The Pioneer Woman Cooks

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Ree Drummond

Ree Drummond is an award-winning blogger, New York Times bestselling author, food writer, photographer, and television personality.  She started out her life in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, later attended college in Los Angeles, CA., and now lives outside of Pawhuska, Oklahoma.  She thought after having tasted the big city life in Los Angeles, she’d spend the rest of her life in a big city.  She planned on attending law school in Chicago and was just about to move there when she fell in love with a cattle rancher and ended up right back in Oklahoma.  She lives on a ranch with her husband and four children.  You can read all about her life in her book, BlackHeels to Tractor Wheels which, by the way, is expected to become a movie starring Reese Witherspoon.

As a way to keep in touch with family and friends, she started a blog called ‘The PioneerWoman’.  Little by little she added different topics, but when she added a section on cooking with photographs detailing how to make a dish, the blog took off and her cookbooks became wildly popular.

Her newest cookbook, The Pioneer Woman: A Year of Holidays, was released on October 29, 2013.  It’s a collection of recipes, photos, and homespun humor to help you celebrate all through the year.  There are menus for breakfasts, brunches, lunches, dinners, parties, deliveries, and feasts.  All are accompanied by fun instructions and step-by-step photographs.  It’s a creative and entertaining book to help you plan each holiday.

Her other cookbooks are: The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl, and The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My FrontierShe has also written several children’s books based on her bassett hound, Charlie.  Charlie the Ranch Dog, Charlie the Ranch Dog: Charlie’s Snow Day, Charlie the Ranch Dog: Where’s the Bacon, Charlie Goes to Schooland Charlie and the Christmas Kitty.  

Her blog, ‘The Pioneer Woman’, is a lively, entertaining and informative account of her daily life as a ranch wife and mother.  She also has a television show on the ‘Food Network’ called – The Pioneer Woman.

Come to the library to check out all her books!

Six Picks: Movies That Are As Good As The Book (Or Better!)

movieThe following movies have been deemed to be as good or better than the book they were based on.  What do you think?

the shiningThe Shining – the movie

The Shining – the book

silenceSilence of the Lambs – the movie

The Silence of the Lambs – the book

godfatherThe Godfather – the movie

The Godfather – the book

fightFight Club – the movie

Fight Club – the book

childrenChildren of Men – the movie

Children of Men – the book

bloodThere Will Be Blood – the movie

Based on the book Oil! by Upton Sinclair

Food for Thought: For Book Clubs

foodIs your book club looking for a new theme to read?  Everyone loves food!  Below is a list of titles that will stimulate your brain and your appetite!

1.  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

2.  My Life in France  by Julia Child

3.  Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford

4.  The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace

5.  I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence by Amy Sedaris

6.  Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck

7.  The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Judith Jones

8.  The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World’s Most Famous Cooking Schoolby Kathleen Flinn

Susan reads: The Queen of Katwe

Wow – two books on chess in the same year?  Odd, yes, but this book fed my brain AND my sense of social welfare at the same time. In The Queen of Katwe, Phiona Mutesi is the poorest of the poor – poorer than the Indian children of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, poor as only the poor of war-torn Uganda can be, yet through her own uneducated analytical mind, she rises above everything as a sort of chess savant, traveling to Siberia to compete on a world level – at the age of 15, a girl who has never even seen a flush toilet, who does not even know when her birthday is.

Much of the book is taken up not with Phiona – how I wish more of the book focused on her, her thoughts, etc. – but with everyone around her, and just how the circumstances formed for her to shoot her star so incredibly high. Throughout, Phiona is a shadowy figure, almost a mentally disabled girl who for a few brief moments is able to see and understand clearly, and then is sent back down to the depths of her dull & hopeless life. Is it crueler to leave her mindless in the mud of the streets or to show her the glory of the rest of the world, and then send her back to nothing? I’m not sure. It’s a real “Flowers for Algernon” conundrum.

And I can’t help but wonder what the author could/did do for some of these people – you see them trying to teach chess with boards missing pieces, so crudely carved you can’t always tell a knight from a rook – did you buy them a few chess sets, when what to us is $10 and to them is a year’s salary? Did you donate so the club could continue to feed the starving children who come there to learn? I myself could not look upon such conditions without trying to help, but the author is silent as to how he himself was moved by the situation. A good book, an incredible story, but I wanted so much more, both for me and for Phiona.

Romance Authors Love Veterans

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One of the wonderful things about Romance authors is that they write about relevant, current, everyday topics.  Lately, many contemporary Romance authors are writing about our wounded warriors.   Romance authors have picked up on the heroic sacrifices our Veterans have made and have written authentic, smart, sensitive, emotional, heartwarming, and uplifting stories that touch all of our hearts.   Two new releases are highlighted below.

USA Today best selling author RaeAnne Thayne continues her series, Hope’s Crossing, with book number six, Christmas In Snowflake Canyon.  

Dylan Caine is a wounded war vet, losing an eye and part of his arm in Afghanistan.  He lands back in Hope’s Crossing, but heads up to an isolated cabin in Snowflake Canyon to get away from his large, loving, and smothering family.  He finally agrees to meet his brother at the local bar in town.

Genevieve Beaumont is the daughter of Hope’s Crossing’s mayor – a spoiled, rich, pompous brat who has spent the last several years in Paris – overspending and overindulging.  When she discovers her fiance has been cheating on her, she breaks their engagement.  Her parents pull her back to Hope’s Crossing, cutting her off from her trust fund until she can get her act together.  She’s banished to live in her late grandmother’s run down house,  and feeling sorry for herself, she heads off to the local bar.

When Genevieve ends up in a bar room brawl, Dylan reluctantly comes to her rescue.  Both are arrested and are assigned community service at the local Wounded Warriors facility.

What follows is a painful, emotional, uplifting journey that brings these two unlikely characters together.  Through emotional and physical trials, both characters transform from people you don’t quite like, to people you want to invite into your home.  The two main characters are supported by a wonderfully written cast of supporting characters.  Ms. Thayne does a beautiful job describing all the characters, the exquisite scenery and expertly shows us the courageous struggle of our wounded soldiers.  A wonderfully written journey of loss and hurt replaced with healing and love.

The Way Home by Cindy Gerard – Killed in Action – the most dreaded words imaginable for a soldier’s wife. Jess Albert has been living with them for four years, since the death of her husband in Afghanistan. Finding blessed numbness in routine, she doesn’t dare to look ahead, any more than she can bear to look back. Then Tyler Brown, a former special-ops warrior, shows up at her small general store in Minnesota North Woods, jarring her back to life. Jess knows better than to fall in love with another man who places duty to his country before love of his wife- but there’s no denying the longing and the hope for a future that Ty makes her feel.

A world away, a man ravaged by years of captivity and torture, a man with no memories, finally escapes- clinging to life and sanity in a hostile land. In his darkest hour, he awakes in a lantern-lit cave to find a woman at his side. Dark-haired and dark-eyes, her touch is caring, despite the resentment he hears in her voice and sees on her face. Rabia is bound by honor to save the lost American soldier in her keeping, this broken warrior from a war that has brought so much devastation to her land. But is it honor igniting her compassion for her enemy, or is it something more?

A beautifully written story of love, honor,  and loyalty and the sacrifices of our soldiers and their families.

Check out some other Romance authors who have written military themed books:  Suzanne Brockmann, Robyn Carr,  Laura Griffin,  Elle Kennedy, Penny McCall, Lindsay McKenna, JoAnn Ross, Roxanne St. Clair, Julie Ann Walker.