Wow Factor! Keep this book front and center on the coffee table or the kitchen counter!

Wow! This book has it all! It’s an art-filled coffee table book and a recipe book for the kitchen. It has a lot of interesting facts and tidbits about the Johnsons and the White House. I find myself saying to friends, “Did you know…”, or “Fun fact:…”. As for the recipes, I am eager to try them out. The top of my list: Tiny Quiches, the Presidential Special (President Johnson’s Barbeque spare ribs with Lady Bird Johnson’s Barbeque sauce), LBJ’s Spoon Bread, Eggplant Niçoise, Lady Bird’s Caesar Salad, all of the soups, Rum Pie, and Grapenut Pudding.

This book also has menus from weddings, holidays, and various state dinners, which are particularly interesting. You could recreate meals served to the King and Queen of Thailand, the Prime Minister of Canada, or their daughters’ wedding cakes. The author, Jean Schuler, is an artist. Her delightful drawings and doodles illustrate the stories and recipes in the margins and between paragraphs. It’s impossible to thumb through this book because her drawings beckon you to read each page in front of you until you’ve read the whole book!