simple.
“I told them I had always wanted to go to the White House,” Scout said.