Blooms of Broccoli Break Through Bush’s Barricade

The produce industry today bestowed on Barbara Bush a broccoli bouquet and three cases of the vegetable and urged the First Lady to try some new recipes to entice her husband “into the wonderful world of fresh produce.”

It was actually just the tip of a 10,000-pound iceberg of broccoli that California growers are donating to soup kitchens and shelters in a good-natured riposte to President Bush’s refusal to eat his broccoli.

Mrs. Bush, who chairs the nationwide “Second Harvest” drive to donate food to the hungry, called it “wonderful” and joked, “I’m going to overlook the fact you think my cooking is not up to par.”

“I’m going to tell you the honest truth: the President is never going to eat broccoli,” Mrs. Bush told a gaggle of broccoli-industry boosters--all wearing broccoli boutonnieres--on the White House lawn before more than 200 reporters, photographers and television camera crews.

The industry had said beforehand it was shipping 10 tons of broccoli from California. At the event, they halved the estimate.

George Dunlop, president of the United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Assn., boasted that 10,000 pounds of broccoli was enough to serve 80,000 hungry people.

“We appreciate the fact that the President himself does not like broccoli personally,” said Dunlop.

Refusing to give up the fight, he added that along with the three cases for the White House kitchens he had brought “along some very good new recipes which you might use . . . (and) just might intrigue the President to take the plunge into the wonderful world of fresh broccoli.”

“Millie and I thank you for the broccoli. We’ll eat it,” said the First Lady, whose pet dog stretched out on the lawn beside the three cases of Irish Spring broccoli, spilling over a small table.

But just as George Bush has vowed never to bite another sprig of broccoli, she assured her guests, “I am never going to eat pork rinds ever.”

She indicated Bush was adamant in his stance against broccoli. “If his own blessed mother can’t make him eat broccoli,” she said, “then I give up.”

She said that without the broccoli brouhaha, the media would never have turned out in such numbers to cover a donation of food to the Capitol Area Community Food Bank.

Bush set the wheels in motion for the protest when it became known that he ordered stewards aboard Air Force One to stop serving him broccoli.