The Pioneer Woman

Yesterday I spent the day up in Pasadena because Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman, was doing a book signing at Vroman’s Bookstore. Now as many of you know, I love Ree. Her recipes are delicious and they always turn out. Plus, she is funny! Tony and I left the house at 5:45am to beat the Los Angeles traffic. We didn’t beat it. Anyway…we got up to the bookstore about 7:45, parked and looked for a cafe for coffee and breakfast. We happened upon a cute little cafe.

Here we loaded up on caffeine and food. Then headed back to the bookstore to buy all of Ree’s books and see what else caught our eye. We had to wait a few minutes for Vroman’s to open, but luckily they had a coffee bar attached to the bookstore. It was called Zeli Coffee Bar and it was awesome! Diane, one of the owners was so friendly and helped us pass the time sharing stories about the shop.

The coffee was excellent!

Finally, the bookstore opened, we shopped and got our tickets. As it turned out, just by accident I ended up being first in line! We strolled around Pasadena, going in and out of shops trying to avoid the rain. We had lunch in a great Italian Pizzeria called Settebello. Our pizza was named after the restaurant and it was unbelievable! It had pine nuts, Pancetta, Italian sausage, basil, fresh mozzarella, and roasted mushrooms.

They cooked it right in front of us and we were eating it within seconds of coming out of the pizza oven. You could even taste the char from the open fire.

Our waitress was fabulous and we couldn’t have picked a better place to have lunch.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the patio behind Vroman’s Bookstore just talking with all the people waiting for Ree.

                                                        We came across a woman, Betty Ford, who was playing the piano out on the patio. She was great!

She plays here frequently and is worth the visit.

I met some of the greatest people while I was waiting in line. Just behind us was Sandy and Chris. They are huge Ree fans as well and we had a great time getting to know them. We also met two wonderful gals, Josie and Julie. We spent the afternoon sharing recipes and talking about Ree.

There were about 400 people there and all I could think of was, “wow, I can hardly stand to address 50 Christmas cards. She is going to sign how many books!”.

Finally, the time came to go inside and meet Ree. She is really friendly and sweet. She took the time to talk to each of us and I asked her to check out my blog. She said she would. I hope she does.

We had  a great day and meeting The Pioneer Woman was an inspiration for me to keep on blogging! Thanks Ree.