Well, the cat's out of the bag. Yesterday Food Network host Paula Deen went public in announcing she has type 2 diabetes. I doubt anyone who has ever watched her show was surprised at this; the only thing less surprising would have been if she'd been hospitalized with some kind of cardiac issue. Sad to say, but true. Her food is to your circulatory system what the Exxon Valdez was to the Prince William Sound.
That being said, I love the idea of Paula Deen. Paula Deen is like the grandmother most of us had -- or wished we had. She spoils the people she loves with her rich, decadent food. She always displays a lovely, lively sense of humor in the kitchen -- cooking never seems like a chore when she does it, much more like an act of love. And with the sun coming through the windows of the country kitchen they use as her set (or used to), you can just imagine yourself sitting there, with a cup of coffee, somehow feeling better about whatever is going on in your life because you're sitting there with her, watching her cook and listening to her gentle folk wisdom. That's the image, anyway.
But Paula Deen is NOT your grandma, and in real life maybe that's a good thing, because I believe she has learned to sell her particular brand of folksiness in a way your grandma never could or would have. She only revealed her status as a diabetic once she had inked a deal with a Big Pharm company to sell their medicine and diabetes regime. She's created an empire out her ability to create (and market) the enticing and homey image of gentle, southern living. In other words, she appears to be your dear grandma but she's actually more like Donald Trump in reality -- a shrewd businessperson who is, no doubt, using her public revelation as a diabetic as a tool to promote something she's being paid to endorse.
And the thing is, I've realized what the attraction is with Paula Deen. The fact is, many of us wish we could go back to some sunny kitchen somewhere and sit on a stool watching and learning as our own grandmother performs all the tasks she was skilled at -- canning and preserving, roasting, and making delicious foods from scratch .. often using what was just outside her back door, in the chicken coop and in the kitchen garden.
We'd love to spend a simple afternoon with her learning to knit or crochet or do embroidery. We'd follow her upstairs and take a deep breath of comfort in as we watched her throw freshly sun-dried sheets and handmade quilts over the beds and open up all the curtains and windows to take in the breezes on a sunny afternoon. We'd marvel as she cleaned a stubborn bathroom sink using only an old lemon rind and some baking soda, and breath deep the lemony smell left over after the sink was clean.
We could probably all use that kind of grandmother at this point in time. Heaven knows we'll need to relearn those skills if oil ever goes to 20 bucks a gallon and our electronic/manufactured/mass produced world becomes more difficult (or just expensive) to access. Unfortunately, most of the women who knew the home arts well have either passed on, are in assisted living quarters, or are actually from the next generation down, who eschewed that made-from-scratch life in favor of whatever came out of a box from the supermarket.
And in real life, Paula Deen probably is not a true representative of this life anyway. She probably eats out more than you and I ever will, because she travels around the country so much promoting her brand. There are, most likely, hired staff who do the washing and the opening up of bedroom windows and cleaning of sinks. And there's the little matter of diabetes. In our great-grandmother's time, scratch-made food with lots of bacon grease and butter was eaten, to be sure, but only after people spent 12 or more hours or so in hard labor around the house or in the fields. This is the only thing which allowed them to consume this kind of diet without consequence. They were literally burning off every calorie they ate with simple, but pulse-rate-raising chores which were probably the equivalent of an all-day cardio class at today's gym. So it balanced out. Not so much in today's world.
Paula Deen says she's always advocated people eat her food but in "moderation." I'd go a bit further, and say if you eat her food, do so very, very rarely, unless you plan on picking cotton or harvesting potatoes out in your back 40 -- by hand. And beware when someone is selling a brand that looks like your grandma. Grandma wasn't a brand, she was a whole way of life.
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