I’ve never actually cooked anything - like anu-la1979 the thought horrifies me a little given the ingredients (and I’m vegaquarian). But I love her writing style and the pictures, and I agree it’s a little bit of food porn for me to enjoy.
I made her Olive and Cheese Bread last week. It was divine. I also cut back the amount of butter and didn’t really miss it. I’d be surprised if her family eats the “pound of butter, quart of cream, extra salt” stuff every day. . . I don’t care how hard they work, they’d all be as big as a house.
Girl From Mars…I understand. I sound like I hate her here, but I don’t. Those are BEAUTIFUL photographs, I think she’s a fantastic food writer and I read the food blog simply to see how she lays out the steps. But there is no fucking way I’m going near Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage, Kraft “parmesan” and butter fat with a ten foot pole. I just kind of look at the recipes out of morbid fascination.
As a note, my old blog was featured on Naughty Curry once, so yeah, I cook too, and I genuinely believe her recipes would make me physically ill in a half minute. The same way I kind of want to cry when I’m forced to eat at Cheesecake Factory or Chili’s. I cook entire batches of curries with a 1/2 teaspoon of safflower oil-clearly I come from a different cooking perspective!!
If I were to cook non-ethnic food I’d probably go with recipes from some place like Chocolate and Zucchini (who I understand is now published as a cookbook author).
My 7yo daughter made the apple dumplings as a special treat for her grandparents. It was easy enough that she could do it (with a little help), and they were a big hit, which thrilled her. Then she got to tell them the secret ingredient was Mountain Dew, which got a reaction that delighted her.
I can’t imagine eating like that more than once a month or so, but it was a great treat.
Well, it inspired me to make my very first pie ever. I’m 42 years old, and my mother made home-made pies, but I never had myself, until today.
My husband groaned with delight and had two helpings. 
Yeaaaahhh. I have a friend who is really into her blog, and cooks her recipies whenever she has people over. They’re sort of fun to eat, in that situation (the apple dumplings–yeah, that was a fun night), but I’m just not in the “OhmygodSOGOOD” place. Of course butter and sugar and salt taste good. I really don’t see where the glory is. And I’ve had the lasagna, and the olive bread, and those apple dumplings, and some other recipies, and… I dunno. They were good. They just weren’t extraordinary.
Sorry.
Actually, probably not. Daily strenuous work burns a huge number of calories.
I have made her cinnamon rolls twice (it makes 7 pans and I never had any trouble giving most of them away), a steak recipe, and her bread pudding for those who hate bread pudding. I love her recipes but agree that one should not eat that way every day.
I used to spend alot of weekends (like 2-3 per month for over a year) on a friend’s cattle ranch and I can attest to the way they ate- it was HUGE food all the time and not a fat person in the family. I would go, eat like a horse for three days and come home the same weight or often a pound less. One thing that may make a difference though- we seemed to eat a huge breakfast and then a huge dinner but not so much for lunch- we might grab a quick snack but we were way too busy during the day to eat a big lunch too. Dinner and bedtime were usually fairly early as well.
I haven’t tried any of her recipes yet, her salad looks right up my alley but I no longer have the cattle ranch for the weekend diet option :).
Has anyone here read “Tanner the Barbie Dog” section- that one I printed out and spread the hilarity around at work. Even inspired the vet I work for to go on E-Bay and buy one!
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Well, I just did based on your recommendation. I have a niece who is two now, but that’s gonna be her Christmas present as soon as she’s old enough not to swallow the poop.
I can attest to the onion strings. Yum! However, I have gained 3.7 pounds this week. This can’t go on. Being a lazy bum this week, I sat down and read her blog from the start (I get compulsive about certain things, others, involving real discipline, not so much). I enjoyed it a lot–it’s really interesting to read about a lifestyle so different from my own.
Now I need to find a food blog about making food with more bulk and fewer calories.
I love the Pioneer Woman, mostly for her cooking and quite a bit for her photography; and her writing is fun to read too. I am amused by the fact that all of her children look so much like the Marlboro Man – but I do hope she will have them wear sunscreen.
I subscribe to the theory that foods need fat to taste their best and enhance satiety – imnsho food that doesn’t provide satiety is as dumb as food that doesn’t taste good – life is short. Ree’s recipes generally do both, and if they contain “processed” food, I don’t give a damn. Taste, satiety, and possible. That’s what food is all about for me.
I just made the bread pudding again a couple weeks ago. Last time I must have made the whiskey cream sauce wrong, because this time it was so good I almost died of bliss. The pudding itself is incredibly good, too. I want to make it again this week.
My husband has been wistfully and hopefully asking about a reappearance of Ree’s onion strings.
Damn it. Those potatoes also look good! I’ve never made good hash browns before, either… and we have potatoes, onions and some peppers… I feel a calorie comin’ on.
Like others have said, don’t underestimate the power of working your ass off all day doing physical labor.
My grandmother was a cook at a logging camp for years, and I’ve got some of her recipes. They read a lot like the Pioneer Woman recipes, without the processed food bits.
My Dad tells me that they rarely had syrup to put on pancakes, so they used bacon fat and white sugar instead. :eek:
None of the pics of the logging camp men show any of them with a spare ounce on their bodies. The work was crazy hard. To put it in perspective: when my Dad was 19 or 20, and had been working in the camps since he was about 13, he decided to go into construction because he wanted an “easy” job.