A Week with the Pioneer Woman: Day 5

A Week with the Pioneer Woman, Day 5: Come and Get It! (2017)

Previously on A Week with the Pioneer Woman, days 1 through 4:
The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl 2009 
Food From My Frontier 2012
A Year of Holidays 2013
Dinnertime 2015

One of the things I noted in a slight criticism of The Pioneer Woman's fourth cookbook Dinnertime was that she was possibly getting stretched a bit thin with all her projects, and that busy schedule might've negatively impacted the contents of Dinnertime. With her fifth cookbook in 2017, Ree Drummond starts off by basically acknowledging that things have gotten progressively busier. "It's a crazy busy life!" says the headline at the start of the book, with a mention of how she thought she was busy at each stage of her life, and with each stage she got progressively busier until... well, now, when she has The Pioneer Woman's Mercantile, a Food Network show, four kids to raise, a huge ranch to run, cookbooks to write, pictures to take of her husband's backside for the final page of her cookbooks, and my blog to read. Well, maybe not that last one. 
I will admit I've not cooked many of the recipes in Come and Get It! yet. But I am excited by the fact that, like The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl, the new cookbook is full of bookmarks (well, tiny Post-It notes) on recipes that I want to try for my family -- eventually. Because like The Pioneer Woman, and like you, my life is pretty hectic right now, too. 
As a sample, here's what I've got bookmarked to try very soon:

Orange vanilla monkey bread (p. 22-23), waffle iron hash browns (p. 27-29), stuffed pizza crust (without the pizza!) (p. 70-74), The Merc's Queso (p. 88-91), Roasted Red Pepper Soup (p. 104-105), Mango Chile Chicken (p. 106-107), Tex-Mex Butternut Squash Soup (p. 108-109), Shrimp Mango Lettuce Cups (p. 110-111). If you're keeping score at home, that was about four recipes in a row. I think I was especially hungry during that stretch.
Other recipes getting Post-Its were the chicken piccata (p. 125-127), honey soy salmon (p. 136 - 137),  parmesan panko chicken (p. 158-159), Slow cooker pot of beans (p. 164-165), slow cooker Mexican chicken soup (p. 174-175), King Ranch chicken (p. 196-198), Spanish salmon sheet pan supper (p. 230 -231), sweet potato with sour cream and mint (you don't need a page number, because I just gave away the whole recipe. seriously. But you can see why I'm excited, right? That sounds SO good!), Hasselback potatoes with a handy tip for doing them easily (p. 280-281), roasted garlic pull-apart cheese bread (p. 300-302), caramel apple sundaes (p. 332 - 333), skillet apple crisp (p. 355-357), and lemon bars (p. 358 - 361). 
Near the end of the book, just before the index, Drummond lists "recipes for all occasions!" with ideas for what recipes from Come and Get It! to use for things like potlucks, date nights, slumber parties, ladies' lunches, or for picky eaters. I discovered this while looking for photo credits, as I was curious whether Drummond was still taking most of the photographs in the cookbook, or if she's let someone else take on the duty in her busy life. It looks like she has a helper this time around, and it makes me curious if I missed that in the last couple cookbooks. Food photography is credited to both Ree Drummond and Matt Ball in Come and Get It! I also discovered that there is an extended edition -- that I don't have -- containing an extra signature (16 pages) of bonus material. Was that the one at Costco? I actually bought this book at Barnes and Noble this time. Dang! What if the one time I didn't buy the book at Costco was the time I missed out on bonus recipes! I'm joking, of course. Costco probably had the same cookbooks as just about everyone else -- you just have to buy them in a pack of twelve.
While I was a bit disappointed with A Year of Holidays and Dinnertime, I thought that Come and Get It! recaptured the comfort-food magic of Drummond's first two cookbooks. I look forward to her sixth cookbook! And someday, maybe, I might watch her TV show. But like so many books that get turned into TV shows or movies, I'm really scared that I won't like it! I say that tongue-in-cheek, of course. But there is honestly a part of me that thinks I'll like the cookbooks less if I don't like the show. 
That fear was also in the back of my mind recently when I road-tripped to Pawhuska, Oklahoma to visit The Pioneer Woman's Mercantile as well as the guest house on Drummond Ranch where The Pioneer Woman films her show. Tomorrow I'll post pics and a review of the Mercantile, the following day I'll have pics of the Ranch and guest house.