Paula Deen headlines Reliant cooking show
The superstar rocking Reliant Center on Saturday wore a shiny peach-colored top, comfortable white slacks and silver sparkle slippers. “Like Dorothy,” Paula Deen said of her jeweled shoes.
And just like Dorothy, all the queen of Southern cooking had to do was click her heels three times to be at home in front of the 2,500 screaming fans who paid a premium to sit a the Metropolitan Cooking Entertaining Show’s Celebrity Theater.
Paula Deen, who headlines the two-day show at Reliant Center continuing Sunday, is a bona fide superstar in the food world – a celebrity who has grown beyond her Food Network showcase to become not just a household name but an international brand.
When she took to the stage Saturday morning, the first of three arena-like appearances at the Metropolitan show that is expected to draw 10,000 visitors, Deen was met with the kind of greeting usually reserved for rock stars.
To Holly Cannon, of Houston, that’s precisely what Deen is. Cannon and her husband, Bob, were among those who shelled out $400 for front row seats to one of Deen’s cooking demonstrations and private lunch.
The show’s priciest tickets for Deen were the first to sell out; Holly Cannon bought hers in December as a birthday gift for her husband.
Stones versus Deen
They were not disappointed. “It’s all he’s talked about for 24 hours – Paula Deen, Paula Deen, Paula Deen,” Holly Cannon said of her husband. She added that she saw the Rolling Stones at the first concert at Reliant Stadium and she’d “stand in line to see Paula Deen before the Rolling Stones again.”
Paulamania touched fans in different ways. Omar Alexander of Houston approached the stage to ask Deen a question and got more than he expected. She bent down to rub the top of his head – like a holy person dispensing a blessing – and implored him to be aggressive with his seasonings when cooking for his wife.
‘It’s butter, y’all’
“She sparked something in me,” he said after the show. “I’ll be more adventurous.”
Kasey Hilton, of Magnolia, is a die-hard fan who watches Deen’s shows enough to know of her deep love of butter. Hilton, 14, returned that affection by making a T-shirt that she wore to the show emblazed with a big golden stick of butter and the words, “It’s butter, y’all.”
“She is a star but she’s so humble and open just like any other person,” said Hilton who said that, like Deen, she hopes to open her own restaurant. She already has the name picked out: K K’s Cuisine.
Deen’s ability to relate to her fans as one of them may be a major factor in her success.
But she said in an interview before her first appearance Saturday that her celebrity is sometimes difficult for her to grasp. “It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around it because to me I’m so ordinary, so average,” she said. “But I don’t question it too much. I just say ‘Thank you, Lord, for this beautiful gift.’?”
Cookbook on way
It’s a gift that keeps on giving, she said. “I feel like God doesn’t miss one day blessing me. Not one. I cannot wait to go to bed and get up just to see what God’s got next for me.”
Next month Deen begins to promote her new book, Paula Deen’s Southern Cooking Bible, a nearly 500-page omnibus on Southern cooking that already sold 45,000 copies on QVC before its official publication date in October. To promote the book she plans a bus tour – just like a rock star.
‘Work until I drop’
The 64-year-old white-haired grandmother has no intention of slowing down. Retire? As ridiculous a notion as a warm biscuit without butter.
“I didn’t start to work until I was 45. I’m going to work until I drop,” she said before she took to the stage. “Now let’s get to work.”
And with that Deen was off – Dorothy slippers and all – to take her fans over the rainbow.
