Paula Deen

Southerners have never been afraid of seasoning. It's kind of the other way around; our seasoning is afraid of us.

In my house, the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl Game have always been a grand tradition for ringing in the New Year. To serve as Grand Marshal is a dream come true and I look forward to sharing the celebration with all of the fans and viewers worldwide.

You know, not everybody can afford to pay $58 for prime rib or $650 for a bottle of wine. My friends and I cook for regular families who worry about feeding their kids and paying the bills.

I wake up every morning happy for where I am in life. It's not all about the cooking, but the fact that I can contribute by using my influence to help people all over the country. In the last two years, my partners and I have fed more than 10 million hungry people by bringing meat to food banks.

Growing up, I had a very busy social life. It wasn't until I was a sophomore in high school that I asked Mama if I could come into the kitchen and have her teach me how to cook something.

There's not one food that causes diabetes. What causes Type II diabetes is being overweight... I've just come to grips, over the past four or five months, with my diabetes.

I really didn't have an interest in being in the kitchen until after I was married, when I was 18. It didn't take me long to realize that Mama was not going to show up at my house every day and cook.

I'm making little changes in my life to take care of myself, like putting in a mile or two on my treadmill every day.

Talking about money is garish. It's tacky.

Onions and bacon cooking up just makes your kitchen smell so good. In fact, one day I'm going to come up with a room deodorizer that smells like bacon and onions. It's a fabulous smell.

I found that when I went from Albany to Savannah, that I needed to put that white rice away, and I needed to turn that into Savannah red rice because they were big into that sausage, tomato-y, bell pepper-y rice mixture.

When it's said and done, the one thing I want to leave on this earth is hope. I have felt hopelessness, and it's a terrible feeling. Hopelessness will destroy you. I want to bring hope to other people.

I figure it's almost like a balance. We're eating these wonderful collard greens and turnip greens which are so medicinally good for you and, OK, so what if it has a little ham hock in it?