Book Review - The Pioneer Woman Cooks: A Year of Holidays, Ree Drummond

The Pioneer Woman Cooks: A Year of Holidays: 140 Step-by-Step Recipes for Simple, Scrumptious Celebrations 

 

Ree Drummond

Category: Cookbook

Synopsis: The Pioneer Woman is back with her third cookbook, offering recipes for a year’s worth of holidays.

Date finished: 31 December 2013

Rating: *****

Comments:

I love Pioneer Woman. I’m sorry, I just do. I don’t know why I apologized other than to say that this book was sort of panned in Barnes & Noble reviews (though Amazon folks loved it…).

Also, there’s this. I bought my mother the first two Pioneer Woman cookbooks (at her request), and she returned them a week later because she knew she’d never make a single recipe in the books. They called for weird things she never had on hand, she said. Now, the reason I LOVE these cookbooks is because they are as close to the home cooking I grew up on as I can find. To have my mother dispute that is odd. I was so sure she’d love them.

But then, I have to remember that my mother has likely never used garlic in a dish in her life.  

To each her own, I guess.

All this by way of saying The Pioneer Woman has done it again. If you liked her other cookbooks, you’ll love this one. It is 400 pages long. Four. Hundred. Pages. People. And the recipes, though billed as “holiday,” aren’t too theme-y to be practical. I don’t have much use for theme-y. There are loads of dishes I’d like to try including Dr. Pepper Cupcakes, Grilled Corn Dip, and Broccoli Cheese Soup.

Some folks might object to Pioneer Woman because she hasn’t gone Vegan or Gluten-free or Paleo, but that’s why I love her. She’s one of the last hold outs. She uses butter. And bacon. And eggs. And the occasional tomato from a can. All of it is fine by me.

Plus, I think she’s pretty funny. Someone you laugh with, not at, even though her humor is pun-y and weird. I like her cheerfulness and even how painfully awkward her husband and kids are in front of the cameras on her show.

The cookbook is well laid out, well-edited, and colorful. And her photography is superb. My only beef, if I had one, is that this would likely be a hard cookbook to cook from, as it’s rather heavy and unwieldy. I always go to her site and print the recipes from her books that I want to cook.

In short, I find PW adorable. And I love her cookbooks just as they are. Over and out.

Would you recommend this to a friend?

Yes. But I would not recommend it to my mother.

You might also enjoy:

The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier
The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl