Imagine if, for one night only, Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman, were to come over to your unsightly urban hovel and cook an amazing dinner of country favorites, all deeply-fried and cheese-riddled comfort foods that would be the culinary equivalent of snuggling all through the cold night close to her warm rural bosom…if only dreams came true, right?
Slumber no more, my hungry one, because the Pioneer Woman, in association with, natch, Wal-Mart, has heard your tiresome pleas and come together to provide the unworthy sloths and sluggards of America a full menu of Pioneer Woman “Heat and Eat” meals, “fully loaded” and “made with love,” as the front of the box reads, complete in effective all-caps.
I had been looking for these dinners in various Wal-Marts around town, but they always seemed to be sold out, the shelves left bare presumably by her fat-fingered fanatics, always eager to put all their filthy lucre deep into her blue-jeaned pockets. With carefully designed foodstuffs such as fried chicken, mac and cheese and, of course, a “meaty” breakfast bowl, I found myself way too eager to enter Drummond’s Southern fried web of microwavable meals...
Last week though, just as I was about to give up, I found three remaining varieties at the Wal-Mart located in Belle Isle. Ransacked and ramparted in the refrigerator section—not freezer, mind you—with a woman eyeing them behind me, quickly, I grabbed the trio and took myself far from the maddening crowd, surveying my soon-to-be purchases—Country Fried Steak, Beef and Bacon Meat Loaf and Creamy Mashed Potatoes.