foodiewife's Reviews
Cookbook Reviews
The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl
By Ree Drummond
William Morrow Cookbooks - 2009
The Pioneer Woman Cooks was the first food blog that I stumbled across, several years ago. I was enchanted with Ree's story on how a city girl meets a real life cowboy. Her recipes are pure comfort food. I'm not a total health nut, but I cannot eat the way she cooks on a daily basis. It's her humorous way of writing that made me a fan of P-Dub. Her photography is beautiful, and that is when I finally decided to start my own food blog. I have been a loyal reader of her blog, and still do as of today. Many of her recipes are classic comfort foods-- such as Chicken Fried Steak, Meat Loaf, Flat-Apple Pie (I call them crostatas). When this cookbook came out, I was one of the first to pre-order it. It was a little disappointing to see that most of the recipes were already on her blog. I had already made her Prune Cake (wow, is that good), oatmeal crispies and onion strings. I didn't see very many new recipes. While the idea of her step-by-step photos (which is how my own blog is formatted) works on her blog, it's the layout of the photos in the book that just loses it. I tend to read left to right. But the photos are in columns, up and down. Kinda odd. Most of the family photos were familiar to me, from her blog. It's not a cookbook that I remember to go through for ideas, unless I want to figure out how to gain weight fast. Love Ree, but I'm a Cuisine At Home fan (or Ina Garten) for inspiration.