For those of you who don’t know who the Pioneer Woman is, let me give you a little background.  Her real name is Ree Drummond.  She is a self-described accidental country girl who lives in middle-of-nowhere, Oklahoma.  She started a blog a few years back that is popular enough to have sponsors like Target, XBOX 360, Intel, Hooked on Phonics, you get the idea.  Her blog is dedicated to detailing her life on the ranch, cooking and photography.  Last week, her first cookbook was released, featuring all her own recipes and photographed by the Pioneer Woman herself.

Courtesy of thepioneerwoman.com

It took me an entire to week to locate the cookbook in Salt Lake and Utah counties after its release. I tried every bookstore imaginable and each one had sold out. I actually walked into a Barnes & Noble in Orem looking for the cookbook, only to find out the last one had sold five minutes earlier. I was lucky enough to call Borders in the Riverwoods right after they had received a shipment. They had three left. So I asked them to hold one for me while I sped down there. I was fascinated by the cookbook upon purchasing it and read it cover-to-cover.  What I couldn’t get over were the detailed instructions for every recipe, with a photo detailing each step!

Courtesy of thepioneerwoman.com

So last night, I trekked up to Salt Lake City with a few friends to get my newly-purchased copy of “The Pioneer Woman Cooks” signed by the Pioneer Woman.  The signing was taking place from 7 to 9 p.m. at The King’s English Bookshop.  I left my class a few minutes early and we arrived at 7:30 - our first mistake. The crowd was covering the entire block.  The letter ‘A’ through ‘R’ had been assigned to the first 360 arrivals to determine the entrance order for book signing. When we left at 9:15, they were only on letter ‘G’ of ‘R’ for the signings.  Averaging 15 minutes per letter, we expected the Pioneer Woman to finish signing right around midnight.  At that point, she would assess how she was feeling to determine whether she would stay and sign the remaining crowd’s books.

It was at 9:15 that we realized we were in way over heads.  News crews had arrived.  Popular Utah bloggers were photographing the crowds.  We learned people had waited since 3 p.m. It was freezing. We were hungry.  The thought of a three-hour outdoor wait with no food in our stomachs was too much to handle, so we took off, missing the Pioneer Woman.

What was it that made the other few hundred people stand outside and wait though?  This was no Harry Potter premiere, but had you replaced the cowboy hats with sorcerer’s hats, it might as well have been!