Paula Deen & Friends: Living It Up, Southern Style

Paula Deen & Friends: Living It Up, Southern Style

A true crowd-pleaser, Paula Deen & Friends is a comprehensive and delicious collection of recipes that will bring family and friends together for all kinds of occasions. 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. Paula Deen is the bestselling author of eighteen books and an Emmy Award–winning Food Network television star. She was born and raised in Albany, Georgia. She later moved to Savannah, where she started The Bag Lady catering company. The business took off and evolved into The Lady & Sons restaurant, which is located in Savannah’s historic district and specializes in Southern cooking. She also co-owns Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House with her brother. Paula publishes a bimonthly magazine, Cooking with Paula Deen, and is a regular guest on QVC, where she sells her books and food products. Martha Nesbit is a cookbook writer and food columnist for Savannah Magazine . She has been featured on HGTV’s “Thanksgiving Across America” special and on Food Network’s Food Nation with Bobby Flay . She lives on the beautiful Isle of Hope in Savannah, Georgia, with her husband, Gary, her sons Zack and Emory, and her dachshund, Lucy. Paula's Birthday Bash The Menu Beer-in-the-Rear Chicken Bacon-Wrapped Grilled Corn on the Cob Green Beans with New Potatoes Lace Hoecake Corn Bread Roasted Carrots Buttermilk Biscuits Buttermilk Pound Cake with Strawberries and Whipped Cream Since my recent marriage, my family has doubled in size, which means so have the birthdays. And that's all right by me, because I just love throwing birthday parties for my family and close family friends. Because some months have multiple birthdays, I've found that it was easier if I picked one Sunday in each month and celebrated all the birthdays for that month on the same day. Take March, for example. This past March we had five birthdays, which meant five cakes, because one of the rules is "Everybody has his own cake." For this I have to confess I just go to the local grocery store, head straight for the bakery department, and order each guest of honor a personalized birthday cake. Then I bake a homemade pound cake and serve it along with fresh sweetened strawberries, ice cream, and fresh whipped cream. That gives everybody a traditional cake as well as that scrumptious, scrumptious homemade cake. Well, I'm really getting ahead of myself with this story, though, because before anyone can sing, blow out their candles, and eat birthday cake, there are a lot of things that have to happen first! A few years back, I realized that our childhoods were getting further and further behind us, and that made me sad. So I set out to find a way to step back in time and recapture a small piece of that time when our lives were worry free. I decided one way to do this was through the wonderful, silly games we all played at our childhood birthday parties. Well, needless to say, when I announced that this birthday celebration was going to involve games, the moans and groans commenced. All the adult children said, "But we don't want to play games," and my response was, "If you're physically able, you must play the games, or no cake for you." Well, it took all of about three minutes for the hoots and hollers of laughter to begin. To this day, I cannot tell you who had the most fun -- Jamie and Bobby playing pin the tail on the donkey, or Michelle and Anthony running the three-legged race. I also found that the guys love bashing a piñata. So I'm happy to say, now on Birthday Sundays, when I clap my hands and yell, "Okay, let the games begin," everybody is eager to play. I also found that these games really work up a hearty appetite. So after the games and before the birthday cake we all share a scrumptious meal together. Michael and I always make sure to plan a meal that is easy to prepare for a large crowd. Michael does the outside cooking while I prepare the inside dishes. It's really a toss-up between the most requested meal, but it's almost always a low-country boil or a Beer-in-the-Rear Chicken. Michael and I would