The Question of Pioneer Woman

The way I discovered the website Pioneer Woman was that people on Jezebel were recommending the recipes; after looking at it three or so times and finding it impressive, I have revisited it semi-regularly since.

Among the rubrics of photographing, gardening, cooking and homeschooling life on a comfortable ranch in the American Midwest . . .


Medieval spoons from the Château de Chillon, Photo by Rama
Wikimedia Commons


— which the "Pioneer Woman" or her friends cover with a pragmatic, admirable generosity — the recipes are obviously only one category, but a very well-achieved one.

The food is inevitably straightforward to make, every (often mildly joking and minimalist) instruction illustrated with large photographs so that the ingredients and steps look as lovely and grand as one would like them to look. Every dish sounds like everyone would want to eat it, and it hews in a contemporary way to the classics of trans-American and fusion home cooking (to give recent examples: lemon blueberry pancakes, barbecued chicken, and caramel-filled brownies).

Altogether it takes an immense quantity of work to make the cooking look as natural and relaxed as it does, like ballet, and the same principle applies to the rest of her blog.

Living in Germany my family's cooking habits have changed from our old ones in North America, and probably for the healthier. But the Pioneer Woman recipes either teem with fruits and vegetables, or soothe the nostalgia for the naughtier indulgences endemic across the pond. The recipe I have tried twice, and very successfully, is the carrot cake, though the icing is still beyond my powers.

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The reason for bringing up Pioneer Woman is that it has been much discussed lately in connection with its writer's new memoir, Black Heels to Tractor Wheels. Ree Drummond was a graduate of a Los Angeles college who was thinking of becoming a lawyer, when she met her future husband in her home state of Oklahoma and moved to the outskirts of a small town to live on his ranch. Now she is raising four children while (since May 2006) tending to her very successful website and, in 2009, publishing Pioneer Woman Cooks and becoming a bestseller in print.

The New York Times Sunday Book Review ran a brief item on Black Heels to Tractor Wheels in February, the Los Angeles Times has written a short article in honour of her coming Food Network television show, and since then the New Yorker has covered it, too. (I haven't read the last review since it's for subscribers only on the website.)

Altogether I mostly know about living and working in the American Midwest from Laura Ingalls Wilder, and though over a century has passed since her birth and obviously circumstances have changed, it is still a nice shock to read about a style of life that sounds comfortable, modern, and fulfilled, and (if I had the energy and discipline for it) enviable even to this inveterately city-loving reader.

Ree Drummond [Wikipedia] Accessed May 9, 2011
Pioneer Woman Cooks
"She is 'Woman': Ree Drummond's view of Osage ranch life has taken the blogosphere by storm" [Tulsa World] by Natalie Mikles (May 3, 2009)