When Paula Deen sits down to Thanksgiving dinner this year, the celebrated cook and entrepreneur is grateful for her many blessings, but there’s one at the top of the list.
“Definitely my family,” she tells Woman’s World in an interview as our cover girl here! “I’m so thankful for my husband, all of my children and my 11 grandchildren. Everybody is healthy. I’m thankful for my Aunt Peggy who just celebrated her 95th birthday. She’s here with us right now and I’m thankful for every Thanksgiving that she has to spend with us. My mother died when she was just 44 years old, and I was 23, so, Aunt Peggy has been my mentor and my biggest cheerleader for 50-something years.”
The former single mom, who was struggling to raise her two sons, humbly began her expansive empire by making bag lunches and selling them to locals looking for a quick and delicious lunch. Since then, the 77-year-old cook—she doesn’t consider herself a chef at all—has built several successful businesses and a reputation for nearly making butter a food group.
These days, Paula stays busy sharing tasty dishes on her YouTube channel and encourages people to subscribe to learn quick and easy meals to help take some of the stress out of mealtimes for busy families.
But, for anyone lacking the time or confidence to tackle her amazing recipes at home, Paula Deen’s restaurants serve up her most famous fare. “I’ll be going to our restaurant in Pigeon Forge, TN in November lighting the Christmas tree and I’ll be with Santa Claus,” Paula says. “I’ll be busy helping our restaurants kick off the holiday season. We also have a Paula Deen’s Family Kitchen [locations] in Branson, MO, Myrtle Beach, SC and in Nashville, TN by the Grand Ole Opry. Of course, our mother ship is The Lady & Sons here in Savannah, GA, and we also have a take-out restaurant next door started by my son Jamie called The Chicken Box.”
Paula’s advice for a stress-free Thanksgiving
For women who won’t be going out for a holiday meal but plan to cook a big Thanksgiving dinner at home, Paula encourages you to make it easier on yourself by delegating. “I really prefer to do my own cooking, but I’m not a spring chicken anymore and I have found that it’s harder and harder for me to multi-task,” Paula shares.
“I have started delegating the family members to bring a dish. I do the meat. I’ll usually do a turkey and a ham and of course, I’ll do the dressing. I don’t want anybody doing the dressing but me and I might cook fresh green beans, but my family all loves to bring casseroles. I give them a category and say, ‘Just bring what you do best, a dish that you’re real proud of.’”
When asked about the traditions she cherishes, Paula says, “I have everybody gather in a circle and we ask a blessing and some Thanksgivings I’ll ask everybody to tell us what they are thankful for.”
Paula says that over the years, her Thanksgiving celebrations have changed and gotten much bigger. “It has certainly grown. When I married Michael, he had two children and I feel like they are my children too. We’ve been together probably 23 years. We’ve been married 20, so I’ve been with his children now a good while. He has a very, very close relationship with his children and he’s been an amazing father to them over the years.
“I didn’t think I was ever going to be a grandma. I didn’t think it was ever going to happen. I said, ‘Michael is going to have to come to your house and give you all instructions on how we are going to make this happen,’” she jokes. “Then all of a sudden they started having them, and now I’m saying, ‘Time out, time out!’”
Holiday traditions with her grandkids
As Paula’s preparing Thanksgiving, she’s happy to have the grandkids helping in the kitchen. “Jack wants to come in and immediately start making biscuits. He loves doing that,” she says of her eldest grandchild, who she proudly notes is the Colonel of his senior class at the military school he attends. “The younger grandchildren, the ones that are 10, 11, 12 and 13, they want to come in and make the Lady & Sons homemade lemonade and they’ve gotten pretty good at it. They all love helping.”
As the family sits down to dinner, Paula says there are some dishes that just have to be on the table. “We have to have the dressing that my grandmother taught me how to make,” she says. “The sweet potato casserole that my Aunt Peggy makes. It’s so good. And my children love my fresh green beans, so those things have to be on the table. I’ll make fresh cranberry sauce using the fresh cranberries and usually a coconut cake is in order. It’s hard for me to have Christmas or Thanksgiving without a wonderful, wonderful coconut cake.”
Paula loves Christmas, but says there’s one thing that makes Thanksgiving easier. “I really love Thanksgiving because you’ve got your family and food element, but you’re not stressed to come up with gifts for everybody like Christmas. I love giving, but when you’ve got 11 grandchildren who have everything they could possibly want, it can be a challenge,” she says with a laugh.
As Paula sits down with her family at Thanksgiving, she admits she has so many things she’s thankful for this year. “God has not missed one day blessing me,” she says. “The fact that I’m physically strong enough to stand up and do my work, I’m so blessed and grateful.”