Down South Down South

This is part 4 of a 5-part series. Paula Deen’s full story appears in the fall 2018 issue of Shrimp, Collards & Grits magazine.

Today, art joins cooking as one of Paula’s passions. “There’s a lady in town – the ‘Shell Lady’ – who shelled our gas lanterns on the patio, and I went to her house because my magazine was doing a story on her. I thought, ‘I can do that because it’s easy.’

“So my husband, Mike, took Aunt Peggy, me, and Bubbles (sister-like friend Susan Greene) out to an oyster bed. We were like pigs in the sunshine, honey. I just had on tennis shoes. I didn’t think to take any gloves. I was stupid, but I’ve done a lot of stupid things.

“I love using the oysters that I rake. I just love sculpting and it is therapeutic, honey. You forget everything except the next shell you’re going to put on.”

Paula loves to paint, too, but is quick to say she’d rather be a chef than an artist.

“I’m not good at it. One of my best friends here Donna Foltz paints beautifully, and she wouldn’t leave me alone. She said, ‘I want to teach you to paint, Paula.’ She taught me a little bit, what I could absorb, and I just love it, but it’s not one of those things that come easy to me.”

In 2016, she joined President Jimmy Carter in Plains for an art class taught by Atlanta painter, James Richards. The fundraiser, “Painting, Paula, and a President,” raised funds for Friends of the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site and the Plains Better Home Town program.

“One year for Jamie’s birthday I gave him a painting of a bream. And that bream turned out so beautiful.” As she talked, the chef surfaced. “One of my favorite fish to eat. Lots of bones but you have to know how to eat them.”

She sent me an impressionistic image of a watercolor, an abstract of white flowers and foliage she painted with President Jimmy Carter. It raises possibilities ... lilies ... the plumage of egrets ... a wedding bouquet. I asked Paula if she’ll use her art to illustrate one of her cookbooks. Laughter like shattering glass broke out.

“Oh I doubt it, but wouldn’t that be fun? I am not talented and I really have to work at it. The shelling, though, is just so easy and so natural.”

And Earl D. Squirrel? His story deserves telling.

“A baby squirrel fell out of a tree, and a worker knocked on my door, ‘We found this little baby. What do we do with it?’ I said, ‘Oh, you give him to me.’

“I raised that squirrel, and I called him Earl D. Squirrel. He knew his name and when I’d call him, he would come. I went to Pet Smart and got some good mother’s milk, baby food, and fruit and I’d feed him that.”

Paula eventually set Earl free. “I was so sad. One day I opened the doors, and I just set him down out on the back porch and said, ‘Well, he’s gone.’ I got on the sofa and fell asleep and the next thing I knew Earl was on the sofa.

“So, he didn’t leave, but the next time—boy, I didn’t want to let him go I loved him so much—I took him out by the pond and he scampered up the tree and I haven’t seen him since. When I go out, I say, ‘Earl D. Squirrel! Earl D. Squirrel!’ ”

Next: Paula’s passion for art, her kind heart, and her future.

Watch Paula Deen On Evine. Find out where it airs and what time at www.positivelypaula.tv