Paula's Home Cooking

Paula's Home Cooking is a Food Network show hosted by Paula Deen. Deen's primary culinary focus was Southern cuisine and familiar comfort food that is popular with Americans. In the show, classic dishes such as pot roast, fried okra, fried chicken and pecan pie were the norm, and overcomplicated or eccentric recipes were usually eschewed. Dishes that are flavorful and familiar were spotlighted, although the fat content and calorie count of the meals were often very high. Paula also showed off vignettes of Savannah, Georgia, where she co-owns with her sons Jamie and Bobby, The Lady & Sons. Deen's popularity, spurred by the show, led to a small role in the feature film Elizabethtown. Despite its seemingly Southern atmosphere, Paula's Home Cooking was taped in upstate New York until 2006; since then, shows had been taped at Deen's new home near Savannah. In 2008, Deen began work on a revamped version of the series called Paula's Best Dishes, in which friends and family join her in the kitchen to prepare recipes. Deen's sons often appeared as guests on the show. They too proved to be popular among Food Network's audience and now have their own show, Road Tasted, similar to Rachael Ray's Tasty Travels. Deen's husband, Michael Groover, also appeared sporadically as a guest, and Food Network taped the Deen-Groover wedding in 2004 as a special edition of the show. The success of Paula's Home Cooking led to a line of cookbooks, a magazine, other television shows and specials, and related merchandise. Reruns of the show now air on Food Network's sister channel GAC. On June 21, 2013, the Food Network announced that they would not renew Deen's contract due to controversy surrounding Deen's use of a racial slur and racist jokes in her restaurant, effectively cancelling the series.