On a beautiful summer day, I left with my good friends, Darcie and Teresa, to drive to Pawhuska, Oklahoma, population 3500, and home of the Pioneer Woman. If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years and don’t know who the Pioneer Woman is, she’s Ree Drummond.  Ree is the wife of Ladd Drummond, a cattle baron and owner of 100,000 acres of land in Osage County, Oklahoma that’s been in his family for generations. Ree is a blogger, photographer, and now famous gourmet cook with her own show on Food Network TV. Every week she cooks up something awesome and shows us what life is like on the ranch, miles away from civilization and the closest pizza parlor, which is one reason she became such a good cook.

Ree and her family have been helping rejuvenate the dying town of Pawhuska. First, they bought a big building in the middle of town on the main street of Kihekah that at one time was a big mercantile. (We didn’t know how to correctly pronounce Kihekah, so we called it Kenickie instead, but that’s another story.) They restored the whole thing, put in a restaurant, bakery as well as another mercantile, and named it, what else? The Mercantile, or “The Merc” for short. They didn’t stop there. They then purchased three other buildings and put in an exquisite boarding house with eight rooms for tourists to stay while in Pawhuska, a pizza parlor, and an ice cream/sweet shoppe. Ree also opens the “Lodge”, the place on their ranch where they film her cooking show, at no charge to the public during the summer, and everyone is welcome to look at anything and everything. Nothing is sacred, and you can open every drawer and closet to your heart’s content. Continue reading “Beef! It’s What’s for Dinner! (AKA Girl’s Trip “Of Death!”)” →