Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #623500 in Books
• Published on: 2009-11-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .75" h x 5.50" w x 8.50" l, .63 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781439163351
• Condition: New
• Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Anyone who's ever watched, mesmerized, as the author of this memoir pan-fries a porkchop on the Food Network will find lots to savor in her down-home life story. Deen, the sunny host of Paula's Home Cooking and the author of three cookbooks, relates the collapse of her first marriage, her surprising fight with agoraphobia and the rise of her Savannah restaurant, The Lady and Sons, with candor, good humor and mouthwatering descriptions of Southern food. Of her husband's favorite dish, Sexy Oxtails, Deen writes, "It is a loving dish; a hearty, lip-smacking dish; and those tails are better than a passionate kiss." Yes, she includes the simple, savory recipe alongside recipes for favorites like belly-filling Shaggy Man Split Pea Soup, salty-sweet Pan-Fried Corn and addictive Biscuits and Sawmill Gravy. Deen writes the way she talks-lots of ain'ts, darlings and honeys-but the effect is charming and disarmingly upfront. On her early Food Network success, she says, "I was not a size 2, but instead a sassy, roundish, white-headed cook. Women could identify with me... I could be them, and they could be me." She's absolutely right; when Deen has turned the last of life's lemons into Southern-sweet lemonade, readers may want to stand up and cheer, or maybe just tuck into a big, celebratory plate of porkchops.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Paula Deen was born and raised in Albany, Georgia. She later moved to Savannah, where she and her two sons, Bobby and Jamie, started the Bag Lady catering company. The business took off and evolved into The Lady & Sons Restaurant, which is located in Savannah's historic district and specializes in Southern cooking, as well as Uncle Bubba's Seafood, which co-owns with her brother. Paula is the author of Paula Deen's Kitchen Wisdom and Recipe Journal, Christmas with Paula Deen, Paula Deen: It Ain't All About the Cookin', Paula Deen & Friends, The Lady & Sons Just Desserts, The Lady & Sons Too!, and The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook.  She publishes a bimonthly magazine, Cooking with Paula Deen (Hoffman Media) and is a regular guest on QVC, where she sells her books and food products

 

Sherry Suib Cohen has written twenty-one books for major publishers and was a contributing editor at McCall's, Rosie, New Woman, and Lifetime magazines. She regularly writes for periodicals, including Parade, Family Circle, Redbook, Reader's Digest, and Ladies' Home Journal. Cohen is an award-winning member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and lives with her husband, Larry, in New York City. She makes a great soup.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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 © 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 © 2007 by Paula Deen

Customer Reviews

Sassy Kitchen Truths Dear To Our Heart
What is it that makes us all fall in love with Paula Deen, that Savannah queen in the kitchen with the recipes that ooze with butter and mayo? I can't find a reason not to love her. She's a slap in the face of honesty, with a cup full of love, a dash of humor, a sprinkle of wisdom, all rolled up into a pretty recipe loaf baked at 350 degrees of yumminess.

First, you have to appreciate that she is a true southern cook, and who doesn't like good ole southern food? Second of all, she has a background story of struggling to make ends meet with two sons, working 9 to 5 in a bank, scared to go out in public, and starting her own business in the kitchen in her middle-age years. Yeah, it's a story we've all heard before, but hers is 100% honest and true.

And lastly, she cooks up recipes that anyone can do, and they are recipes that you want to try, not a recipe you throw in a box and plan to cook some day (but probably never will). Remember those over-the-top chefs from years ago that used ingredients you had never even heard of, cooking up dishes that required hundreds of dollars, gallons of sweat, hours of nail biting, prep work, and probably lots of crying? Paula is definitely not one of those cooks. People appreciate her as a person because they can relate to her on all sides of her life. She's one of us.

If you are a Paula Fan, from her cookbooks to her shows, there's a lot in this book that you've read or seen before. But there is a lot that you will be learning for the first time on these very pages as Paula reveals more about herself and who she is, which will make you appreciate Paula even more. She is truly inspiring, in and out of the kitchen.

Deen holds nothing back in revealing her humor and her flaws -very inspiring!
First of all, if you have a high opinion of Paula Deen and don't want to know about her past, including lots of mistakes (by her own admission) and her bouts of agoraphobia (which left her housebound) and panic attacks, then this isn't the book for you. But there is lots to recommend here - not only are there wonderful recipes at the end of each chapter, some of which have become family favorites for us - try the chili or the ham salad sandwiches or one of her scrumptous desserts - but Deen holds nothing back and proves that a person who started out with nothing, had a low opinion of herself but lots of energy and gumption, was able to rise above her flaws and make it. It is inspiring and an amazing story, too!

I loved this book and found it VERY inspiring. Deen came from a rather modest background and she didn't have a lot of self-esteem. She married a handsome hunk of a guy, had two gorgeous boys and found herself in a mess of trouble, with a man who couldn't make ends meet and leading a hardscrabble existence. She lost her parents and felt lost, alone and very scared. Her home was repossessed. A lot of people would have given up at that point but she did not. Working nearly round the clock, she slowly built up her business.....very slowly, but steadily.


But out of her adversity, one step at a time, she learned to make it. Along the way, she made lots of mistakes but she kept persevering.

In all honesty, some readers may have trouble with some of values and decisions made by Deen but I didn't judge her a bit. We are all human and we all have our ups and downs. I find her indefatable resilience to be amazing.

Tell it All Sister!
There is an old joke here in the South about a man who gets up during a fire and brimstone sermon at church and starts to confess all of his sins. The minister is pleased with the results of his sermon and is urging the subject on by saying, "Amen brother, tell it all." Finally the confessing backslider confesses something so horrible that the preacher's jaw drops and he says, "Whoa, I don't believe I would have told that!" A few times while I was reading this book I sort of felt like that preacher because Paula tells it ALL!

She starts out the book by saying that she is going to hide nothing and is going to be totally honest with her fans. She then proceeds to admit that she is a smoker and I thought that if this was her biggest darkest secret I was going to be bored before I got through with this book. Well in true Southern fashion she was just serving up a light appetizer because there was much more to come. The much more I'm not going to give away but take it from me, Paula has been cooking in more rooms than the kitchen.

Beyond the secrets though this is a warm and endearing book that is filled with Southern slang and humor. This is the story of the average Southern girl who grows up watching her mother and grandmother cook but never dreams that cooking will be her ticket to the big time. This is the story of a girl who marries too young, loses her parents not long after that and ends up in the having to find a way to support her family. There are dark times when she has to deal with family problems and mental illness and there are times when most people would have just given up but this is also a love story with a happy ending.

If you take this roller coaster ride with Paula you will laugh with her and you will cry with her but most of all you will be pulling for this Steel Magnolia from South Georgia. She had some help writing this book but for the most part these are obviously her words and her thoughts and both come at you with a deep drawl. She talks about her personal life, her family and her business adventures and from start to finish this is one fascinating book. The story of how she and her sons brought the Bag Lady to life and how together they built what amounts to a food empire is truly the stuff of legend and her reaction to Michael after their first meeting will have you rolling on the floor. This is quite frankly one of the best and most honest autobiographies that I have ever read and I have read more than my share of them. No fan of things Southern should miss this book.