by Paula Deen
I said, “Well, okay, but the reason Mr. Jimmy called me was because that was the last thing he wanted to have happen. This is important to this man and this town, and it ain’t going to be me who tells him no.”
That awful job fell to one of the assistant producers. She called Mr. Jimmy’s scheduler and told him we’d have to reschedule because we didn’t have enough daylight to film. Well, Mr. Jimmy was very, very, very displeased.
So my phone rings again, and I say, “Hello,” and this voice again says, “Paula, this is Jimmy Carter.” I say, “Hey, Mr. Jimmy. How are you?” He says, “I’m not doin’ good at all.”
I said, “What’s the problem, Mr. Jimmy?” and he said he’d just gotten word that the company wanted to cancel the shoot and reschedule yet again. He was not one bit happy.
I said, “Mr. Jimmy, I’m so sorry that you’re unhappy. I have talked to the production company, and they’re very concerned that your schedule isn’t going to give us enough time to do the show. But I’m going to do what I can to see that the show does not get canceled.”
I call up Gordon and say, “Gordon, I don’t care how you do it, but you cannot tell this man no. This show must go on. We’ve got to figure it out because I’m not gonna be the one to tell this man that we’re going to reschedule. I’m not gonna be the one to disappoint Mr. Jimmy. If I have to go buy me a movie camera and go to Plains by myself, somethin’s going to be filmed.”
They knew I meant business. I don’t pull the diva thing too often, but, I mean—this was Mr. Jimmy.
Well, they got it all worked out. The next time I talked to Mr. Jimmy, I was able to say, “We’re coming.” Of course, he was just as sweet as could be and said he sure did appreciate it because that trip I had made to Plains earlier meant more to them than the Nobel Peace Prize he had won. Well, I’m not so sure of that, but it was downright grand of him to say it.
So back we went. Mr. Jimmy had gone overseas, had his big world leaders’ meeting, monitored the Palestinian elections, flew to London to make a speech, and at four-thirty or five o’clock that Tuesday afternoon he came in ready to put on an apron I had made for him that read “Hail to the Chef” and stir a pot of grits on Paula’s Home Cooking. It was a scene—lights set up everywhere, cameras, crew members, and the kitchen people getting everything prepped. Then in walks this eighty-one-year-old man with a briefcase and a topcoat draped over his arm, just smiling to beat the band to see all these folks piled in his kitchen.
“Is this my house?” he asks.
The Carters live in the same house they’ve lived in most of their married lives, a very humble ranch-style home, comfortable but not pretentious at all. The small kitchen is particularly simple, wall-papered in a blue-flowered print, and it had the house’s original 1961 cabinets repainted white. There’s a Kenmore dishwasher, a GE side-by-side refrigerator covered with magnets holding photos like the one of Miss Rosalynn catching a fish and one of Mr. Jimmy building a house for Habitat for Humanity, and a couple of rusty beer-can openers that look like they date from his brother’s Billy Beer era. A window over the sink looks out on an overgrown holly bush. Still, your breath is taken away when you walk in and see all these pictures of Mr. Jimmy with every world leader you can imagine hanging on the wall. Looking at those photographs, you immediately know you are standing in the presence of history. This is the man they asked me to cancel on. Fat chance!
So Mr. Jimmy goes back to his bedroom to freshen up. He puts on a plaid flannel shirt, his blue jeans, scuffed cowboy boots, and a big silver belt buckle forming a horseshoe around the initials J.C. Then, ready for his close-up, he comes out and says, “Well, am I gonna need a little makeup?” It’s clear he’s done this before.
“You look so handsome, I can’t hardly stand it,” I tell him.
The makeup table had been set up in his office and he’s whisked off to where the makeup girl is waiting on him.
My crew and I go back into his kitchen where my show is going to be filmed.
For the show, I’ve built a menu around a south Georgia classic, smothered quail over grits. President Eisenhower used to come shoot quail in these parts. I planned early green peas on the side (from a shiny can; I hold no prejudice against canned veggies) and miniature tarts called Pecan Toffee Tassies, the sort of rich dessert my momma used to make, and I’m sure Mr. Jimmy’s momma also made.
We talk as I prepare the meal, with Mr. Jimmy stirring the grits every now and then. He doesn’t have to be shown how to make grits. During the Depression, he tells us, his momma cooked grits twice a day down on their farm, using the leftovers to make fried grits for breakfast. Sometimes they had buttermilk and corn bread for dessert, still one of his big favorite dishes.
After we finished preparing the meal, we all went into the den, followed by the crew. We ate on serving trays on the coffee table with Mr. Jimmy telling us stories about what he fed various visiting heads of state. “The most peculiar diet we ever ran across,” he remembered, “was that of the prime minister of India, who ate nothing that came from an animal and predominately nuts and fruits. The killer was when the prime minister drank his own urine.”
“You get out!” I shouted. “Why?”
“For health reasons,” said Mr. Jimmy.
And my producer Gordon Elliott, that rascal, couldn’t resist asking in his reverberating Australian accent, “But what wine would go with that?”
I had to keep secretly pinching myself during the filming of this show. Paula Deen, chattin’ away with (in my opinion) the greatest humanitarian walking the face of the earth today. Paula Deen and the President. Had a nice ring.
Who would have thunk an Albany High School cheerleader could jump so high, so wide, so far? Girl, I was on the right side of the dirt, and then some.
Uncle Bubba’s Crab and Shrimp au Gratin
This was one of Michael’s momma’s favorite recipes. It lives on at Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House. Sometimes I serve this delicious, rich, cheesy delight in individual glass casseroles that are shaped more like a boat than a casserole. Warm French bread and a fine salad are perfect partners for this dish.
¼ cup all-purpose flour
⅓ teaspoon salt
⅓ teaspoon black pepper
2 cups milk
⅓ cup Kraft Cheez Whiz
⅛ teaspoon Tabasco sauce
½ pound cooked shrimp, peeled
½ pound cooked crabmeat
1 cup grated Cheddar or Jack cheese
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Mix the flour, salt, and pepper with 1 cup of the milk and beat out all the lumps with a wire whisk or a fork.
In a double boiler over low heat, add the Cheez Whiz to the remaining cup milk. When the Cheez Whiz has melted, add the flour mixture and the Tabasco sauce. Stir until smooth and thickened. Add the shrimp and crabmeat. Pour into a casserole and top with the grated cheese. Bake for 20 minutes.
Serves 3 or 4
Chapter 18
SOUTHERN COMFORT:THINGS I’VE LEARNED
A balanced diet is a cookie in both hands.
SOUTHERN CHARM IS REAL. IT WORKS.
I don’t know if Southern women are taught charm in the cradle, but it ain’t far after that time. You know, I think it’s genetic; comes with the goods, but it can be learned. So, the rest of you gals, don’t despair. Y’all can pick up Southern charm—it’s transportable. Some of the most aggressive businesswomen I know from up north are rolling in the art.
Southern charm is a woman empowerment thing, a kind of gentle flirting, and we Southern gals, we begin practicing it on our daddies. I had mine so under my spell that if I even looked like I was goin’ to cry, it would have killed him.
Don’t ever mistake charm for stupidity, which a lot of folks do. Sure, there’s some giggling and batting of the eyes, but as my Uncle George once said when I told him I didn’t know if I’d be able to tend to my business because I really wasn’t smart, he took only a second before he answered, “Yeah, you’re dum
b, Paula. Dumb as a fox.”
Southern charm knows how to make a man feel good about himself; you can get whatever you want without deballing guys. Sometimes all it takes, even with the strongest, smartest guys in the world, is a compliment that gives a man strength and power. When I tell Michael Groover, “I love you so much, I could kiss your socks,” it just sets him off all grinning. Women can even use Southern charm on other women—and it’s very appreciated. Tell someone—if you mean it!—that her eyes are beautiful or you love her outfit, and she’ll follow you anywhere. Hey, listen, SC is not necessarily sweet—it can be edgy and witty—but it’s always sincere. If you don’t feel it or mean it, don’t waste your time trying to use it. Won’t fool a soul.
You can’t define Southern charm in a sentence; there are too many adjectives you’d have to use. But if I had to choose one word, it’d be niceness. I want people to feel good about bein’ with me, and bein’ nice to them makes it happen. If you see Joe Blow in the grocery store, you can’t walk by and just say, “Hey, how y’all doin?” If you’re wantin’ to display your SC, it takes stoppin’ for a while.
Now, it’s true you just can’t break through to some men and women—niceness doesn’t lay a finger on their hearts. But most people, if you give them love and consideration, they will return it.
Southern charm also takes listening hard to people; not trying to fix their problems, but just letting them share their problems. It takes (with me, anyway) touching. I love to touch—to grab a hand, stroke someone’s shining hair. And it takes smiling (that’s the best thing in the whole charm wardrobe!) and being able to laugh and not take yourself so seriously.
Finally, for me, Southern charm has a lot to do with feeding people. “The Lady Can Cook” it says on the front of my apron. You can make someone your willing servant with a fine gooey butter cake. You know how many daughters-in-law out there hate their mother-in-law’s guts because their husband says, “This pot roast is not like Momma’s”? I’m so lucky that Brooke, my own beautiful daughter-in-law, does not feel threatened. She can sure hold her own with anyone—even someone with a cooking show. At Christmastime, she brought over this wonderful candy she’d made from her grandmomma’s recipe, and I told her it was the best candy I ever had in my mouth. And that’s saying something.
“Well, it’s all I can make,” Brooke sighed.
“Don’t you worry,” I told her, “that candy is all you ever need to make.”
My Brooke’s got the Southern charm gig down pat.
NEVER JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER
I’ve learned you can’t tell much about a person by the way he wears his hair or the way she dresses or talks. Einstein’s looks didn’t inspire drop-dead respect: it’s only when he started talking mathematics that you could see his mind. I’d say the same is true of Bill Gates. So someone can come into my restaurant looking like Ned from the First Reader, or Jackie Kennedy, and I give them the same respectful treatment.
I remember a story about the great cosmetics queen Estée Lauder, who was working her counter at Saks Fifth Avenue in San Antonio, Texas. In came a Mexican woman. She had gold teeth and wore torn leather sandals and a multihued serape. Mrs. Lauder said she knew it had taken great personal courage for the Mexican woman to even walk into the store.
The woman wistfully pointed to the (quite expensive) Super Rich Moisturizing Crème.
Mrs. Lauder went to work. She cleansed the lady’s face, applied a mask and then the Super Rich Moisturizing Crème, she brushed a little blush on the woman’s cheeks, finishing off with just a touch of lipstick. She spent almost twenty minutes with her customer, and all the while, three dolled-up Texas ladies waited impatiently for their turns.
The woman looked at herself in the mirror and broke into a radiant smile. She opened her sagging black purse, and it was literally overflowing with dollars. She bought two of everything Mrs. Lauder had used on her face, and the next day her relatives did the same.
I’ll never forget when my very stylish assistant, Brandon, and I were in New York City about a year and a half ago. We had just flown in and I really looked like Ned in the First Reader. I mean, Ned was not pretty and neither was I. To make matters worse, I was in rumpled but comfortable travel clothes, my hair was stringy, and I think my lipstick was all eaten off. I looked a little rough around the edges, to put it mildly.
Comin’ out on the street from the airport, Brandon said, “I am so sick of seeing you tote that free bag that the jewelry store gave you. It’s not a purse, Paula, and you have got to throw it away.”
I just hated to dump the tote—it was really thin, papery stuff and I loved it because it was light.
But soon Brandon and I, we’re passing one of those high falutin’, expensive Fifth Avenue stores—and he walks me right through that door and directly into the pocketbook section. Brandon says, “It is time for you to have a good purse. I want you to buy yourself a Louis Vuitton.”
Now, I’d heard him and my niece, Corrie, talking about this Louis Vuitton person, and I always thought they were saying Lewis Baton.
So I say to Brandon, “I don’t know if I really want a Lewis Baton.” I’d heard they were superexpensive, and I just didn’t know if that was where I wanted to put my money. But we walk in, and I’m looking around at everybody and the purses, and I’m also looking at the sales clerks.
Nobody looks back at me. Nobody speaks to us.
I go over to Brandon, and I say, “These sons of bitches think I can’t afford one of their purses. I’ve been culled.” Culled means something that’s been picked out and put aside as inferior, like a lobster with no claws that’s been culled from the catch and maybe sold for fish soup. One saleswoman looked at me, and fast looked right through me. She had already decided that I didn’t have the money for a Lewis Baton. She was on the lookout to attend to somebody who looked like she would buy.
I knew at that moment that I was walking out with any Lewis Baton I wanted; maybe two of them. And I just strolled over to the case, pointed, and said to a different, very young salesperson, “I’ll take that … and that one.” And I pulled out the money and paid.
The one who had ignored me turned as red as a beet. She was dyin’.
YOU GOTTA TAKE RISKS
I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said, “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” Go, Ellie! That’s how I live my life. Take cooking. When some people go into a kitchen and start to cook, it’s very important that they have a recipe, and they will deviate from that formula not one iota. Some people go in there, find a recipe, look at all the ingredients, and then, by putting their own ideas together with the recipe ingredients, they create a great dish. They make that formula their own. Those people would be risk takers. That would be me.
You always have to run the risk that a dish you prepare might be delicious or it might be disastrous. The person who follows the formula exactly knows exactly what she’s gonna get; she’s not gonna gamble. I think that’s fine—for the first time. In my cooking class, I always recommend that if you have a recipe you’ve never made before, follow it exactly so that you’ll know what the creator of that recipe had in mind about what that dish should look and taste like. But the next time you make that dish, change something about it. Add one thing or take one thing out. Make it your own. Make it fabulous, not just good.
Even though my restaurant honors all things Southern, at home I experiment a little. I’ve made collard greens and ham hock pizza and deep-fried wontons stuffed with greens and cream sauce. My son Bobby loves it when I cook my version of Mexican food, and he thinks I make a pretty mean stir-fry too. Where is it written that you can’t make, in one meal, Chinese wonton soup, okra and fried green tomatoes, Indian-style curry, and Jewish blintzes (Shalom, y’all) for dessert?
In my life I’ve learned that taking a risk and losing doesn’t mean the game is over. I’m not afraid to be proven wrong, not afraid to fail even when people say I’m nuts and success is impossible.
&
nbsp; But here’s the thing: there are calculated risks—those that have a reasonable chance of coming through for me—and then there are dumber-than-dumb risks.
Most of us are pretty good at avoiding dumb risks, unless you happen to be reading this from a damn jail cell. But we’re also mostly scared of taking calculated risks. I believe the dumbest mistakes we make in life come from not seizing the moment—even if the moment looks a little scary. I have learned to respect my intuition and I have flown by the seat of my britches so many times, they’re stretched out.
When I first started The Bag Lady, I had no experience—none, zilch, zero. I was forty-two years old and I knew I had to do something even if it was a wrong move. So, I flew by the seat of my pants every day I got up. I went with my gut instinct. I knew that if I was to succeed, I had to do what I knew. I’d hung around with my grandmomma in her restaurant long enough to have an idea of what it took to run one. So, I took a calculated risk and it paid off.
I could not have gone and hung up a shingle that read oral surgeon. I could not have become a race-car driver or a poet. Those would have been dumb, stupid, can’t-ever-win risks. It so happens that the thing I knew best—feeding folks professionally—has the highest rate of failure in America. Probably the last thing a banker wants to see walking into his bank looking for a loan is somebody who thinks they want to open a restaurant. Any time you want to get rid of a banker, go in and tell him you want to borrow money to open a restaurant and that bastard will go to the bathroom and won’t never come back.
When I purchased and opened the original Lady & Sons, I signed a twelve-year lease and put myself on the line. I had no money and I didn’t know how I was going to get it. I was probably foolish and guilty of poor planning. Still, my gut—my intuition—told me to go for it. The risk worked out.
My handsome, fun-lovin’ boys, Jamie and Bobby, are starting on a grand adventure—their own television show, called Road Tasted, on Food Network. Without a script, without television training, without coaches, they’re hitting the road and crisscrossing the country in search of the best local handcrafted foods of the region. They’ll find ma-and-pa specialty stores and family-run businesses that highlight the culinary specialties of a particular city and they’ll ad-lib visits with perfect strangers. Jamie and Bobby are trekking through California, New Mexico, Tennessee, Florida, Missouri, Seattle, New York—you name it—winging the dialogue and also hanging on by the seats of their pants as food happenings explode around them. Now, I’m so proud of these young men, who by sheer wit (they are pretty damn funny), ingenuity, and passion for all things good to eat are taking chances every day, and with cameras following them to boot. But they know food—cooking it, serving it, and eating it—and they’re having a blast.