“She is NOT going to fry that!”
August 22nd, 2005
One of the perks of working in a home office is that, when I’m assigned some mindless activity like stuffing envelopes, they let me watch cable tv. Channel surfing seems like it might be pushing my good luck, so I always park the tv on the Food Network and watch the good, bad, and ugly.
In the middle of the afternoon, the Food Network features a show called Paula’s Home Cooking. The first time I experienced Paula Deen’s cooking, I nearly choked on my envelope glue-laced saliva. This is Southern cooking, oozing with more butter, eggs, and sugar than my little Yankee brain could possibly imagine. By the end of thirty minutes, I was fairly certain that one serving of her stuffed french toast could send my total cholesterol rocketing into the mid-200s. When the Food Network started rolling out the Thanksgiving-themed episodes, I watched in both horror and total fascination as Paula proceeded to deep fry an entire 10 lb turkey in the largest deep fryer I have ever seen.
Is there anything this woman can’t fry? After that episode, I was resolved–if I could find it, Paula could probably tell me how to fry it and/or smother it in butter. Today, as I built folders for a home buyers’ class, I watched Paula gleefully sample a Mexican wedding cookie and then–through a garbled mouthful of crumbs–contemplate the powdered sugar she’s just gotten all over her mouth and shirt. Paula, unlike other hosts, cannot wait until the end of the show to eat her own food. Still on camera, her eyes go wide as she takes her first bite and then gushes to the viewer with her mouth full. And yet, there’s something beautiful, and beautifully out of place, about watching Paula sandwiched between Emeril and Giada’s polished and healthful fare. Paula’s cooking is, in some ways, more authentic than anything cooked up by master chefs. It’s still educational and valuble, though maybe in a non-traditional way. (I’m sick of these shows about eating thin or low carb–I want to see how you eat fat, damnit.) Plus… I have to give props to anyone who happily talks with their face full on national tv.
