Paula Deen and her friends share their stories, ideas for entertaining Southern style, and more than 150 prized recipes.
A delicious meal is everyone's favorite way to bring together friends and loved ones, whether you're planning an intimate family supper, hosting a cocktail party, or feeding a hungry crowd for lunch. In "Paula Deen & Friends," beloved author, restaurateur, and television star Paula Deen features delicious down-home meals for every occasion that are guaranteed to please.
Entertaining Southern style is about spending time with the people you care about. Paula and her friends are experts at creating mouthwatering menus that are easy to prepare, so you too can relax and enjoy the fun with your guests. Each chapter is filled with helpful tips and time-saving techniques, as well as the memorable cooking stories that inspired Paula and her friends to create each dish. You'll be inspired to share memorable meals with your family and friends--and to live it up, Southern style.

Do you know the real Paula Deen? You may think you know the butter-loving, finger-licking, joke-cracking queen of melt-in-your-mouth Southern cuisine. You may have even visited The Lady & Sons to taste for yourself the down-home delicacies that made her famous and even heard some version of her Cinderella story (a single mom with two teenage sons started a brown-bag lunch business with $200 and wound up with a thriving restaurant, a fairy-tale second marriage, and wildly popular television shows), but you have never heard the intimate details of her often bumpy road to fame and fortune.

Courageously honest, downright inspiring, and just a little bit saucy, Paula shares the highs and lows of her life in the inimitable charming and irreverent style that you know from her television shows and personal appearances. She talks about long childhood summers spent in a bathing suit and roller skates and hard years living in the back of her father's gas station; a buzzing high school social life of sleepovers, parties, cheerleading, and boys; and a difficult marriage. The death of her beloved parents precipitated a debilitating agoraphobia that crippled her for years. But even when the going got tough, Paula never lost the good grace and sense of humor that would eventually help carry her to success and stardom. Of course, you can't get by on charm alone: as Paula has learned, you need plenty of willpower, hard work, and, above all, the love and support of family and friends to finance, sustain, and run a successful restaurant.

In each chapter, Paula shares new recipes: there's serious comfort food like her momma's Chocolate-Dippy Doughnuts, Courage Chili for when you know life's going to get tough, Sexy Oxtails for seducing that special someone, and the recipe for her new mother-in-law's Banana Nut Delight Cake that Paula finally got just right. And you'll love the never-before-seen photos of her family.

In this memoir, Paula Deen speaks as frankly and intimately as few women in the public eye have ever dared. Whether she's telling tales of good times or bad, her story is proof that the old-fashioned American dream is alive and kicking, and there still is such a thing as a real-life happy ending.

Hi, y'all
This book is my proudest achievement so far, and I just have to tell y'all why I am so excited about it. It's a book of classic dishes, dedicated to a whole new generation of cooks--for every bride, graduate, and anyone who has a love of a great Southern meal. My family is growing and expanding all the time. We're blessed with marriages and grandbabies, and so sharing these recipes for honest, down-home dishes feels like passing a generation's worth of stovetop secrets on to my family, and yours.
I've been cooking and eating Southern food my whole life, and I can tell you that every meal you make from this book will be a mouthful of our one-of-akind spirit and traditions. These recipes showcase the diversity and ingenuity of Southern cuisine, from Cajun to Low-Country and beyond, highlighting the deep cultural richness of our gumbos and collards, our barbecues and pies. You may remember a few beloved classics from The Lady & Sons, but nearly all of these recipes are brand-new--and I think you'll find that they are all mouthwateringly delicious. It is, without a doubt, a true Southern cooking bible.
I sincerely hope that this book will take its place in your kitchen for many years to come, as I know it will in mine. Here's to happy cooking--and the best part, happy eating, y'all
Best dishes,
Paula Deen