WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama calls himself a “night guy,” and as president, he has come to consider the long, solitary hours after dark as essential as his time in the Oval Office, according to a New York Times report.
Almost every night that he is in the White House, he has dinner at 6:30 p.m. with his wife and daughters and then withdraws to the Treaty Room, his private office down the hall from his bedroom on the second floor of the White House residence.
There, his closest aides say, he spends four or five hours largely by himself.
He works on speeches. He reads the stack of briefing papers delivered at 8 p.m. by the staff secretary. He reads 10 letters from Americans chosen each day by his staff. The president also watches ESPN, reads novels or plays Words With Friends on his iPad.
First Lady Michelle Obama occasionally pops in, but she goes to bed before the president, who is up so late he barely gets five hours of sleep a night.
To stay awake, the president does not turn to caffeine. He rarely drinks coffee or tea, and more often has a bottle of water next to him than a soda, the report said.
And what is his snack of choice?
His friends say his only snack at night is seven lightly salted almonds.
“Michelle and I would always joke: Not six. Not eight,” Sam Kass, formerly the Obama family’s personal chef, told the newspaper. “Always seven almonds.”
(Kass spoke at Winsight’s recent FARE retail foodservice conference. Click here for details.)
Click here to read the full New York Times report.
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