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Four pounds of butter?!!  Are you nuts?

 

How can you possibly use four pounds of butter?   

 

And not use sour cream, heavy cream and cream cheese as well?!  Do you have some kind of Un-American tenderfooted hatred of dairy?  This is frontier ranch cookin' and you use one dairy, you damn well better use 'em all!  'Cause at the Drummond place we put our over priced designer boots on one and a time just like everyone else and we have our big oil lease money and natural gas subsidies direct deposited just like you little folk with your 'paychecks' but we still eat our year's worth of saturated fats in a week's sittings because greed is good and if we can corner the local share in oil, we can corner the Food Network's share in Land-o-Lakes and get more than a fair share of our 'Dollop o' Daisy'.  Sargento's might be for those fancy city folk but out here we're not proud.  We'll even take a velveeta monthly residual check if we have to.  I hear they pass the stuff by a vat of milk on its way to packaging.  good enough!

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Today's show with the 3 cowboys testing Ree's recipes was so "been there, done that".  Chicken fried steak, biscuits and chocolate pie.   Snoresville.  One of the many things that irk me is how she talks about cowboys like they are a different species with unique abilities.  They are nice guys, but don't make them out to be culinary supermen. They're tasting the bosses wifes' food and giving an opinion.  

Whenever Cowboy Josh is onscreen, the thought "I wonder if he's banging Ree?" pops into my brain, cause I imagine life on a ranch can get boring.  I won't even go into the other fantasies that engulf my head about what those cattle folk get up to.  Guess I watch too much trash TV.

Edited by patty1h
It's not chicken "friend" steak
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3 hours ago, Lisin said:

Mmmm. Chocolate pie... I guess I have to make chocolate pie for dinner now. 

There's plenty of tasty chocolate pie recipes online.  No need to use Ree's.

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When Ree said she was testing chicken fried RIB EYE for a deli menu, my first response was, "Are you out of your f-ing mind?!" WHY ruin an excellent cut of meat like that and secondly, that's going to be a damned expensive "sapphire plate special." I'm so glad the panel of cowboys knocked that inane idea out right out of the gate. (Ha! Ha! A little ranch humor there.)

I'd also think that the French silk pie would be more expensive to produce. Maybe the ingredients are a wash, but FSP takes a lot more time to make.  Just as an example, at the grocery stores around here, FSP ranges from $10.99 to $15.99.  (The same bakery supplies all of the stores, but it just depends where you buy it.) By comparison, "regular" chocolate pies or other cream pies by the same bakery cost anywhere from around $5.99-$9.99.  I made a FSP once (using somebody else's recipe) and it took a long time to make. It was good, but not worth the time.  So, Ree would have to mass-produce them in order to make it cost-effective and hope that enough people ordered FSP in order to at least break even. Oh, hell ... what do I care about saving the Drummonds money? /facepalm

I always thought you added a lot of black pepper to milk gravy like that, but then I don't ever make it. Does the residual seasoning from the stuff in the bottom of the pan have enough flavor without any extra S&P?

My take-away is if you're trying to run a home-town business and cater to the locals, to keep it simple.

P.S.:  I kinda liked the new Cowboy John, especially since he went rogue in his preferences!

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Yeah, I'll be the dirty old woman tuning in for more episodes with Cowboy McHunkster (was that John, gris gris?).  Seriously, Ree, make him an addition.   And then let us watch him roping steer and whatever it is he does, while you disappear and think up more ridiculous retreads of everything that's been made before.  I call BS on Ree not needing Ladd involved in the taste testing.  I bet the outtakes of the taste-testing had her sitting on the young cowboy's lap hand feeding him that pie.

As for the cooking, we have the million dollar question:  which is better?  Chicken fried steak made with cube steak or the one made with expensive rib eye?  She's so stupid.  First, putting the rib eye in a quesadilla.  Now it's in chicken fried steak.  What's next?  Grinding it up for Sloppy Joes?

Edited by anneofcleves
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Yep. That's John.  I'm getting a kind of "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," vibe and maybe they are for Alex and Paige!  Creepy Cowboy Josh is spoken for with the unfriendly wife and unfortunately-named children.

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For the love of God, why does she keep calling her restaurant/cafe/whatever it is a "deli"?  Why?  If this is the menu she intends to serve, why in the world call it a deli?  What a moron.  My Lord, she grates!

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13 hours ago, beeziebee said:

For the love of God, why does she keep calling her restaurant/cafe/whatever it is a "deli"?  Why?  If this is the menu she intends to serve, why in the world call it a deli?  What a moron.  My Lord, she grates!

I agree. By definition a deli is a place that slices meats and cheeses and sells them.  Or makes a sandwich for you.  And the best ones are German, but that's long gone.  Grocery store delis are uniformly meh (at least here in Albuquerque.) 

A deli does not prepare biscuits and chicken fried steak or many hot meals in general.  I would walk in there and expect to be able to buy a half-pound of olive loaf, some cheese and maybe some ham.  I would be sorely disappointed.

Perhaps for Pawhuska the Merc Chuck Wagon, Canteen, Bistro. Eatery, or whatever would be more true to what they serve.  And I'm only half-kidding about 'Chuck Wagon'. 

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On 10/16/2016 at 7:49 PM, anneofcleves said:

Yeah, I'll be the dirty old woman tuning in for more episodes with Cowboy McHunkster (was that John, gris gris?).  Seriously, Ree, make him an addition.   And then let us watch him roping steer and whatever it is he does, while you disappear and think up more ridiculous retreads of everything that's been made before.  I call BS on Ree not needing Ladd involved in the taste testing.  I bet the outtakes of the taste-testing had her sitting on the young cowboy's lap hand feeding him that pie.

As for the cooking, we have the million dollar question:  which is better?  Chicken fried steak made with cube steak or the one made with expensive rib eye?  She's so stupid.  First, putting the rib eye in a quesadilla.  Now it's in chicken fried steak.  What's next?  Grinding it up for Sloppy Joes?

I've said it before: Ree and Ladd's cavalier approach to expensive cuts of meat (like boiling whole tenderloins in butter and Lawry's Lemon Pepper) completely destroys the "aw shucks, I'm just a little rancher's wife" down-home schtick she keeps trying to portray. One whole tenderloin costs $110 at my local Sam's Club. If you can treat that like the cost was a drop in the bucket, there's nothing down-home or humble about you.

For me, if I was going to lemon pepper a tenderloin, I'd be zesting fresh lemons and grinding peppercorns along with some fresh herbs and sous-vide-ing that ish. Then sear it on a grill to get that nice crust. Same goes for a ribeye. 

There's a really good post I saved on Reddit by Chef Geoff where he talks about why cooking steaks well done is an affront and I think the same principles can be applied to Ree and Ladd abusing tenderloin and ribeye.

The hotel I work at does end up using tenderloin or ribeye in things like quesadillas and nachos, but it's the scraps leftover from Steak Night or weddings being used to squeeze out every bit of yield and money out of the expense of buying the meat.

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On 10/13/2016 at 6:25 PM, tenativelyyours said:

Four pounds of butter?!!  Are you nuts?

 

How can you possibly use four pounds of butter?   

 

And not use sour cream, heavy cream and cream cheese as well?!  Do you have some kind of Un-American tenderfooted hatred of dairy?  This is frontier ranch cookin' and you use one dairy, you damn well better use 'em all!  'Cause at the Drummond place we put our over priced designer boots on one and a time just like everyone else and we have our big oil lease money and natural gas subsidies direct deposited just like you little folk with your 'paychecks' but we still eat our year's worth of saturated fats in a week's sittings because greed is good and if we can corner the local share in oil, we can corner the Food Network's share in Land-o-Lakes and get more than a fair share of our 'Dollop o' Daisy'.  Sargento's might be for those fancy city folk but out here we're not proud.  We'll even take a velveeta monthly residual check if we have to.  I hear they pass the stuff by a vat of milk on its way to packaging.  good enough!

You left out mayonnaise.  Jeez.  :)

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Strangely, I didn't find today's show as hair-tearingly annoying as usual.  However, I'll preface that with my overall thoughts that Q&A for bloggers really didn't warrant a special showed dedicated to that.  What bugged me the most was the way Ree's top clashed with her hair color.  In some scenes it looked like it all blended together.

Ree actually gave credit for an idea to somebody else, Grandma-in-law Nan.  I didn't think the idea of freezing cookie dough was very awe-inspiring and I especially didn't think the cherry-lime combination  sounded appealing in that type of cookie dough/shape. I'd envision cherry-line in a much lighter cookie like a meringue or something.

The butternut squash soup might have benefited from some type of additional spice/flavor element instead of more dairy. Just my two cents.

Why in the fresh hell then don't you, REE, use your homemade tomatillo sauce in your enchiladas, enchilagna, and now open-face enchiladas (WTH anyway?) instead of that nasty green slimy stuff from the can? Especially if you can make big batches and freeze it.

I was going to groan and say, "chicken spaghetti AGAIN," but I guess she got around it because she was honestly answering a questions supposedly posed by her followers, "What's your favorite casserole to freeze?"  I actually didn't think that version looked so bad as it had more flavor elements to it than the usual bland one she always makes. What I thought was weird was lining the baking pan with foil, then shrouding the casserole with more foil, removing it from the pan and putting it into a plastic bag.  I'd be afraid that it would fall apart in the process. I didn't understand why Ree was doing that. I thought that in previous "freezer fundamentals" episodes, she used disposable foil pans that would go straight from the freezer to the oven. That wouldn't take up much more space in the freeze than a foil mummy casserole in a bag. Huh?

I think she showed something else, but I don't remember what it was.

Edited by grisgris
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3 hours ago, grisgris said:

Why in the fresh hell then don't you, REE, use your homemade tomatillo sauce in your enchiladas, enchilagna, and now open-face enchiladas (WTH anyway?) instead of that nasty green slimy stuff from the can? Especially if you can make big batches and freeze it.

I had the same question.  Mostly I expect it's because she's trying to straddle two worlds.  The first is a world where people would actually be interested in making their own tomatillo sauce.  The second is a world of people who can't be bothered to try and would rather resort to a can to make things easy (no judgment there).  There is the possibility of a third world of people who would pronounce it toma-tillow sauce and are afraid to touch those nasty little green feckers, but I'm thinking they're probably not the sorts to be watching a cooking show on a Saturday morning (ok, some judgment there).  

Edited by anneofcleves
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Marshmallow pops, yuck.  I can't think of anyone I know over the age of four who would like them.  And for a kids party they're a total choking hazard.

Her citrus butter cookies looked a lot like the lime cherry things she made for last week's make ahead-freezer show. I guess the special part is that in the delivery of the cookies to her stepmom, she gets to remind us that she grew up fairly wealthy and that she has some class?  I can't figure it out.

I kinda would like to punch her for her devil cakes, because it looks just like a Hostess Suzy Q knock off recipe that everyone in my neck of the woods made when I was growing up.  That filling is an ingredient-for-ingredient rip-off of just about every Suzy Q recipe on the web.  She just added more vanilla to differentiate it.  Another Pioneer Woman rip off, rebranded as her idea, that the zealotous fans will adore her for.  

AND WHAT IN THE HELL IS THIS WOMAN'S THING WITH MARASCHINO CHERRIES?  Pretty much the only thing they're good for is drowning in a whiskey or bourbon-based cocktail.  

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Enough Ree, with the lecture that you think you were one of the first food bloggers or that you invented food blogging (just like your recipes.) Then it sounded like she was apologizing for blogging about chicken casseroles and her other base bland food.

For starters, s'mores and cupcakes and quesadillas and pizzas are not new "mash-ups." (If you haven't seen the show yet, don't worry, she didn't make another quesadilla, the theme was crazy sweets.)

Recipes for s'more cupcakes, cakes, pies, pizzas and brownies are a dime a dozen on the internet.  Next.

I just cringed when I saw her dip beautiful Granny Smith apples in that nasty waxy faux chocolate "candy melt" stuff that is sold in bricks around the holidays.  I noticed that the coating kept hardening up.  Shouldn't she have advised the viewers to occasionally zap it in the microwave between dippings? Marbling is not really anything new either.  Now, I do think that that technique, in the hands of a skilled pastry chef would be all kinds of awesome, but not here.  I also snickered and thought how marbled apples would have been so fn'tastic on an episode of Semi-Homemade. That had Aunt Sandy's name written all over it.

Fried cheesecake in any form also is nothing novel. Paula Deen did it years ago.

The last and most WTF was saved for the last. Who? Why? Shot glasses out of hard candy? Wouldn't one's hands get all sticky from holding them? Then what do you do with them afterwards? For some unknown reason, I had this flash into the future of her selling those in boxes of six in the "Merc," whenever that opens. I can also see her gift wrapping and delivering them for Christmas presents to the farm hands. Isn't there one who's particularly fond of hard candy?

Another head scratcher ...

Edited by grisgris
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There have to be fifty million stupid food blogs out there dating back decades. I, for one, avoid them all like the plague.  Who needs to scroll through screen after screen with a picture of someone pouring a teaspoon of vanilla or measuring a cup of flour or stirring some damned ingredient in a bowl.  If the recipe isn't up front at the top, I bail out pronto.  I am not such a moron that I need any of thin to be presented in a picture.

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MERC OPENS TOMORROW, Y'ALL!

I never get to see the new episodes except on repeat (they're on way too early here in NM) but if it was about sweet shit, I'm grateful. 

As a total non-food person, I have to admit that Pioneer Woman was the first food blog I ever heard of.  Not sure when or how...someone probably posted a link to her Double Mocha Meatball Jalapeno Layered Enchilada Gummi Bear Casserole or whatever.  So if the marketing plan was to reach simpletons like me, it was a success.  There are two recipes of hers I make frequently (Salisbury Steak and Baked Ziti) neither of which are ground-breaking, interesting or proprietary.  But damn, they're good.  And simple enough for a simpleton.  Everything else is just too sweet or too hot or just....ewwww.

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Interesting article.  So are the Drummonds going to now handle all ordering and fulfillment for Ree's collection of crap? Won't that be competing with Walmart and FN? Inquiring minds want to know. (Not really.)  I have no idea what the demographics around Pawhuska are but I'm wondering who is going to work there and what type of customer base the Merc will draw from.  (Sorry. It's withdrawal from years of business school and working in management.  I'll just head back to my needlepoint!)

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Quote

I have no idea what the demographics around Pawhuska are but I'm wondering who is going to work there and what type of customer base the Merc will draw from.

I have a feeling that they will be expecting hordes of adoring fans will take bus trips (a la Branson) to spend time in the Hallowed Halls of the Merc and maybe, just maybe, catch of glimpse of their goddess.  Gag.

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10 hours ago, Kohola3 said:

There have to be fifty million stupid food blogs out there dating back decades. I, for one, avoid them all like the plague.  Who needs to scroll through screen after screen with a picture of someone pouring a teaspoon of vanilla or measuring a cup of flour or stirring some damned ingredient in a bowl.  If the recipe isn't up front at the top, I bail out pronto.  I am not such a moron that I need any of thin to be presented in a picture.

I generally avoid food blogs because 1.) they plagiarize recipes from other bloggers, who stole the recipes from magazines and cookbooks (aka, the unpaid or low-paid culinary school interns working in test kitchens); and 2.) waaaaaaayyyyy too many pictures. Either it's nine million photos of every. single. step or it's nine million photos of every angle and position possible of the final product. There really should be no more than two pictures of the final production. For most, you should only do one, but for something like a cake, you have the shot of the whole cake then the money shot of the inside via a slice or the cake with a slice missing. You have a picture to open the post to entice the reader, then your (short!) essay as to what led to this recipe and your methodology, maybe another picture of the final product, then the recipe.

Ree did pioneer the using 45 photos for a single blog post thing because it was to mask that she didn't have much to say and wasn't particularly good at writing. Most food bloggers are terrible writers, at least on the subject of food, because they don't actually have any passion or really any care for cooking, baking, and food in general. It's covered up by the numerous photos broken up by a couple sentences of what they view to be witty, pithy remarks.

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On 10/29/2016 at 7:06 PM, grisgris said:

The last and most WTF was saved for the last. Who? Why? Shot glasses out of hard candy? Wouldn't one's hands get all sticky from holding them? Then what do you do with them afterwards? For some unknown reason, I had this flash into the future of her selling those in boxes of six in the "Merc," whenever that opens. I can also see her gift wrapping and delivering them for Christmas presents to the farm hands. Isn't there one who's particularly fond of hard candy?

Another head scratcher ...

I wanted to see how those were made because my husband and I went to a New Year's Eve party last year and someone brought shot glasses made from Jolly Ranchers, and also some made from chocolate. They were fun, and looked really cool. I opted for a chocolate one, and let me tell you it was pretty damn delicious with shots of Bailey's. 

14 hours ago, Kohola3 said:

There have to be fifty million stupid food blogs out there dating back decades. I, for one, avoid them all like the plague.  Who needs to scroll through screen after screen with a picture of someone pouring a teaspoon of vanilla or measuring a cup of flour or stirring some damned ingredient in a bowl.  If the recipe isn't up front at the top, I bail out pronto.  I am not such a moron that I need any of thin to be presented in a picture.

I was telling my husband the other night that I do find quite a few recipes on food blogs via Pinterest, and the most annoying thing about them is that the blogger usually has to write some long elaborate story about how the recipe came to be, how she (most food blogs I run across are written by women) decided, on that particular day, to make that recipe, and so on. "We're getting close to Thanksgiving, which means we'll be eating leftovers for the next week, and so I thought making Indian food would be a nice change of pace before we get into the holiday. Normally my husband doesn't like anything with curry, but he loved this and ate 3 helpings!" and on and on and on. I really don't care, I just want the damn recipe.

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I really enjoyed this episode.  I think the marbling / dip would be great for pretzels or sugar cookies. I like that her recipes are a mix of homemade and pantry help.  Not everyone has time to make meals from scratch and seeing the alternatives helps me a lot.  I also think  her recipes are easy to customize to my family's palate. 

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4 hours ago, bkathi said:

I really enjoyed this episode.  I think the marbling / dip would be great for pretzels or sugar cookies. I like that her recipes are a mix of homemade and pantry help.  Not everyone has time to make meals from scratch and seeing the alternatives helps me a lot.  I also think  her recipes are easy to customize to my family's palate. 

I think Sandra Lee has made the semi-homemade "recipes" with a lot more flair than Ree has for the canned cream of soup crowd.

Edited by ariel
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I watch a cooking show for unique recipes that are made from scratch, not some conglomeration of crap I can find in my pantry. There used to be shows that were based on starting with prepared foods and were advertized that way.  Those were fine;  at least you were warned ahead.  Ree acts like she's a food guru while dredging up old recipes from Betty Crocker books and adding all kinds of bizarre things none of which should ever be paired.

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Sing it, Kohola3. This is just a ridiculous show. I cannot stand to watch her and her "recipes" are just rehashes of every church cookbook ever published except those recipes were actually tasty. 

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Deep fried cheese cake balls are ugly little buggers aren't they?  And apparently there is no amount of trick photography or Photoshop that can make those greasy, fatty blobs of...fat look pretty or appetizing.  They look like an alien life form in the FN beauty shot.

Not to make Ree all competitive, but Trisha Yearwood made beignets that looked surprisingly fabulous compared to Ree's deep fried alien eyeballs.   

38 minutes ago, tabloidlover said:

Wondering how she handled the thousands of customers she expected at the opening today?  <scarcasm font>

I'm envisioning a Walmart-esque Black Friday stampede of women looking for Ladd and Cowboy Hunkster from the show a few weeks ago.

Edited by anneofcleves
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I confess I frequently tell myself that had I been more into computers I totally could have been one of those bloggers that hit the jackpot.  Realistically I know that for every success like Ree there are probably thousands of others who sank like a stone.  A little talent, a lot of luck.

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8 minutes ago, grisgris said:

And a rich husband and husband's family to finance back your dalliances and dreams.

Ree has told the story that Ladd was just some down home country hick that made her hiney tingle.  I think it was his family wealth that got her hiney tingling.

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On the recommendation of a fellow poster, I looked up Ree's recipes for salisbury steak and baked ziti.  Both recipes looked average to me. Salisbury steak isn't something I would make for myself, especially loaded up with salty beef bouillon and I don't need a recipe for what amounts to basically assembling a casserole of cooked pasta, sauce and assorted cheeses.  (Ree even said it was fine to use marinara sauce from the jar to that makes it even more semi-homemade.)

I couldn't get past the gazillion photos and whoever said the writing was poor was correct. There was little content and what always has bugged me are the smug condescension and weak attempts at humor. (I know. I know. Ree has a "dry sense of humor" that few people "get.") The blog read like her recipes; short on content/quality and overly compensated for with a multitude of glossy photos, and on TV, excessive ingredients.

I accidentally came across another food blogger from Oklahoma this morning. I think it was called something like "Miss Minnie." (Wasn't that interested ...)  She has two kids and her food is the same hearty rib-/hip-sticking fare that Ree makes but this woman's had more flair to it. I also actually thought her photos looked better than Ree's. The writing wasn't much better, but there were fewer photos and they were all of the finished product.

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5 hours ago, ariel said:

Ree has told the story that Ladd was just some down home country hick that made her hiney tingle.  I think it was his family wealth that got her hiney tingling.

Ree's old blog got a little more Tele Novella - she claims she was dating a successful  LA attorney who wanted to marry her, but she turned him down for her country bumpkin Marlboro man.

Edited by ariel
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2 hours ago, grisgris said:

... (I know. I know. Ree has a "dry sense of humor" that few people "get.") ...

The British have a "dry sense of humor" that some Americans may not "get".  That's not what's going on here -- she's just not funny! 

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