Paula Deen
Page 13
I was so afraid I was going to blow the deal and they’d tell me to go screw myself. “Call you back,” she told me.
Well, she called back and said, “Okay, your advance is seventy-five hundred dollars, and that’s as high as we’re going. That’s the deal—take it or leave it.”
I said, “I’ll take it.”
In the contract, they had given me until March 31 to sell the books I had in stock because my little self-published book should not be there to compete with the new edition. I didn’t know how I’d manage that, but, you will not believe this, on March 31 we sold the last book. A girl walked over from the Savannah News Press and bought the last one.
And you know what? I wish I could buy every one of them back. There was one for sale on eBay a month or so back that sold for like $271.
It was so easy to write that first cookbook because I had no food police and no publisher police doggin’ my steps. I’d say, “Cover some bones with water, bring it to a boil,” and I’d never say how many bones, or exactly how much water. I’d say, “Put in a can of cream of celery soup,” and never mention how big a can.
But the Random House version took one whole year to rewrite. It was so much harder. The wording had to be specific. The amount of ingredients down to the last grain of sugar had to be so freakin’ exact. Pamela told me I had to assume that the person who was going to use the recipe had never before walked into a kitchen. Does that sound logical to you?
I came to know she was right because one day around eleven-thirty in the morning, the lunch crowd was about to come in and I was so busy in the kitchen, but Bobby told me there was an urgent phone call for me. The lady was desperate and I had to take it, he said.
“Miss Paula,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. “I’m truly sorry to bother you while your restaurant’s open but I’m having the hardest time trying to make this squash casserole from your cookbook recipe. I want to make it so bad but I can’t figure it out. I keep taking the squash and pounding it down in the measuring cup because the recipe says use two cups of squash, and I’m having all this trouble pushing the squash into the cup. Can you tell me how to get these bleepin’ long yellow squashes into the cup?”
I forgot to say “Slice up the squash.”
I started screaming my head off laughin’, and before you knew it, both of us were laughin’, and I said, “I’m so glad I took this phone call because you have just made my day and driven home a point with my cookbook. Now go into the kitchen and cut those sons of bitches up and then measure them.” I know y’all are not going to believe this story, but it happened.
Anyway, writing the book the professional way was extremely frustrating; it took up so much of my time and I was almost insane by the time the book finally came out.
And it sold, it sold, it sold! America was ready for Southern country cooking, it seemed. People were asking for my autograph. Can you believe that?
One day I happened to watch QVC, long before it became so popular. I called Pamela and told her I’d love to take my book on QVC.
“What’s QVC?” she asked. When I told her it was a home shopping network, she got interested and went to do some talking to whomever editors talk to when they want to make books fly off the shelves. Next thing I knew, she called back and said they’d booked me on QVC in Philadelphia.
Now, I’d been on national television once before. It was Good Morning America and the host was the most adorable, kind man—Spencer Christian, the weather person. He came down here to The Lady & Sons to film part of the segment; he brought his whole film crew right into the restaurant and everyone ate up a whole storm—there were no profits that day! We had a big old wonderful time with the crew, all my family, and even some of my buddies. After that, I was scheduled to go into the New York studio to do a little cookin’ for the rest of the segment, and I was so scared, I liketa die. You shoulda heard me talking to myself:
Paula, Spencer’s not going to let you die, he won’t let you die, he won’t let you die, grow up Paula, it’s going to be good, Spencer’s your friend, remember how he liked your fried chicken so much?
And then I said the Serenity Prayer to myself and cooked hoe cakes for the New York television audience. When the segment aired, I could hear the quiver in my voice, and I could see my hand shake, but I was never again scared on TV after that.
By the time QVC came into my life, I felt like Julia Child. Since I am a born ham and was by then an experienced television star with my appearance on Good Morning America, QVC was a piece of cake. I felt like I was just talking to my own customers, not thousands of TV watchers. I’d tell them that a recipe was really just a startin’ point and they didn’t have to stick to no recipe, even mine, as if it was the word of God. I encouraged them not to take food so seriously and to experiment in cooking; if a dish didn’t come out, they could always give it to the dog. They’d only be in trouble if the dog came up to them, burped, and said, “Now, that was tough.” I’d tell my readers to make double the amounts and put half away for another day when they spent time fixin’ a recipe. It’s important to befriend your freezer; a lady’s got a life to live.
Bottom line is this: it don’t take much money to eat good. Even rednecks can eat like kings. I consider us all rednecks, by the way, but maybe refined rednecks.
Well, honey, the response was huge. I sold seventy thousand books in one day. Since then I’ve been on QVC more than fifty times and I’ve loved every minute.
Now I got a whole new publisher called Simon & Schuster, and I love my editor and every one of my copy editors there to death even though they’re even fussier than the last ones about getting every darn word exactly right. What happens if you put an editor in front of a stove and ask her to fry up some chicken exactly right? Someday I’ll find out.
It’s all still a mystery, this publishing business, even though I’ve now written three more cookbooks. All kinds of friends call me regularly to say, “Paula, would you please help me? I’ve got a book that I’d love to get published. How do I do it?”
And I usually answer, “Hell, I don’t know. Open a restaurant, and pray for rain.”
Biscuits and Sawmill Gravy
If you ask me really how you can get a cookbook published, make sure there’s a cookbook editor in your friend’s kitchen when you bring over your offering for a potluck supper. This is the recipe that will definitely seduce that editor into publishing your cookbook, because it is so divine. I promise!
BISCUITS
Makes about 1 dozen
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup vegetable shortening
1 to 1¼ cups milk
¼ cup melted unsalted butter
Preheat the oven to 450°F.
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Cut in the shortening with a fork until it looks like cornmeal. Add the milk, a little at a time, stirring constantly until well mixed.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead lightly two or three times. Roll out the dough with a floured rolling pin to ½-inch thickness. Cut with a 2-inch cutter. Place the biscuits in a greased iron skillet. Brush the biscuits with half the melted butter. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, or until golden brown. Brush the hot biscuits with the remaining butter. Split the biscuits in half and ladle Sawmill Gravy (see page 136) over the hot biscuits.
SAWMILL GRAVY
1 pound ground sausage
4 slices thick-cut bacon
½ medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons black pepper
2 cups half-and-half
2 tablespoons butter
In a large skillet, combine the sausage, bacon, onion, and garlic. Cook over medium heat until the sausage is browned a
nd crumbles. Stir in the flour, salt, and pepper; cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Gradually stir in the half-and-half. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thickened. Stir in the butter until well blended.
Chapter 11
LOVE ON A TUG: MICHAEL
I was hot as a June bride on a feather bed.
It’s one thing not to trust that good fortune will hang out with you all the time; it makes you more grateful every day for what you have. But early in the new century, when everyone else was celebrating the millennium, I was a total emotional mess. Okay, by this time I had a couple of cookbooks under my belt, my business was on its way to being fabulous, I had money in my pocket, and financial security, but I was still struggling with a long, dead-end relationship that was suckin’ the joy from me. I was so disappointed in myself because I craved a love that was fine and trustworthy. I wanted somebody my whole family approved of, someone I didn’t have to hide, someone who could make me laugh.
And I was ready for passion; lovely returned passion. Just because there’s snow on the roof doesn’t mean there’s no fire in the furnace. No one knew how I felt—even my children, who could no more imagine their momma’s feet pointed up to Jesus than they could imagine me deserting them. Children want to think their birth was an immaculate conception; they don’t want to picture their mommas and daddies with lust in their hearts. These old folks? they think. Why would they want to do it?
But intimacy is one of the greatest gifts that God gave us, and it doesn’t have an age limit. Doesn’t always mean doin’ the dirty, either. It can mean holding and caressing each other. Snuggling. Remember necking? Nothin’ better. Of course, it is nice when you can consummate great love—it completes the intimacy. Listen, I was so ready. Starving. Just starving. Waiting for the telephone call of a married man I didn’t even like that much anymore was getting to me, but I was not strong enough to tell him to go freak himself.
But my days and nights were chock-full of work, and when I wasn’t working I was involved with family. I don’t do bars, and even church was out of the question because Sunday was the one day I could not leave the restaurant. I tried to figure out how to zap up my personal life, but everywhere I looked, I saw only a dead end. I was living downtown and all my neighbors were either older couples or single men who would have liked my brother better than me. I felt that if I could meet someone who was decent and available, I could take total responsibility for myself, but for the meeting of the man, I needed God’s blessing.
This was a problem I’d have to turn over to God.
So I did just that. I added a sentence to my nightly prayers: “God, please send me a neighbor.” He’d know what I meant, I figured.
I know about prayer. Aside from my family, it’s the only thing in my life that’s bigger than food. You can pray anytime, even when you cook. You can hold a person’s name in your heart as you stir the fixin’s for a hoe cake, or season the chicken. You can ask for God’s help when you pepper, salt, and sift. So that’s what I did. I thanked Him for every blessin’ and asked for one more. That neighbor.
Then I got pretty busy on my brother’s behalf. We’d recently had some news that really shook me. After being married nineteen great years, as Bubba puts it, the twentieth turned out to be a real loser. No one knows what really happens behind others’ closed doors, and it’s probably better that way, but I was shocked to hear that Jill was leaving my brother and they were planning a divorce. Somehow, I thought that marriage would last forever.
I’ve always been very protective of Bubba, and I was so devastated from his sadness that I began to badger him to move to Savannah. Looking ahead, I figured, very correctly, he’d be great in the restaurant business, and there was always room in my business for my baby brother. Early in the new millennium, Bubba called me and said, “I’m ready to leave Albany now; I want to come live in Savannah.” I was thrilled that he and his daughter, Corrie, were thinking of moving near to me.
“Come on,” I said. “You can stay with me in the meantime, and we’ll find you a place to live.”
So, we went looking for a house for Bubba, but who ends up buying a new place? Me! I’d gotten a wild hair that I wanted to live on the water, so one day the real estate agent brought us into Turners Cove on Wilmington Island, a new waterfront community under construction. It was gorgeous—and out of Bubba’s price range—but I loved it. Every unit but one had been sold and I piped up and said, “I’ll take it.”
I looked around and said, “Was that my evil twin sister? I didn’t say that, did I?” But, just like I signed the restaurant lease on Congress Street without a second thought, I bought this three-bedroom condo. It was a row house designed after the row houses in downtown, and it even had a square with fountains, and dolphins jumped in the lagoon in front of the condo. I got to pick out the paint colors and the appliances and I busied myself with the move. In the meantime, we’d also found Bubba a wonderful place. Things were looking up—now I had my baby brother and his child with us all the time. My niece, Corrie, really became like the daughter I never had. I loved having that beautiful, funny young woman around so much. We spent hours together laughing, talking, watching television, creating a bond that will never break, never even stretch.
I still said my new prayer every night: “God, please send me a neighbor.”
On January 19, my birthday, I loaded up my cat, my dogs, and my birds and I moved to Turners Cove. Moving day, I was so tired—I’d been working my tail off in the business, preparing for a major move—and when I walked into my new home, I found out my children and Bubba had gotten together and called my two best friends in Albany, and everyone was there. It was wonderful.
As soon as I moved in, I started on my third book, The Lady & Sons Just Desserts for Simon & Schuster, and I took a short hiatus from the restaurant. There was no way I could work on this book and be at the restaurant every day because I had a serious deadline. I put on my baseball cap, then started testing recipes and writing.
My household had grown to include a one-eyed cat named Popeye; Ladybird, the macaw; Dixie, the umbrella cockatoo; and two precious Shih Tzu dogs, Sam and Otis. Because I was afraid the dogs would run away and get lost in this new neighborhood, they were not allowed to roam freely outside. When they needed to relieve themselves, they would come over, scratch on my leg, and we almost always went out the door on the water side; we’d take a right, go into the square, they’d do their business, and then we would come back. I had never even been to the left of my house; I didn’t know what was down there in that direction.
This one particular afternoon, around the first of August, the dogs came over to signal me. We got up, went out the back door as usual, but this time they turned around, looked back at me, then in a jailhouse break they whirled left and just hauled ass. They ran like the devil, barking crazily all the way. I saw they were in a race to get around a big old tall wall near my condo where there was about a foot that you could maneuver around before you fell into the water. They were still running and barking, so happy to be out of the house. I’m in hot pursuit, beggin’ them, beggin’ them to stop.
But Otis’s head is harder than my arteries. He is so damn stubborn. He will not stop for nothing. So, I shimmy around that wall after them, and then I see what’s caught their interest.
They’re heading straight for this man who’s propped on his chain-link fence talking on his cell phone. And my first thought was, This could be the neighborhood pervert. Or an ax murderer. The guy was mean-and shaggy-looking, with gray shaggy hair, a gray shaggy beard, and a gray shaggy mustache that covered his mouth, and he didn’t look very happy. He was a dead ringer for Ernest Hemingway, just back from a month at sea without catching no fish.
And I was frightened. Of course, the dogs run straight up to him and immediately start pooping there in his yard, right under his nose. And there I am, looking at this shaggy man who does not look happy, and I’m saying, “Oh, my goodness, I’m so sor
ry. I’ll clean it up. I’m sorry they’ve done this.” And he mumbles something like, “That’s all right. I like dogs. It’s people I ain’t crazy about. People I don’t trust.”
He sounded like a loon and it didn’t surprise me. I told him I was his neighbor, I had a restaurant in town, and I was home writing a book.
“I’m so sorry the dogs have disturbed you, suh, and now we’ve got to get back home.” I get these dogs loaded under my arms, and as I’m walking back, I’m saying to myself, God, that ain’t my neighbor, is it? Is that who I’m praying for? Nah! That can’t be him. Please, God, that ain’t what my neighbor’s supposed to look like.
The guy had muttered something in a low voice about having a drink together when I was finished with my book and I said to myself, Over my dead body! So I go home, and I tell myself with a giggle that I thought I might have just been asked out on a date by an ax murderer.
Two weeks later, damned if those dogs didn’t do the identical thing. This time, I know where they’re going. I’m running behind them one more time in my baseball cap, my dirty shirt that’s got gravy stains all over it, and these ugly-ass stretch Wal-Mart jeans. I’m chasing after them, begging them to please stop.
And it was the weirdest thing: it was like that man had not moved away from that fence in two weeks. He was propped on it in the same spot talking on that same stupid cell phone. The dogs start pooping again. It was like déjà vu all over again. He got off the phone, but this time he didn’t seem so scary; he seemed kinda nice, actually. I decided I would talk to him. He told me he’d lived here all his life, and I thought that was a good sign. I asked him if he knew anything about boats. If he had lived on this water all his life, he probably knew something about boats.