• $2.6 million spent on food and beverages for reps and their staffers

• $604K
  Spent on bottled water -- in 19,000 individual line items, many for Nestle's Deer Park water-delivery subsidiary
• $397K
  Spent on catering -- CapitolHost is easily the largest caterer serving the House, though there's plenty to go around here
• $135K
  Spent on meals at restaurants of all shapes and sizes, including $152 at Quiznos

Catering to our nation's leaders

• The Wares of Myriad firms have Gone Down the Congressional Gullet. They include Pennsylvania institution Crocodile Catering (tagline: "Great since 8/8/88!"), D.C.'s tasty-sounding Honey Biscuits and Virginia Beach's The Gourmet Gang (which makes us imagine a pack of miscreants wielding spatulas and egg beaters for weapons). All of which suggests taxpayers' money is going toward encouraging the proliferation of catering firms with funny names. More catering tidbits:

• 59 companies, big and small, catered to legislators and their staffers

• $7,536
  The amount Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings spent on catering -- more than any other legislator
• $1,316
  Average amount spent by legislators who used catering services

• $124K
  Spent on Occasions Caterers, which had just three House offices as clients
• $23K
  Spent on catering services by Betty Crudup -- who we hope isn't doing all the work by herself
• $6K
  Spent on Brown Bag Catering (which, despite its name, does not specialize in peanut butter and jelly)

The go-to for gourmet grub

• Wolfgang Puck's fancy new restaurant Has traction -- at least with congress. Restaurant Associates, the company that helps run Puck's newish D.C. restaurant, The Source (along with offering fancy digs in the Kennedy Center), has a fairly large share of House food expenditures. The company also does catering -- which might explain the Committee on Foreign Affairs' massive one-time charge.

• $63,016 spent with Restaurant Associates

• $35,824
  The amount the Committee on Foreign Affairs spent with the firm (a kickin' international theme party, perhaps?)
• $5,812
  The amount Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry spent with the firm. He's one of 13 legislators who logged an expense with Restaurant Associates

Can't legislate without caffeine

• large or small, industrial or retail, coffee companies make up a sizable chunk of house expenses. Part of this is because the top firm in this category, Joe Ragan's Coffee, also sells some office supplies, too. More full-service than Starbucks, it was responsible for a little more than half of all coffee-related expenditures.

• $84,794 spent with coffee-centric companies

• 7,743
  Pounds of coffee beans (at $10.95 each) could be bought with that much money
• 348,468
  Cups of coffee (about 45 8-ounce cups per pound) could be brewed from that many beans

BBQ: The people's food

• It's A pretty common thread in the data: Lots of regional barbecue places showed up on the list, from spots in Kansas City to Denver to Birmingham, Mich. Unsurprisingly, there weren't a lot of vegetarian restaurants among lawmakers' favored eateries -- veggie burgers don't have quite the bipartisan appeal of burnt ends or baby back ribs. (Put another way: Your tax money is literally paying for pork!)

• $10,673 spent with barbecue restaurants

• $3,649
  The amount the House's Committee on Homeland Security spent on Gates Bar-B-Q, a Kansas City, Mo., institution
• $3,901
  The amount Colorado Rep. Ed Perlmutter (not to be outdone) spent on Denver's Big Papa's BBQ, which claims to have "the best ribs in Colorado"

Other tasty morsels of data

• $37K
  The amount the House spent with the Good Food Co., which specializes in day care food
• $8,786
  The amount spent on food and drink at various colleges and universities (a science center also showed up as a $1,595 food expense)
• $1,401
  The amount Pennsylvania Rep. Joseph Pitts spent at Yoder's Country Market, in Amish country

• Congressional pages Don't Work on an Empty Stomach. One of the top overall food expenses was logged to FreedomPay, a company that makes it easy to buy food in the cafeteria without cash -- something that seems less necessary as an employee using a debit or credit card, but more so when you're a junior in high school. The expense was tied to the Page Revolving Fund, set aside for all those teenagers who do congressional grunt work. (The fund also paid for a number of nonfood things like "resident activities" and piano maintenance.) Thanks to FreedomPay expenditures, the pages' office plunked down more for food than any other House office.

• $209,673
  Amount spent by the Page Revolving Fund
• $140,027
  Amount that went to FreedomPay -- by far the fund's biggest expense

• » Other top food-purchasing offices: In second place is the Democratic Caucus, which spent more than half of its $193,557 in food expenditures on a weekend getaway at Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg, Va. Waaaaaaay behind that is the Office of the Speaker, which spent nearly three-quarters of its $83,341 in expenditures with Occasions Caterers.
• » Maybe it should be renamed the Chow-Down Committee? The House Committee on Foreign Affairs spent $40,479 on food, all of it on catering. The total was five times the amount spent by the next-hungriest committee, Homeland Security.

The hungriest guy in the House

• Who's Gregorio Sablan? He's the House delegate for the Northern Mariana Islands (which didn't even have a delegate until after the 2008 elections), who spent more on food than any other legislator. In fact, Sablan spent $6,000 more than the second-place legislator, Texas Republican Michael Burgess, who spent $17,515.

• $23,457amount of Sablan's total expenses

• $5,127
  Amount spent in Sablan's name specifically
• $3,000
  Amount spent at Saipan's Hyatt Regency by Sablan staffers
• $3,000
  Amount spent with D.C. caterer CapitolHost by Sablan staffers

• » Big names not far behind: After Sablan and Burgess is Guam Delegate Madeleine C. Bordallo ($17,374), whose travel expenses are also quite high. And behind her are two of the most powerful guys in Congress: Rep. John Conyers ($16,157), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor ($13,454).

• Because we wanted to compare the two parties' equivalent offices, we left the speaker out of it. The Office of the Speaker did, however, spend $83,341, most of it with one catering company. But beyond Nancy Pelosi, here's how offices common to both parties -- majority and minority leaders and whips, as well as party caucuses -- spent money on food:

• $298,734
  Amount spent by the Democratic Party's largest offices -- the Democratic Caucus, the Office of the Majority Leader and the Office of the Majority Whip
• $202,927
  Amount spent by the Republican Party's largest offices -- the Republican Conference, the Office of the Minority Leader and the Office of the Minority Whip

What Democrats bought

• Call it a Staffers' Binge. Beyond the already-mentioned weekend getaway to Williamsburg, Va. (which cost $114,925), three top staffers -- two for the Democratic Caucus and one for the majority whip -- were reimbursed as individuals for $87,611. Those four items alone account for $202,536 of the total -- or nearly what the GOP's main offices spent. Other details:

• $985
  The amount Democratic leadership spent on Chantilly Donuts
• $2,362
  The amount Democratic leadership spent at Corner Bakery Cafe
• $4,543
  The amount Democratic leadership spent with Coca-Cola Enterprises

What Republicans bought

• Hard to say, as Most of it is hidden behind debit cards. The bulk of GOP reps' expenses -- around $144,146 -- was spent through Citibank, so there's no itemized data. Another $34,427, however, was spent with CapitolHost, by far the largest catering company they used. Other details:

• $2,076
  The amount GOP leadership spent on Chantilly Donuts
• $9,374
  The amount GOP leadership spent with coffee companies
• $4,651
  The amount GOP leadership spent with Coca-Cola Enterprises