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Summary
Summary
Do you know the real Paula Deen? You may think you know the butter-loving, finger-licking, joke-cracking queen of melt-in-your-mouth Southern cuisine. You may have even visited The Lady & Sons to taste for yourself the down-home delicacies that made her famous and even heard some version of her Cinderella story (a single mom with two teenage sons started a brown-bag lunch business with $200 and wound up with a thriving restaurant, a fairy-tale second marriage, and wildly popular television shows), but you have never heard the intimate details of her often bumpy road to fame and fortune.
Courageously honest, downright inspiring, and just a little bit saucy, Paula shares the highs and lows of her life in the inimitable charming and irreverent style that you know from her television shows and personal appearances. She talks about long childhood summers spent in a bathing suit and roller skates and hard years living in the back of her father's gas station; a buzzing high school social life of sleepovers, parties, cheerleading, and boys; and a difficult marriage. The death of her beloved parents precipitated a debilitating agoraphobia that crippled her for years. But even when the going got tough, Paula never lost the good grace and sense of humor that would eventually help carry her to success and stardom. Of course, you can't get by on charm alone: as Paula has learned, you need plenty of willpower, hard work, and, above all, the love and support of family and friends to finance, sustain, and run a successful restaurant.
In each chapter, Paula shares new recipes: there's serious comfort food like her momma's Chocolate-Dippy Doughnuts, Courage Chili for when you know life's going to get tough, Sexy Oxtails for seducing that special someone, and the recipe for her new mother-in-law's Banana Nut Delight Cake that Paula finally got just right. And you'll love the never-before-seen photos of her family.
In this memoir, Paula Deen speaks as frankly and intimately as few women in the public eye have ever dared. Whether she's telling tales of good times or bad, her story is proof that the old-fashioned American dream is alive and kicking, and there still is such a thing as a real-life happy ending.
Author Notes
Paula H. Deen and her sons operate The Lady & Sons Restaurant, located in Savannah's historic district.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Famed Savannah restaurateur Paula Deen, whose drive to create a better future for her two sons helped fuel a rags-to-riches entrepreneurial adventure, dispels the notion of herself as the model of motherly virtue, confessing to a nagging smoking habit and a less than wholesome workplace vocabulary. More seriously, she admits that chronic agoraphobia and an inability to come to terms with the effects of her first husband's drinking rendered her a less than ideal maternal figure. During the taping of an early episode of Deen's Food Network program, a meddlesome producer chided her to take only "princess bites" of on-air creations, advice that she wisely rejected. Admittedly, Deen may at times seem to sink her teeth into too many personal issues and cathartic experiences, at least for the most casual of listeners. Yet Deen's legions of fans will find themselves enthralled by the spunky, confessional tone and undeniable down-home charm of her audio performance. She addresses her listeners as "ya'll" with a grace and sincerity capable of winning hearts on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Simultaneous release with the S&S hardcover (Reviewed online). (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
In this richly emotional culinary memoir, Deen, the author of three best-selling cookbooks, star of a popular Food Network television show, and the owner of the celebrated Lady and Sons restaurant in Savannah, GA, shares her life story. Writing in a warm, comfortable, and occasionally salty style, Deen talks about everything from her decades-long battle with agoraphobia and her troubled first marriage to the hard work that went into building her first business, The Bag Lady, and the professional and personal successes that followed. A few of Deen's recipes (almost all new) are sprinkled among her stories, which offer a sample of the distinctively Southern cooking that is the foundation of Deen's life and career. This wonderfully nourishing book will have readers laughing, crying, and hungry for more. Highly recommended for all public libraries, especially those where other culinary memoirs such as Pat Conroy's The Pat Conroy Cookbook and Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone are popular. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 12/06.]-John Charles, Scottsdale P.L., AZ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter 1 TERROR WITH NO NAME What did I have, what was makin' me so scared that my heart about beat out of my chest? I just knew I was gonna die, knew my heart couldn't stand this kind of pressure, and it had happened too many times before. Almost every last time I had to go outside by myself, that panic would start in and drop me to my knees. Couldn't breathe, couldn't stop trembling. I felt weak and nauseated and dizzy, and I just knew I was gonna die in front of other people. If I dropped over in public, think how horribly humiliatin' it would be. But, oh Lord, the magnolias smelled so damn good out my window, and all morning I'd been fixin' to take my eleven-year-old son, Jamie, to baseball practice. After, I figured I'd hang out at the mall store in the housewares section, then maybe go strollin' for a bit, just to breathe deep some of that sweet Georgia air. I wanted to walk through my door so bad and maybe today I could do it; maybe today I could go outside. There would be no breathin' deep, no goin' outside . The thought of outside grabbed my gut like a 'coon grabs a chicken. I started to sweat and my arms lost all feeling, like they belonged on someone else. At the very least, I was likely to faint at any moment. Would there be someone to see me, someone who would catch me if one of those panicky attacks came back and I lost control and fainted outside ? Oh, my stars, I was frightened silly. It was 1978, and I was thirty-one years old. Was this the day I was finally going to die, the day I'd secretly been waiting for and dreading ever since my daddy passed almost thirteen years ago now? Well, maybe not, if I stopped thinking of going outside. You're safe, Paula , I told myself. You're safe inside this house. No one's makin' you go out, you won't die today. Fact is -- don't you remember -- y'all canceled the boys' after-school stuff for the whole year. What sickness did I have? What had happened to me? My terror had no name -- least none I'd ever heard. I was alone with it. So scared about goin' outside . It wasn't always this way. Copyright (c) 2007 by Paula Deen Foreword I never call myself a chef. Never went to Chef School. Never made a Blanquette de Veau. Never met a boxed cake mix I didn't like. I'm a cook. Learned at my grandmomma's stove. But I can cook, honey, cook rings around those tall-white-hatted chefs. My fried chicken, my grits -- oh my stars, you'll think you died and went to heaven. Like everyone else on this earth, there's a story behind the cook, behind the recipes, behind the woman. So, y'all, here is what the publisher calls my memoirs. How did they come about? Well, I've written five cookbooks, and after each one, I got thousands of letters from people asking about my personal life, not just my life with grits. Until now, I haven't been about ready to do that. Maybe if you heard the truth about Paula Deen, about the mistakes I made in my life, how bad my judgment's been at times, and how guilty I still feel because my mothering wasn't always so wonderful...well, maybe you wouldn't be quite as lovin' to me as you have been. And that would kill me. If I could get back one wrong I did to my family, if I could choose some words I could take back and eat 'em down so they would never have seen the light, it would be the day I told my son Jamie I hated him. I can barely write those words now. I love my sons more than life, but we were in the heat of the battle of starting a restaurant business, trying to get all those people fed, and I felt like Jamie was pulling against me, rather than with me. If I could only live that day over, oh, I would. You'd better believe I learned that the spoken word can never be taken back. Sure, you can apologize for it, but you and the person you hurt will never, ever forget. Forgive, maybe, if you're real lucky. I've asked for a lot of forgiveness in my life and I've given it as well. You know what? In church, they always tell you to forgive your enemies. Seems to me it's even harder to forgive our loved ones and friends, but it's much more important to do so because it's the people we love who can hurt us the most. The terrible thing I said to Jamie taught me to speak with more care and try not to let my instinct for survival get me so mad I'll give pain to someone close to me. But can you imagine me, a mother who loves her boys beyond love, saying such a thing to her own child? I'll tell you something else: in all the things that have been written about me, there's something that's been left out of the tellin'. I'm a smoker. There, I said it. Hardly anyone outside my family knows that, and it embarrasses me because it's an addiction I can't be quit of, though I try every day. They say Jackie Kennedy was a chain smoker, but she would never allow herself to be photographed with a cigarette -- and I get that real well because I also try my damndest to see that no one takes my picture with one. I love my fans so much and I hate to disappoint them; to see me with such a weakness will surely upset them. I still need to walk into a room where they're waiting with my head up. But suddenly, somehow, it's time to show and tell -- warts and all. I plan to tell some hard secrets in these pages, but it's taken a long time to get up the nerve to do so. Try ten years. Maybe twenty. Mostly, I want to share with you that I'm livin' proof that the American dream is alive and well, that you can be an imperfect person and still end up with so much fun in your life you can hardly stand it. I'm prayin' that if even one of you out there gets some inspiration from the way my own American dream turned into reality, it'll be worth playing true confessions here. You should know this: you gotta be willin' to work for that American dream -- work for it, and feel the passion. You gotta truly be in love with what you do. If you have a wild hair to fly a circus trapeze, to chug out to sea on a tug, to own a restaurant when you haven't much more than a dime to your name, or to search for true love even when you're no spring chicken -- go for it. Sure, luck plays a part, but here's the thing: the harder I work, the luckier I get. A warning: you may be a little shocked at some of the language in this book, and that's another weakness of mine. I tell people who come to my cooking class that sometimes I can be a little bawdy and I sure hope that don't upset them. But I'm my father's daughter, and I'm banking on one thing, and I'm not budging on this: my God has a sense of humor even if what I say has a four-letter word in it. I think He'd want me to laugh. What's in my heart is not irreverence but a full knowledge that God's laughing too. So, this is a book wishin' you best dishes from my house to yours, but it's also a look into my home, my true life, my loves, and my Southern heart. Copyright (c) 2007 by Paula Deen Excerpted from Paula Deen: It Ain't All about the Cookin' by Paula Deen, Sherry Suib Cohen All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
Foreword |
1 Terror with No Name |
2 Something Smells Good |
3 On Not Listening to Yo' Momma |
4 How Do You Get to Be a Woman of Substance When Your World's Fallin' Apart? |
5 The Terror Did Have a Name |
6 The Bag Lady |
7 The Bottoming Out and the New Beginning |
8 What I Did for Love |
9 The Lady & Sons |
10 Sharing Recipes |
11 Love on a Tug: Michael |
12 How I Got My Own Television Show, and It Wasn't No Desperate Housewives |
13 Backstage Secrets and a Weddin' to Beat All |
14 Blend. Don't Mix, Stir, or Beat |
15 Food, Glorious Food, Southern Style |
16 So You Want to Own a Restaurant? |
17 Scenes from a Life: Growth, Cameron Mr. Jimmy Bubba, and Me |
18 Southern Comfort: Things I've Learned |
Index |