The Pioneer Woman - From Blog to TV Series

_{Above image Amazon product available below}

How It All Started

It started with another one of those wildly popular cooking shows, 'Throwdown! With Bobby Flay', the format of this show is for chef and restaurant owner Bobby Flay to travel to small, privately owned restaurants all over the country, surprise the owner with a challenge to prepare their specialty better than he can prepare it. The food is prepared at the restaurant, a crowd always gathers and there are local guest judges to determine the winner.

In a twist from the format of the Bobby Flay show, Ree Drummond reversed the roles and challenged Flay to a throwdown, challenging him to prepare a complete Thanksgiving dinner. He accepted the throwdown which took place at the Drummond ranch. The show aired November, 2010 with country singer Trisha Yearwood as one of the judges.

It was a close call, but Ree's home cooking edged out Flay's gourmet spread.

A natural transition from hosting a food blog and TV show is publishing a cookbook. There are several Pioneer Woman cookbooks available. Some have made it to the New York Times best seller list and some are Amazon best sellers.

Less than a year after the Throwdown! With Bobby Flay show aired, Ree Drummond had been offered her own daytime TV cooking series on the Food Network, it was titled 'The Pioneer Woman' and made its debut in August of 2011.

Cookware, utensils, kitchen linens, glassware, dinnerware and more products designed for The Pioneer Woman line of products. Here are just a few and they are available at Amazon.

• Started in May 2006 as a subdomain through Typepad
• October 2006 registered her own domain hosted by Rackspace
• 2009 TIME magazine named it one of the "25 Best Blogs" in the world
• May 2011 received 23,300,000 hits per month with 4,400,000 unique visitors
• Estimated income from display ads alone is $1,000,000 per year