I'm psyched for the chicken-fried steak

Someone sent me this book a few weeks ago and I immediately sat down and read it cover-to-cover. It's a charming, scrapbooky volume that sucks you in with the gorgeous photography and anecdotal sidebars. I find even the recipes -- some of which are on the Pioneer Woman site, some of which aren't -- fun to read. When Isabel saw it she had the same response and told me I had to cook from it it next. She asks very little from me, so I agreed.

Yesterday, for my birthday, my mother bought me a copy of Michael Pollan's Food Rules. Rule rule #41: Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Greeks.

What he really meant, but was too polite to say: Don't eat like the Oklahomans. Under any circumstances. Ever. I have scoured Pioneer Woman Cooks, and it contains nary a recipe that doesn't break some food rule or another. Except maybe the salsa. Everything is swimming in heavy cream or fortified with ground beef or drenched in icing. Apparently, the Marlboro Man doesn't like vegetables or fish, so Ree Drummond simply doesn't cook them. They seem to have an unusually happy marriage. It makes a person think.

Last night, I served Drummond's meat loaf, a mighty 12-inch ziggurat molded from ground chuck, milk-soaked bread and Parmesan cheese that is then wrapped in bacon and slathered in sweetened ketchup and baked. Fabulous. Owen ate an enormous wedge. My own Marlboro Man almost kissed my feet. It was very awkward.

I owe a final review of Moro. Coming soon.