Roosevelt Appetite
Ted Jr. remembered his parents often had either scrambled, or hard-boiled eggs at breakfast. They liked biscuits called Fat Rascals similar to scones filled with currants, or raisins. During the day TR liked Fat Rascals as a stand alone snack served with extra butter and a cup of coffee.
At the breakfast table they generally had a side plate of liver or bacon, or both. Edith and TR both liked hominy porridge sometimes served with a topping of eggs, cheese, or ham. Coffee and Tea were always served. He said his father would add “six to seven lumps of sugar.”
There is a fictional story that every morning at breakfast TR ate a dozen eggs and a pound of bacon.
A pound of cooked bacon is approximately 2,200 calories and 12 small to medium size eggs amount to about 800 calories. All in all that would mean TR’s daily caloric intake would be around 3,000 calories from these two items alone.
In one year TR would go from 185lbs to 310lbs.
He’d gain 10lbs every month.
TR called every meal a banquet and those around him saw his enthusiasm as simply another part of his “robust" lifestyle
Dinners began with a mix of appetizers that included oysters, shad, muscles or quail followed by a main course of steak, lamb or fried chicken cooked to his mother’s southern recipe. When he was growing up his mom told him fried chicken had to be prepared smothered in white gravy to give the chicken more time to absorb its flavor.
One of TR’s favorite desserts were sugar cookies given the name Sagamore Hill Sand Tarts. Another all time favorite was Cove Cake, popular at the turn of the 20th century that was similar to gingerbread. Other TR favorites included Hasty pudding, apple pie, peaches in cream, butter pecan ice cream and a variety of cheeses particularly Camembert and Roquefort.
Alice said her father was a big fan of spice cake served in a mix of warm cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. When TR went camping he’d fry steak and potatoes in bacon fat.
Roosevelt is typically listed at 5’10,” but there’s a belief he was really “5’9” in his stocking feet. David McCullough wrote he was actually 5’9” when he listed his height at 5’10” on a passport application and that seems to have stuck. An article in the American Heritage also noted Roosevelt was 5’9.”
His shoe size varied from 7 to 9.5 and may be the result of a variety of different manufacturer’s sizing standards. Over his lifetime TR weighed anywhere between 185 to 225 lbs. He was his heaviest in the White House.
Roosevelt lost the hearing in his left ear in 1918. The hearing loss was a result of an operation to remove abscesses that developed after contracting malarial fever during his 1914 expedition down the River of Doubt in Brazil. TR was also suffering from fevers and severe arthritis in his joints and both hands. This led to a 6 week hospital stay and extended bed rest which has been frequently believed to have led to the formation of a blood clot.
Before leaving the hospital doctors asked TR if there was anything they could do for him. He told the surgeons if they could put him alone in a room with Woodrow Wilson for 10 minutes. He said when it was over he'd happily go to the gallows.