Paula Deen: It Ain't All About the Cookin'

Paula Deen: It Ain't All About the Cookin'
by Paula Deen, Sherry Suib Cohen

Paula Deen: It Ain't All About the Cookin'
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Book Summary Information

Author: Paula Deen, Sherry Suib Cohen
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-04-03
ISBN: 0743292855
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Book Reviews of Paula Deen: It Ain't All About the Cookin'

Book Review: OH, PUH-LEEEEZE! I know this woman.........
Summary: 1 Stars

I could write my own book on her. I just might. She is as fake as lots of celebrities. I live on Wilmington Island, GA (outside Savannah) where she lives and I am just down the road from her mansion. Now this island is small and is a mix of rich people (they have the water views) and the middle-class (they live in the middle part of the island and can't see a thing because of the big, rich-folk homes). She is building herself a bigger home where she plans on doing her videotaping. Well, that is if people keep buying her act.

Her accent is sooooooo fake. We knew her before she became "famous" and she used "y'all" rarely and certainly not in that exaggerated accent she uses on TV. Either she or her network thought it would be a good gimmick and she just goes overboard with it. Most people here just laugh at her. She shops at my Publix and has her husband, Michael, keep the "small people" away while she buys groceries. LOL! Before she had her teeth fixed and her face done, she wore clothes pins behind her ears to pull her face tight, no lie! Her teeth were not good. She rides in a chauffeured black limo like all Southern family women. LOL!

Her fried chicken and her biscuits are great but all the rest of her "cooking" is good to fair and she is not doing the cooking, believe me. Really, she made a career out of producing a cartoon image of herself. I could go on and on. She is fake all the way down to her lard smeared heart. I wish I could tell you about her potato throwing rampage she had at the restaurant she bought her brother Bubba (and still controls interest in). They close down Bubba's to tape her show. This can go on days or weeks. It is cheaper to film several shows in a row, they just change clothes and audiences, etc between tapings. There are some greenish-yellow condos next to Bubba's and I have a friend who lives in one.I was visiting my friend one day when they were taping some of her shows. Anyway, I saw one woman from the Food Network outside and was chatting with her about Paula and she told me Ms Dean is a real c@@@. You can think I am lying, that is fine cause I know the truth. I just hate to see the BS she is flinging at people.

Paula walks around downtown (during tourist season, of course) wearing a flour caked apron like she just ran out of the kitchen to get a pound of butter. LOL!. So fake!! She goes into stores and banks and throws her remarkable weight around because she seems to think everyone ought it to do what she wants.

Don't believe a word of what she says in her books and on TV except her family are very good folks and her sons are super nice. Still, she is the boss and it is clear to Savannah that her family BETTER take orders from her.

Paula is all about image, a manufactured one like a movie star's.

UPDATE: I just read that silliness in the January, 2009 Reader's Digest called Paula Dean "How I Cooked My Way Out of A Crisis" LOL!!!
She cooked things with heat alright, but it wasn't food. She had an affair with a man in town and he had money and suddenly she was opening a restaurant. Of course, he is gone now. Then she started this tale about having only $200.00 after her divorce and had to work her way up to where she is. Well, OK, Paula. Nice story but we know the truth here in Savannah. One thing: Paula is VERY insecure about herself and dislikes anyone with more money or education. She may not know one thing about you but if she perceives you have more money or education than her she will be cold and aloof. It may go back to when she worked in a bank in Albany and had a gun put to her head during a robbery. She quit after that and never got a college education.

Yes, she accomplished a lot but you cannot discount her use of other people's money and lots of good luck and timing and stretching the truth A LOT.

Summary of Paula Deen: It Ain't All About the Cookin'

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. PAULA DEEN is the bestselling author of Paula Deen Celebrates!; Paula Deen & Friends: Living It Up, Southern Style; The Lady & Sons Just Desserts; and other books. She is the host of the Food Network's Paula's Home Cooking and Paula's Party, and has appeared on Good Morning America, Today, Fox and Friends, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Paula is the founder of The Lady & Sons restaurant and co-owner of Uncle Bubba's Oyster House. She lives with her family in Savannah, Georgia. 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.

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