Love & Best Dishes: Happy Easter 2023 from Paula Deen

– Hey, my friends, it’s Easter time again, and I think it’s a time when we do a lot of reflecting. And the fact that it’s in spring when everything is coming back to life, you know, after a cold, hard winter, you just, the word rebirth comes to my mind. And we all have our beliefs, our different beliefs. Beliefs, I happen to be a Baptist, naturally, coming from southwest Georgia. Most of us were either Baptist or Methodist. And we’ve been going through pictures for my new cookbook, because I told you it’s gonna be, hopefully, a lot

of pictures that y’all have never seen from my childhood on up to my grandchildren. So this is the four of us. I wrote our name, Paula, Jimmy, Jamie, and Bobby Dean, (chuckles) like I might forget. We were on our way to church and somehow we were lucky enough to get a picture. You know, back when I was raising my boys, y’all, there was no such thing as a telephone camera. So I have very, very few pictures of my children when they were little. And this is Bobby and his daddy with his Easter basket that I’m

sure Aunt Peggy had helped me put together, because this was probably about the time she was teaching me how. Now I’ve taken them little further, but that’s how

they looked if you went to the Toy House there in Albany, at the Albany Mall, and bought one of the Toy House’s baskets. And this is Jamie and little Kari. She’s in her Easter bonnet. She was so cute. And, you know, I always felt like Jamie and Kari looked more alike than any of the rest of the family. She had his coloring. She didn’t have his dimples, but

she was one beautiful, little girl. And when she was good, she was very good. She was like the little girl with a curl. And when she was bad, she was horrid. (laughs) And look at this. I don’t know why I don’t have one of Jamie, but this is Bobby and the Easter Bunny. (laughs) Oh, sometimes I would love to just blink them back, you know, just for maybe a half a day. (laughs) But, so I’m getting ready to do Easter baskets for my grandchildren, and that’s always fun. They get so excited, and every one of

’em come here and I usually put ’em out on the front porch because they gonna make a mess. Grass is going everywhere and paper’s going everywhere. And I should have some pictures from last Easter somewhere. You know it, Eddie? I know Ashley took a lot, so I’ll have to ask her so I can just compare them last year to this year. So I hope this message finds y’all in a very peaceful place. And, you know, contentment is very important. It’s a very important word in my life, accepting things. You know, it all goes back to

that serenity prayer, y’all. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and please God, give me the wisdom to know the difference between those two.” And that prayer, I could say that every day. And it applies to me, and I know so many other people. But this Easter, I hope that it finds y’all all in a happy, good, peaceful, content way. So until Easter Day, love and best dishes to all of y’all this Easter.