texasmesquite

Food Network star Paula Deen kept it casual at her Plano appearance


03:26 PM CDT on Friday, April 24, 2009


By JOY TIPPING / The Dallas Morning News
jtipping@dallasnews.com

PLANO – The title of one of Paula Deen's cookbooks, It Ain't All About the Cookin', turns out to be an understatement: It's about everything and anything. Paula Deen is no shrinking magnolia.
She came to town Thursday evening for a sold-out "Conversation With Paula Deen," moderated by Channel 8's Gary Cogill, that brought 250 ecstatic fans to Legacy Books. The stop was to promote her latest book, Paula Deen's The Deen Family Cookbook.
In an interview at her Dallas hotel before the event, the Savannah, Ga.-based chef, restaurateur and Food Network star says, "There's nothing I won't tell you except my weight." That leads to a hilarious anecdote about the time she had a – "What's that thing? You, know, like a kaleidoscope?," she asks her assistants – colonoscopy, and because she wouldn't tell her weight, the nurse had to guess. She erred on the low side, and Deen got too little anesthesia; she woke up about halfway through the procedure.
But she cheerily reveals her age – 62 – and that her perfect, snow-white teeth are porcelain veneers. She offers the name of her dentist.
She stage-manages the photo shoot with aplomb. "Ya'll hold that bedspread up behind me for a backdrop." Her four young assistants scurry about good-naturedly, moving furniture and standing on chairs. She's what you might call 'animated,' " someone mentions. "Oh, I can have a real good time right by myself," she says with a boisterous laugh. "Just me and a mirror."
Deen says she loves Dallas – "the room service was just delicious" at the Ritz-Carlton, she reports – and especially her women fans here. "Dallas and Texas girls, we're like sisters in the way we think and do things. We all love our cast-iron skillets and our hair close to Jesus."
She reminisced fondly about once being shown how to cook brisket by a cowboy on a ranch near San Antonio. "I kissed that man square on the mouth," she says. "We don't do much brisket in Georgia – we do chicken and pork butts."
At Legacy, her entrance (accompanied by husband Michael Groover) sent the previously quiet crowd into "rock-star sighting" whoops, whistles and a standing ovation. Tina Butler of Mesquite bowed, as if meeting the queen, from her front-row spot. "She's made cooking cool," Butler explained later. "I just adore her."
Mary McLaughlin of Plano, a pastry chef and sommelier-in-training, said Deen "just has this persona that emanates joy; she's irresistible. And it's great that she has struggled and been on a path and made it through."
The star immediately established a casual tone by kicking off her shoes to show her new pedicure. "The color's called In the Buff," she said, with a twinkle that made Cogill blush.
She entranced the crowd with candid tales of her 20-year battle with agoraphobia, the acceptance of death (her father died at 40, her mother at 44) that brought her out of it, her decision to start a catering business at 42 with only $200, her hard-won success and her brief career as a movie star in Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown.
She bemoaned the loss of sweet tea in Southern restaurants. "I never thought I'd live to see the day I'd go to any restaurant in Atlanta and not be able to get sweet tea! It's like our table wine." She also gave her biggest tip for success: Use only Luzianne tea bags, and a cup to a cup-and-a-half of sugar per gallon.
Deen got her biggest laugh when Cogill asked her to dish about her Food Network co-stars – "Who's weird and who's not?" he quizzed.
She demurred. "I don't know nuthin'!" But then she couldn't help herself: "Well, some are spitters and some are swallowers. Some of 'em don't eat their own food. I don't have to tell you which kind I am, do I?"
She declined to name names. But hey, if you need the name of a good dentist in Savannah, she's your gal.
Paula Deen's The Deen Family Cookbook
Simon & Schuster, $26