You are invited to dine at the Texas Governor’s Mansion, to be the 
guest of the first ladies and two women governors of the Lone Star 
State as they offer (through author Carl McQueary) some of their 
finest recipes and favorite stories of life in the heart of Austin.

    The ingredients in Dining at the Governor’s Mansion include 
one part culinary history and one part social history, along with a 
generous helping of recipes cooked by Texas first ladies or (in later 
years) their personal chefs, from the completion of the Austin 
mansion in 1856 to the present.

    McQueary’s folksy cookbook offers a look at food and its 
preparation, entertaining at the Mansion, and the challenges the 
women faced keeping the old home together. It includes brief 
biographical sketches of the first ladies, who usually orchestrated 
food service for both family meals and social or political events, 
and considerable background on the Mansion’s infrastructure 
challenges, interior decoration, landscaping, and restoration.

    The book also provides an intimate portrait of Texas life during 
the last century and a half, since the trends in food enjoyed by the 
governors and their families, especially in their private lives, have 
been surprisingly similar to those enjoyed by even the humblest of 
Texas citizens. Most of all, it presents dozens of tasty, appetizing, 
historic recipes tested by McQueary in his own kitchen and 
annotated for the contemporary cook.

    No matter how you slice it up—as Texas history, food history, 
women’s history, or cookbook—Dining at the Governor’s Mansion 
offers a palate-pleasing smorgasbord for your reading, eating, or 
gift-giving pleasure.

_________________________________________________________

Historian CARL McQUEARY serves as a commissioner of the 
Texas Historical Commission. He is the coauthor of two books 
about Texas’ first woman governor, Miriam A. Ferguson.



What people are saying about this book

"If ‘All flesh is grass’ and ‘A man is what he eats’ then those First 
Ladies that fed their governor-husbands on ham hock and turnip 
greens—and pork chops and black-eyed peas!—were writing 
Texas history on the kitchen stove. They might have done as much 
in the kitchen for Texas politics as their husbands did in the 
Capitol."—F. E. Abernethy, Secretary-Editor, Texas Folklore Society