Paula Deen

by Paula Deen

  Jeannie left the menus up to me, and I chose beef stroganoff for the main course because it seemed like that would be an easy dish to make for so many folks. I didn’t figure on the heat in Savannah in July.

  It was horrible. I had this little bitty kitchen in our house, with no dishwasher and about two feet of counter space. It was so hot, there was no way I could cool the blasted house down. Jimmy Deen went and rented us a big old fan that just about blew the food off the stove, and my Aunt Peggy came over to Savannah to help me. I moaned to her, “I’m never gonna make it. How am I gonna get that ten thousand dollars? I’ve got to produce.” The entire family—the boys, their girlfriends, Jimmy, me, my Aunt Peggy—we worked and we sweated and we worked and we sweated and we finally got that damn beef stroganoff made. It was divine. But I’ll tell you what, by the time I got those meals served at the parties, I muttered to Aunt Peggy, “You couldn’t pay me to eat beef stroganoff, never, never, ever again.”

  And Aunt Peggy said, “Me neither.”

  One day, my friend Kenny Edwards called me and said, “The restaurant space is available in the Best Western hotel. You need to get down there, girl, and if you’re going to be in this business, get in it.” Boy, was he right.

  I went down and, sure enough, the restaurant in the Best Western on Eisenhower and Albercorn, the south end of town, near the mall, was for rent. The neighborhood wasn’t great; it sure wasn’t the best of Savannah’s historic pride, but it was a chance for me to grow a little bit, anyway. I talked with Robert Anderson, the owner, a really good-looking man, but with a reputation of being very, very tough. He looked me up and down and finally said, “I’ll tell you what: I see that you don’t have any experience, but something tells me that you have what it takes. I’m gonna give you a chance.” He rented that space to me for a thousand dollars a month, plus utilities. It was a tremendous amount of money for me, but I took the biggest risk of my life and signed a lease for five years to serve three meals a day, seven days a week.

  Well, I couldn’t make a move without my family. I talked with my Aunt Peggy for weeks, told her what I wanted to do, and together we decided that I’d start a double-purpose food place in that Best Western space. The Bag Lady had done well so I’d continue to operate the deliveries out the back door of the Best Western, and, honey, I could relax because now we were as legal as the Constitution. Jamie started putting all the Bag Lady routes together by himself. I made the hot meals for him, and all he had to do was package them. Then he would make all the cold meals and salads; he would work all night long. Then he’d do his routes, come back home and sleep a little, and the next day it would start all over again. He was getting terrific at the business. I knew I needed family in there.

  I planned that we’d have this cute little sit-down restaurant in the front of the space. Because I wanted people to associate the new restaurant with the good food that came with The Bag Lady, I decided to call the little restaurant simply The Lady.

  The Lady was a charmer of a restaurant, a dream fulfilled. I could probably seat thirty to forty people. I’d been rat-packing money from the week I started The Bag Lady, and I’d managed to save four thousand dollars. I had to come up with the first and the last month’s rent for the owner of the Best Western before we could open the doors to The Lady; that was two thousand dollars. The other two thousand would have to go for food supplies for The Lady. The beauty of this tiny restaurant was that it was a turnkey deal; because a restaurant had been in the space before I got there, pots, pans, dishes, and silverware were part of the package. I had to buy nothing except the groceries.

  There wasn’t a dime to pay for employees. When we moved into the new place, I said to my sons’ girlfriends, “You girls are gonna have to wait the tables,” and they did. In the beginning, I’d take the orders, run back to the kitchen to make the food, come back to deliver the order, go to the next table, take their orders, bring the coffee to the first table, with the girls filling in when I was busy doing something else. In some ways, it was pure hell. I was working sixteen-hour days, providing three meals a day, seven days a week. I wasn’t sure I could stick it out, but it was my last shot at making something of myself: I was forty-four years old and almost out of time. But listen: Aunt Peggy told me I could do it. Aunt Peggy’s never wrong.

  Let me say a word about the kitchen in the Best Western: you had to be dedicated to stay in there for even twenty minutes. The focal point was a beautiful Vent-A-Hood range; it was so popular back then because it would draw out the heat and smoke and beautifully ventilate the kitchen—when it worked right. I would cut on the range every day, but I was so inexperienced—this was the first professional kitchen I’d ever been in besides my grandmother’s when I was small—and I didn’t know the Vent-A-Hood wasn’t working. So the kitchen was unbearably hot and smoky and awful. One day I was back there working and my heart was beating so fast and hard, not because I was agoraphobic this time, but because I was so damn hot. I thought I was gonna die, and I said to Jamie, “I’m gonna have to call an ambulance here in a few minutes.”

  The spell passed and I never had to call for that ambulance. I was still being pretty tough to my boys; tough to everyone except my customers. Personally, though, I couldn’t even look at anyone having a real good time because I couldn’t afford to want that, couldn’t afford any diversions because it might break my stride, and once that stride was broken—that was it for the Albany High School cheerleader. There wouldn’t ever be a road to success, only streets of doom and gloom to walk.

  I wasn’t a whole lot of fun.

  With all the work pressures and emotional strains, I certainly didn’t have time for my husband’s bad habits. The Lady was an exciting turning point for my business life, but it was also the beginning of the end of my marriage. For about twenty-five years I’d endured not only my own awful agoraphobia but also Jimmy’s drinking, his insults, and both of us tearing each other down in a thousand different ways. But I’m here to report that there’s nothin’ like a little business success to lend a lady some personal courage. I’d about had it up to here with my husband. He’d lost yet another job while I was trying to build up The Bag Lady, so he started running a route for me. One morning, Bobby told me that he had to stop by the local store, and his daddy was up at the counter with a beer in his hand getting himself a hit before he started The Bag Lady route. I was furious and terribly worried that Jimmy would ruin my reputation before I could even get started. Still, I didn’t do much about it. I didn’t want to hurt him or embarrass my children by asking for a divorce.

  Then it came: that famous straw that breaks the camel’s back.

  Bobby had bought himself the neatest old white pickup truck. It was in mint condition. It had been completely restored, and he loved this truck something fierce. He was making the loan payments from his salary by giving the money to his daddy so that Jimmy could put the money in the checking account and then write a check to the bank for Bobby’s loan payment. The checks were always bouncing and Jimmy always had a tough time explaining why. One day, when I was at The Lady, a distraught Bobby called me and he said, “Momma, somebody just came and took my truck. They hauled my truck away.”

  I exploded. “What are you talkin’ about, son? Let’s find out what happened.”

  It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that although Bobby had faithfully given his car payments to Jimmy, his daddy now had really stopped sendin’ the checks. The bank had repossessed the truck. I knew Jimmy loved his boys and would not intentionally hurt or steal from them, but times were tough for him, and he’d forgotten to make those payments one time too many now.

  Whoaaaaa. I was madder than a wet hen. “Son, don’t you worry about it, we’ll get your truck back,” I promised.

  I went down to the First Union, where I had my own checking account; I had saved up four thousand dollars and bought a certificate of deposit with that money and I told the bank manager I wanted to make a loan against my CD.


  Do you know the bank turned me down? It was my own money, and they turned me down. I went back there, and I said, “Listen here. I want my money. Now.”

  They finally gave it to me, but they made me dance through every beat there was. This bank had previously made me some small-business loans, but I hadn’t been in business very long and they didn’t really trust me. Their mistake.

  When I finally got my money, Bobby and I took it to the sheriff who had repossessed the truck, and we paid off the debt and Bobby got his truck back.

  But that was the final blow. I told Jimmy I wanted out. Frankly, I wanted to tear my husband limb from limb. You don’t screw with my children. You can screw with me, but not them. All my feelings for Jimmy Deen died at that moment; anything that had been left was gone. I was finished. For years I’d begged him, “Please address our problems while I still care, while I still love you, ’cause one day I’m gonna get up, and I’m gonna flatline. And once I flatline, there’s no turning back.”

  The day I found out he’d not been sending Bobby’s truck payments, I flatlined. It had been twenty-seven years, and now he was dragging us all down. But even when I filed for divorce, he never left the house. I was the one who had to leave. Jamie moved in with his college girlfriend and Bobby remained with his daddy.

  Well, it only took about three or four months for Jimmy to default on making the house payments, and I got a notice that the house was being repossessed. He was finally leaving.

  It was the end for the cute cheerleader from Albany High School and the handsomest guy on the planet. I had to go to the bank, catch up on all the payments, and I eventually moved back into the house. But, oh, there were lonely times to come.

  • • •

  My life was grim. I was working such long hours at the Best Western and I only came home to sleep for a short time. I’d lost my little Shih Tzu, Magnolia, to cancer, and her death was so devastating to me that I told myself I’d never have another dog because it hurt too much to lose her.

  Still, I yearned for some company that would be around as long as I was.

  I chose birds. They live a long time. I got in my car and drove to the store and bought this three-week-old blue and gold macaw. I called her Ladybird, and still have her. I brought her home in a shoe box and the bird went everywhere with me. Wherever I was in the house, if I moved from one room to the next, I had her shoe box with me. She was like my baby. Baby birds at birth have to be mouth-fed by their mommas, so I became Ladybird’s momma. I fed her with this special bird pump that had a long rubber tube attached so you could put it down the bird’s throat. She wouldn’t eat at first, but gradually she took food from her new momma. I would pump this cereal into her and you’d immediately see her crop fill up. I didn’t know anything about birds, and later I found out this was very dangerous. Even people who know birds well have killed their pets during feeding by putting the tube down the wrong pipe.

  I was so alone and yearnin’ for company that I let Ladybird sleep with me on my pillow after she had feathered out. One day, I went into a pet shop to get her some food, and there was this precious little yellow-tipped umbrella cockatoo named Dixie. I fell in love with her, too. One of the salesgirls said she thought she had been abused, and when I heard that I said, “Load her up. I’m taking her home with me and Ladybird.”

  What a nutty sight we three were! Dixie would sleep between my legs, totally covered by the comforter, and Ladybird would sleep on my pillow. I slept on my back, and I wouldn’t move so that my birds would not be disturbed.

  Paula, this is a sad existence, I said to myself one morning, but, never mind, those birds gave me something to come home to at the end of the day. Of course I saw the boys at work, but when the day was over, it was just the birds and me. I would bring chicken legs home to Ladybird; she just adored chicken legs. She ate everything that I ate: grilled cheese sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, grits—she was a real Southern beauty. It takes a while to marry birds together because they’ll fight and seriously hurt each other, so when I went to work, I’d leave Dixie inside the cage, and I’d let Ladybird sit on top of the cage. She thought she was a free bird, an in-the-wild creature, and she let loose some pretty wild amounts of droppings. I never knew what I’d find when I came home. First, she ate the entire front of my chest of drawers. Then she would open the drawers, pull out all my pictures, and rip them up. She was a challenge, but she called me “Momma.” I was a sucker for “Momma.” I was the first thing she saw when she opened her little eyes and the last when we both closed down for the night.

  Then the most disgusting thing I’d ever heard of, dreamed of, or guessed at happened to me. When I think of it today, I still shudder.

  I didn’t do anything to tend to my house; in those days, I was just walkin’ around in a nervous daze and ignoring the fact that my house was now more repulsive than the old pool-hall kitchen in which I refused to cook. I put newspapers under the bottom of the birdcage, trying to catch the chewed chicken legs, the macaroni-and-cheese leftovers, the butter beans, and the impressive droppings of those two birds, but they didn’t aim so good. Crap was everywhere. Half the time, I didn’t bother to clean it up. I would come home and get more and more depressed about my living conditions at that house because I knew they were bad, but I couldn’t help it.

  One night, I arrived home very, very late from the restaurant. It was dark, and I came in and flipped on the bedroom light.

  I saw a huge, black mass slowly move under my bed.

  “Oh, my God,” I said out loud, and lifted up the dust ruffle to see better.

  What I saw was a mass of black, wiggling, shiny cockroaches, like a single lump of stuff with a million legs, all now running together—now fast, now scurrying even faster. I’m not proud to be telling y’all this.

  They were there under my bed feeding, and when I’d flipped on the light, they’d started to run for cover, a clump the size of a dinner plate, like a horrible science fiction creature. Listen, it took so much courage to lift that dust ruffle, and now I watched those breeding roaches disappear again in the dark underbelly of the dust ruffle and, I knew, into the bed springs. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I crawled into my bed in this roach-infested bedroom and I cried and I couldn’t stop until I fell asleep.

  That was my bottoming out.

  I got up the next day, and I said to my mirror, “Momma and Daddy would be so hurt to know that I’ve sunk to this.”

  I went and rented me a big old truck from Budget Rental, and I had some men come in and take every bit of my furniture out and put it in that Ryder truck. I threw that mattress and box spring in the outside trash myself. I didn’t want to spend the money because I was trying so hard to save, but I had to go ahead and have the whole place fumigated. Then I had everything painted, the wood floors redone, and new carpet put down. That Ryder truck set out on my front yard holding all my furniture, which I sprayed, scrubbed, and scrubbed again. I bought myself a new bed. And I made a vow and said to God:

  As You are my witness, I will never live like that again.

  Beef Stroganoff

  My family may be sick of this recipe, but you might feel differently because it’s so damn good.

  Unlike all the new recipes in this book, my recipe for a perfect beef stroganoff has been published before, in Paula Deen’s Kitchen Classics (Random House, 2005). Still, this chapter called out for the exact stroganoff that my Aunty Peggy and I can no longer eat but which you will find extraordinarily yummy.

  1½ pounds cubed round steak, cut into thin strips

  House Seasoning (see page 96)

  All-purpose flour

  2 tablespoons olive oil

  2 tablespoons butter

  1 medium onion, sliced

  8 ounces fresh mushrooms, sliced

  One 10¾-ounce can condensed cream of mushroom soup

  One 11-ounce can beef broth

  1 cup sour cream

  Salt and black pepper to taste

  Cooke
d flat noodles

  Season the steak strips with House Seasoning, then dust the strips with flour. In a large skillet, quickly brown them on both sides in the olive oil and butter. Remove the steak from the pan. Add the onion slices and mushrooms to the pan drippings. Cook for a few minutes, until the onion is tender, then sprinkle with 1 teaspoon flour. Put the steak back into the pan with the onion and mushrooms. Add the mushroom soup and beef broth. Cook over low heat for about 30 minutes, covered. Stir in the sour cream. Adjust seasoning to taste, adding salt and pepper as needed. Serve over cooked hot buttered flat noodles.

  Serves 4

  HOUSE SEASONING

  1 cup salt

  ¼ cup black pepper

  ¼ cup garlic powder

  Mix the ingredients together and store in an airtight container for up to 6 months.

  Makes 1½ cups

  Chapter 8

  WHAT I DID FOR LOVE

  I was a hardworkin’ woman, looks gone, but was I truly finished? I didn’t want to be by myself the rest of my life, didn’t want the boys havin’ to feel responsible for my happiness.

  I was exhausted from The Lady, lonely and hungry for affection, disgusted from the roach attack, and, boy, was I ready to fall—either down or in love. I had been working like crazy for a year, spending but also saving money as fast as I could make it, giving orders to everyone, and in the meantime, more than once in a while, I noticed I didn’t have a life.

  My marriage was over and I was starved for conversation with a guy. Just to be able to sit with a nice man, talk and laugh and flirt and kind of unburden myself—that’s all I wanted. Nothing serious. Wait: I’m a toucher, and I love to be held, cuddled, snuggled. It had been a long time—try twenty years. Maybe talking was not all I wanted. I was growing dry and sad and stale even as my business thrived. I was looking for love in all the wrong places.