Bonjour Sylvie…oooops sorry, getting ahead of myself.
Guys, in my wildest dreams, I never thought it would happen. But yesterday, my skirt flew up! Shortly after 10 a.m., the door bell rang. I flung open the front door and standing in front of me was a hawt, virile FedEx delivery man holding a spayshul package. Not that kind of package! Ripping open the bodice of my Anthropologie top, I quickly signed for it and sent the driver on his way winking as my chest heaved. He knew I’d thank him later.
Steadying the box with my foot, I grabbed some scissors and tore into it taking care not to slice off my big toe. Inside there wasn’t any jewelry or god-awful ballet slippers or even a garlic press, which I wouldn’t know how to use even if I had one. No sireee, something much more precious and valuable had arrived: the smoking gun. My hiney tingled as I quickly thumbed through my newly found evidence of The Pioneer Woman’s ongoing Internet hoax. In my hot little pink alien hands, I held such wonderfulness. I do declare, FedEx had overnighted me Heavenly Fodder from Bartlesville, Oklahoma’s St. Luke’s Episcopal Church (1986):
Inside were quite a few recipes previously published elsewhere…uh yeah, like on The Pioneer Woman’s blog and in her Home Economics picture book, Pioneer Woman Cooks. I knew I’d hit a goldmine when I came across this
and this:
Shhhhh, don’t tell anyone, but Gerre Smith is actually Ree Smith Drummond’s mom. You know the woman Pioneer Woman credits as the source of a recipe if and when the mood strikes. In Pioneer Woman Cooks Drummond, like all the other little ol’ blogging ranch wives who’re trust fund babies married to multi-gazillionaire cattle ranchers with hired help and tutors running out the gazoo, credits dear old Mom for the cinnamon rolls recipe but forgets to mention Mom as the source of these:
Instead she launches into some lame account of learning to make these during a ninth grade French class where she was called Sylvie. Much like her non-existent culinary knowledge, Ree admits not being able to parlez vous francais except for one vocab word, “bonjour.” And this gal homeschools? Oh no, the tutors do…nevermind.
Bonjour Sylvie! Your scam is once again exposed. Stay tuned, in future posts, we’ll explore more PW recipes straight out of the pages of Heavenly Fodder.
AND ANOTHER THING — in the PW Cooks book, she’s doubled the proportions (except for the coating, which she’s expanded by a KABILLION), but has written the method (nearly word for word, thanks) precisely the same. 12 muffin cups, filled 2/3 full. What is the reader supposed to do with the other half of the batter?
I haven’t read the previous comments, so I don’t know if anyone has already pointed out the fundamental gap in the logic, but I’ve taken a lot of foreign language classes (mostly Spanish, some French) and NONE of them have had a cooking component.
We actually did some cooking in my 9th-grade French class back in the late ’70s. We didn’t cook in class, but we got the recipes, cooked the stuff at home, and brought it in to share with the rest of the class. (The students who took Spanish did the same thing.)
We didn’t get the recipe for French Breakfast Puffs, but my mom used to make them, too! I couldn’t believe it when I saw that recipe on the blog; it’s the exact same one my mom passed on to me. It must have been making the rounds in that part of the country in the ’70s. (I’m from a northern Oklahoma town not far from Bartlesville.)
I knew it! I’ve said all along that I should go down in the basement, dig out my mom’s old church cookbooks, lift some of the recipes and start a website where I claim them as my own – “just like P-Dub.” What a sham(e).
You should work for the FBI!!! Loved the post. Thank you!
I just found your site today. I saw a picture from Smitten Kitchen, showing that Deb’s son was reading Ree’s children’s book about Charlie, and then I googled it, wondering what other books she was doing, and then I found your post about the movie. Anyway, your site is awesome! I had been a blog follower of Ree’s until I bought her cookbook. I realized it was such a waste of money, and it is just sitting there collecting dust. Not until I bought that cookbook did I realize what a money-making machine she really was. After that, I noticed I started losing interest in her posts, and I would just occasionally go to the site to see if she was having a giveaway (I know, I’m guilty). Then I just stopped visiting the site entirely. I was totally duped by her brand and image, and I never made anything from her cooking blog… it was just like I was addicted to a TV soap opera…
Every time she is described as a “city girl”, it cracks me up. We’re talking Bartlesville, OK for God’s sake. A lovely town, I’m sure, but not exactly the first place to come to most people’s mind when they think “big city”.
right you are, we are definately not ‘big city’ but we can drive to some, tulsa,okc, wichita, kansas city, springfield…
It’s bigger than Dewey?