Some of the reasons I love Pioneer Woman….

She’s real!  When you watch her show, you know that she knows her way around the kitchen, and you can take it to the bank that the food she is cooking are not recipes that assistants show her twenty minutes before show time, she really makes this food for her family. It’s not artfully displayed, it’s doesn’t contain exotic spices and obscure herbs, it’s real food, everyday food, that families eat.

Her family actually works.  This morning the kids were helping dad chop down cedar trees, and those little boys know what they’re doing.  I’m sure some people are appalled at the child labor, but that’s how it is in the country, it’s a hard life, everybody pitches in.

I think why I really enjoy this show so much is that I can relate to her at that age, I cooked much like she does for my family.  And yes, I bought Crisco Oil in those large gallon plastic jugs and fried everything, as my mother and her mother before her had done for their families.  And you know what,  I miss it, all that fried food, but it’s not healthy and we’re at a stage of our life when we are trying to prolong the inevitable, so I no longer cook this way, and when I do fry food, I use olive oil and when I buy a quart of canola oil, it lasts for a year.

I was in the kitchen all the time when the boys were growing up.  I made pies, cakes, cookies, I made pasta, using a crank pasta maker, the kids helped, and now they make pasta themselves.  I baked bread, I made biscuits, and had to laugh as I watched Pioneer Woman this morning, because her biscuits didn’t look any better than mine.  I never could master high as the sky, flaky biscuits, mine always spread like hers did and were flat.  Thank goodness for Pillsbury and their frozen Southern Style, those things are high in the sky with no effort, and they never flop.

And the boys helping their dad, that was my boys.  LC always expected them to work alongside him, and they did.  And now that they’re grown and know how to do the things around the house that need to be done, I’m grateful for what he taught them.  They know how to do so much and it’s helped them as adults, saving them a lot of money, too,  unlike most of their friends who have not a clue as how to perform home maintenance.

So now I’ve had my Pioneer Woman fix for the week, it’s bath time for the girls this morning, life goes on, and for me, with a smile on my face.  So thank you, Ree Drummond, for bringing so many memories back to me, and allowing us to look inside your world.  I do love that woman!