Pioneer Woman!

It's been a good year for food blogger celebrities in Seattle so far... First Joy, now Ree (the Pioneer Woman), and soon, (I hope!) Deb. (Her cookbook should be coming out later this year, and I hope she comes to Seattle!) On Tuesday, Nathan and I ventured out to the Third Place Books at Lake Forest Park to see the Pioneer Woman and have my book signed. I knew she was popular... but this was ridiculous. 

We estimated that there were around 1000 people there- and unlike the hipster crowd at Joy's signing, these were mostly middle-aged ladies, giggly with delight at seeing Ree Drummond. There were, obviously, no seats by the time we showed up, so I stood at the back, my view of Ree mostly obscured by frosted wavy hairstyles. 

Nathan and Luke wandered the bookstore and managed to get this shot for me. 

The Pioneer Woman is, I think, one of the top three food bloggers. She's been doing it a long time, she's a consistent poster, her recipes are approachable (sometimes I think too approachable- she uses a lot of processed foods) and she's now got a show on the Food Network. Her writing is quirky and funny, and since she lives on a working cattle ranch in Oklahoma, the snippets of her country life that she includes in the blog are fascinating.

Unfortunately, since we only arrived a few minutes early, I was in "Signing Group L". When we left the store 20 minutes after her presentation, she was still signing group A and I imagine group L was several hours later. She did, however, say that if you left a copy of the book there with your name on it, she'd sign it and leave it at the store to pick up. With a tired fussy baby who needed to get to bed, I took that option. I thought that was pretty impressive of her. I can't imagine how long it took to sign all those books! I saw one lady waiting for Ree to sign SEVEN copies of the cookbook, and the memoir. (I'm clearly not that gung-ho.)

Just before we went to see Ree, Luke and I went swimming at the Mountlake Terrace pool. I'd heard that it was quite a warm pool and wanted to try it out, but Luke shivered through the entire swim session. (Kid needs to toughen up!) Apparently this is the way to get him to snuggle me (he's really un-snuggly)... make him chilly and he'll hug me for warmth!