Author: Angela Knipple

What makes a good romance book? There’s got to be chemistry, a little bit of conflict, a good dose of humor, and, of course, a happy ending. Ree Drummond’s The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels — A Love Story (William Morrow) is a slam dunk.

For those who don’t know her already, Drummond is better known, at least on the Internet, as the Pioneer Woman. The blog she started in 2006 chronicles her story as a city-girl-turned-ranch-wife in the wilds of Oklahoma. While a large focus of the blog has been food, as was her first book, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl, this love story, co-starring Drummond’s husband, aka Marlboro Man, has been woven in almost from the beginning.

When I talked to Drummond, she and her daughters were hiding out in Salt Lake City, avoiding the minus-20-degree weather that the boys were braving back on the ranch. After reading her book, it’s hard not to wonder how it feels for a woman who left the busy world of Los Angeles for a quiet life in Oklahoma now that she is on the road and in the spotlight as a best-selling author.

“The irony is hilarious,” Drummond says. “It took me about 10 years to really get in the groove. Living there those 10 years before I started blogging helped feed my creative side; I wouldn’t be a writer without the experience. That’s where the contentment comes from. Traveling and meeting people is great, but it has made me realize how much I love home and the country.”

For some men, being the star of a sweet love story could be a bit awkward, but for Drummond’s Marlboro Man, it’s been just another part of the ride. “He’s fine with it. He’s always been very supportive of the blog. Besides, he knows I wouldn’t write anything I wouldn’t want the kids to read, so he knew it would stay family-friendly,” she says.

The story starts with their meeting in a smoky bar in Drummond’s hometown just as she was beginning to transition from her life in L.A. to a new life in Chicago. Four months later, he called, and they began a romance that changed all of her plans. Drummond shares the story of their courtship and the first year of their marriage, telling it with the humor that got her through the hard, embarrassing, and heartbreaking moments.

Turning the story into a book, though, seemed to happen organically. “I didn’t really plan it when I started telling it on the blog. I never thought about turning it into a book. It came out because I had writer’s block one day. I posted the first part of it for fun. I was sure no one would be interested in this, but then over 18 months it turned into a serial on the blog, and people kept asking for more,” she says.

“As a book, people can enjoy sitting down and reading it straight through,” Drummond continues. “And it gave me the opportunity to talk about how our honeymoon fell apart and what happened when we got back. People are getting a kick out of it.”

And then, of course, there’s the food. While there were stories in The Pioneer Woman Cooks about Marlboro Man’s reactions to some of her original ideas about cooking, this book goes more in depth. Drummond was very proud of the first meal she cooked for her husband, and she was also very sure that he loved it. “It was awhile before he fessed up about that — after we got married actually,” Drummond says. “Those first couple of meals almost killed him, but my cooking has only improved since then.”

It wasn’t that her food was bad in the beginning; it just wasn’t “cowboy food.” As Drummond says, “I had to re-invent how I cooked. For cowboys, food is about refueling. It’s not about stimulating the palate or experimenting. My favorite part of blogging is still sharing the recipes.”

You’ll find some of those recipes at the end of Black Heels to Tractor Wheels. Make them for your special somebody.

Ree Drummond discusses and signs Black Heels to Tractor Wheels on Friday, February 25th, 6 p.m., at Davis-Kidd Booksellers. Line tickets are required and are available at Davis-Kidd.

The first thing you notice about One Sharp Dude is the vehicle that Steve Collins uses to take sharpening on the road. It may be unexpected, but that vehicle is a repurposed ambulance carrying Steve’s slogan, “Are you dull?”

Every chef will tell you that the most important thing for home cooks to know is to always keep your knives sharp. Kathleen Flinn even used the rule to title her book about studying at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry.

But even if you use a sharpening steel and cut only on cutting boards, eventually your knives will dull, whether they’re high-end or not. To get a true hone and an edge as sharp as you need, you should go see Steve and his wife Vicki.

It was Steve’s hair stylist who gave him the idea to get into the sharpening business.

“I was sitting in her chair, and she was looking for her shears before she remembered that she had mailed them off for sharpening,” Steve says. “She told me that if there was a guy who sharpened here, he would make a lot of money. She wasn’t really telling me the whole truth on that,” he says with a laugh.

Becoming a professional sharpener is not an easy endeavor. Steve went to workshops, conferences, and three knife factories before he earned his certifications. But after working in advertising for 30 years, he was ready for a change.

Making his business mobile allowed him to turn his sharpening business into a full-time job. Stylists use expensive, specialized shears and are hesitant to hand them over to someone who has to take those shears elsewhere. Before Steve, stylists in the Memphis area had no choice but to mail them off for sharpening and do without them, sometimes for weeks. But since Steve brings his services to them, they don’t have to wait to get professional sharpening for their tools.

Of course, beauty salons aren’t the only businesses to benefit from Steve’s ability to bring his services to them. He also visits pet salons, restaurants, and L’École Culinaire where he sharpens the students’ knives. Home cooks have to come to him.

As Vicki says, “Sharpening is a good business in a bad economy. People get their knives sharpened instead of buying new ones. And people always have to get haircuts.”

Steve sharpens more than knives and shears. He’ll take care of your lawnmower blades, pruning shears, and scissors. For people and pet stylists, he sharpens trimmers and clippers, too.

When he sharpens your knives, he’s also going to tell you how to treat them right: “Don’t ever put your knives in the dishwasher. Vicki did that before we got married.” (Sharing that piece of information earns him a dirty look from his Dudette.)

He’ll also teach you the right way to use a sharpening steel. “You should sharpen your knife four or five times on each side at a 22 1/2 degree angle,” he says. It sounds complicated, but it’s not that hard to get that angle.

“Hold your knife perpendicular to your steel,” Steve says. “That’s a 90 degree angle. Swing it down halfway, and you’ll have a 45 degree angle. Swing it down half of that angle, and you’ll have it just right.”

Be prepared to take some heat from Steve if you’ve been putting off getting your knives sharpened. My nicked paring knife earned a raised eyebrow and the question, “Who’s responsible for this?” My husband and I blamed our son since he wasn’t with us, but we were suitably abashed.

That repurposed ambulance may be great for Steve’s business, but a real one might not be such a bad idea either. Sharpening is dangerous business. As Vicki puts it, “He should probably have dismemberment insurance.”

Steve says, “You know, you really don’t want to test the edge that much after you’ve sharpened it.” He actually does test it — on the bed of his thumbnail. “If it cuts on there, it’s gonna cut anything you need.”

You’ll find Steve at the Cooper-Young Community Farmers Market and at the Memphis Farmers Market on alternating weekends. You can also drop off and pick up at the UPS Store at Poplar and Highland. Check out his Facebook page and website for details and pricing.

You’ll find a special sense of humor when you stop to talk with One Sharp Dude. Like many vendors at the farmers markets, Steve is proud to advertise that he’s organic. By all standards, his business really is. After all, he doesn’t use any unnatural pesticides or fertilizers to work his craft.

But one important question remains: Where can you get a used ambulance for your own? (You know you want one.) Steve Collins gives a smile and a simple one-word answer: “eBay.”

onesharpdude.com

There is nothing more relaxing than sitting outside on a late spring morning listening to chickens clucking contentedly as they scuff and forage. Occasionally, the rooster finds something particularly good and calls over the hens to share it. It’s the kind of scene that everyone imagines of country life.

The rooster lifts his head, suddenly alert and protective. Is it a fox, a raccoon, maybe a loose dog? No, it’s just someone thumping the bass on their car stereo while waiting at the McDonald’s drive-thru across the street.

We’ve had our Midtown chickens for three years now, and it has been a learning experience. What started as a quest for fresh eggs has turned into sometimes begging our neighbors to please, please take a dozen eggs. Maybe two dozen?

We bought what we thought were tiny egg factories. But they’re as much pets as any other animal that has found its way into our home. They have individual personalities, favorite foods, favorite spots for dust baths, and favorite nests in their coop.

We know, for instance, that as soon as we open the door to their run, our little red hen Pie is going to stick her head out as far as she can to grab any blade of grass she can reach. We know that Trifle, our rooster, will always let the hens eat first unless there’s cornbread — he prefers not to share that. Cheesecake has scraped out her dust-bath spot in the corner of the run closest to our house, and she doesn’t like it if anyone else tries to get in her spot. Speckles chose her favorite nest spot to try becoming a mother for the first time; we’re not sure how many eggs she’s sitting on — she can peck really hard.

We’ve watched one hen grab a choice bit of vegetation or bread and take off running, quickly pursued by another hen who may not know what’s been grabbed but knows she wants it. We’ve watched them discover that they like fresh corn on the cob and that tomatoes may be a little bit hard to get into but are worth every bit of effort.

They’re funny and friendly, and they can easily get a place in your heart. And they can break your heart too.

We’re on our second group of chickens. We lost the first ones when a possum or a raccoon worked its way into our run. We never heard a thing, but when we went out to feed them the next morning, we found a sight that none of us ever wants to see again. The only survivor was our questionably named rooster Karen, and he was badly injured.

For the next three weeks, he lived in the deep clawfoot tub in our bathroom where we medicated his wounds twice a day and worked to get him to eat and drink. He never made a sound the whole time.

He got better. Feathers grew in where they had been ripped out, he took a definite interest whenever someone came into the bathroom (you haven’t lived until you’ve been stared down by a rooster while you’re on the toilet), and he started eating again without us having to coax him. We put him back outside with our younger generation, and for a long time he seemed to be doing well. He even started crowing again.

But those injuries had taken their toll. As the weather grew cooler, he had more and more trouble getting around. He dragged a wing as if it hurt too much to pull it close. He slept in the run, because he couldn’t make the three-inch jump into the coop. He wasn’t happy or healthy anymore.

And so we made a decision that most pet owners have to make at some point, but unlike most pet owners, there was no one who could end his pain except us. Yes, we killed him. It was the hardest thing that my husband Paul and I have ever done in our lives. We both cried. We thought about turning him into wonderful coq au vin as a celebration of his life, but we just couldn’t. We gave him to people who we knew would do it right and enjoy it. (Karen was roasted and finished in a stockpot.)

We’ve been through highs and lows with our flock, but we love having them. It’s not always easy, but then nothing worthwhile ever really is.

Angela and Paul Knipple write the blog “From the Southern Table” at paulandangela.net. They’re also working on The World in a Skillet, a book about first-generation immigrants and food in the South. For more information on raising chickens, go to mypetchicken.com and idealpoultry.com.