Chris Smith: Salubrious visit to the White House for a Santa Rosa boy on a roll

Eat your heart out.

In less than a month, an 8-year-old Santa Rosa boy will fly to Washington, D.C., to dine at the White House and talk healthy eating with Michelle Obama.

Cannon Meiers won the trip when the lunch entree he and his mother created for a national contest was judged the best one submitted from California.

As part of the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” health initiative - letsmove.gov - she will on July 14 welcome for lunch Cannon and his mom, celebrated competitive recipe inventor Amy Meiers, and the recipe winners from the other 49 states, D.C. and five territories.

The Santa Rosans won their place at the table with Cannon’s California Roll, a kid-friendly creation featuring chopped chicken, yogurt, California avocado and raisins, and sliced almonds, celery, apple, chia seeds and green onion, all wrapped in cucumber strips or a La Tortilla Factory whole-wheat tortilla.

Obama and several national partners host the Healthy Lunchtime Challenge to encourage kids ages 8 to 12 to experiment with nutritious foods and create recipes that could help lead the nation away from the high-sugar, high-fat diet that’s the source of such woe.

Cannon, who attends Steele Lane School and can’t wait for the dreamlike summer trip, eats a healthy, largely garden-?grown diet for a number of reasons. One is that he lives with a very rare genetic disorder, Mosaic Trisomy 14, and he needs good nutrition to hold the disabling effects in check.

He and his mom and all the other kids and accompanying parents will have lunch with the First Lady, then tour the kitchen garden.

High on Cannon’s hope list is to meet Sunny and Bo, the White House dogs.

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SPEAKING OF DOGS, if you doubted you’d live to see the grand opening of the glorious but long beleaguered animal shelter in Healdsburg, here’s a pleasant surprise.

“Pasta King” food, tours, music and encounters of a furry kind will happen from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday at the opening celebration of what has become the Sonoma Humane Society’s Healdsburg Center for Animals.

It’s in a splendid spot off of Westside Road, just east of the Dry Creek bridge. Financial needs endure, but Saturday’s gathering is for fun and for checking out a long-awaited haven for animals waiting to enliven a home.

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BARBIE IS BACK: Ron Pickart read in the PD about the Santa Rosa mom who really, really wished she hadn’t sold her late mother’s vintage Barbie dolls case to a 60-ish patron of her Saturday garage sale.

Harrumph, said Pickart. He’s only 59.

Aside from that, Pickart, who enjoys and makes a few bucks seeking and re-selling antiques and collectibles, was happy to be informed that the woman to whom he’d pay $15 for the late 1950s Barbie set yearned to reclaim it for her daughters, who are 4 and 7.

Pickart promptly phoned the Petaluma antiques store at which the set was displayed - with a $99 price tag - and instructed that it be unshelved.

Then he contacted the seller, Sarah Keefer, to say that of course she could have it back.

They had the nicest talk, with Keefer coming to agree that her girls should be quite a bit older before they’re given their grandmother’s collection because the Barbie and Ken, also 60-ish, really are quite rare.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD.