I have a secret girl-crush on The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, who writes a blog and has a Food Network TV show about her life on a cattle ranch in northeastern Oklahoma. 

It is a cooking show, but I think what really attracts me is her life. She and her incredibly handsome husband are raising their four children on this vast land, and it takes all of their collective effort — and a lot of other people, too — to keep it going every day. 

Her kids are rosy-cheeked and healthy as they leap off of hay bales, scramble over fences, haul various ranch stuff from place to place, and wake up at the crack of dawn to saddle their horses and work cattle all day. It’s clear that they and Mr. Pioneer Woman — did I mention that he’s very easy to look at? — are willing to tolerate the cameras that invade their lives in exchange for all the delicious food she prepares and they get to eat. 

She feeds them butter and pasta and bread and cheese and red meat, and they seem to burn it up quicker than she can put it in front of them. It’s all a little bit corny, a little bit cliché, very polished for prime time, but I don’t mind. 

Drummond’s stories in her blog are accompanied by her lovely photographs of life on the ranch, and usually feature her folksy sense of humor and the guilty pleasure she takes in making brownies and cookies and cakes, which her family eagerly consumes while suffering none of the ill-effects that plague those of us who work keyboards instead of cattle for a living. 

Because I fall into the former group, I don’t make many of her recipes. I did once take her cheesy corn dip to a potluck — fat, cheese, fat, corn, fat, green chiles and fat — where it received rave reviews, but I can’t afford to make something like that for regular consumption. 

But every now and then, usually when her husband and kids are out of town, she cooks something I can live with, or at least something I can modify and then live with. 

One such recipe is her Quick and Easy Roasted Red Pepper Pasta. The first time I made it, I actually didn’t make it at all. My husband made it and he served it over ziti. It was amazing — creamy, full of flavor, a really wonderful departure from the usual, tomato-based sauce. 

But recently, as part of my not-spaghetti squash redemption project, I made it again. Actually, he made it through the food processor step, and I finished it when I got home from work. We served it over roasted spaghetti squash and it was a hit! 

It calls for heavy cream and lots of butter — 4 tablespoons — but when we make it, we use half-and-half and just 2 tablespoons of butter with no noticeable difference in the end result. And when you eat it over spaghetti squash and serve it with Honey Chipotle Meatballs — I’ll write about those in my next column — you can cut out the guilty and just keep the pleasure. 

Enjoy!

Quick and Easy Roasted Red Pepper Sauce 

2 tablespoons butter 

Half a large onion, finely diced 

3 cloves garlic, minced 

1 15.5-ounce jar roasted red peppers, drained and roughly chopped 

1 cup vegetable or chicken broth

½ teaspoon salt 

Freshly ground black pepper 

½ cup half-and-half 

½ cup Parmesan cheese shavings 

Minced parsley (dried works, too) 

Fresh basil (optional) 

Melt 1 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onions and garlic and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the chopped red peppers and cook until hot and bubbly. 

Carefully transfer the contents of the skillet to a food processor or blender. (I use an immersion blender.) Puree the pepper mixture until it’s totally blended. There still will be some texture to the peppers but the sauce should be evenly pureed. 

Heat the other tablespoons of butter in the original skillet over medium heat. When the butter is melted and bubbly, pour in the pepper puree. Add the broth, parsley, salt and pepper, and stir until heated through. Splash in the half-and-half and stir to combine. Taste and adjust the seasonings as desired. 

If serving over pasta — there's enough sauce for 12 ounces to 1 pound, depending on how saucy you like it — add the cooked pasta to the sauce in the skillet. Add the fresh basil and stir to coat. 

If serving over roasted spaghetti squash, serve up a pile of squash strands in a big bowl, top with a generous amount of sauce, Parmesan shreds and torn, fresh basil leaves. 

Original recipe from Ree Drummond’s www.thepioneerwoman.com. Jill Blanchette is the multiplatform production manager at The Day. Share recipes and comments with her at j.blanchette@theday.com.