Bag Lady

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen, and today I want to go back to my humble beginnings when I first started the Bag Lady

I have to tell y'all, these dishes really got me where I am today, and I just love the opportunity to share these recipes and the stories behind them

So first up, I want to share with y'all McCall's Plantation Shrimp Salad with a taste right straight out of the South

and then after that I want to share with y'all my almond chicken salad

and then there's my creamy cheese noodles and I'm going to follow that up with the simplest and tastiest sour cream muffins

a Bag Lady lunch didn't go out without. So if y'all would please do me the honor of joining me in the kitchen today

and sharing in my very special menus of the Bag Lady days

Today is a real sentimental show for me

because the theme of the show, I'm going back to the original Bag Lady days when I started my business

It's hard to believe that it's been 16 years now. And you see this little container

You know, it may not mean much to you, but it brings back the very beginning of my business to me

I tried these little clear containers so that the people could see the food without touching it

so that it was completely germ-free. by the time they got it

So I love these little containers. I get weepy every time I see one

You know, my beginnings were very, very humble. For those of you that don't know my story

I started 16 years ago with $200, and I was really kind of a desperate woman

I was like at a crossroads in my life. I was 42 years old

and I really wanted to take responsibility for myself and my children, and hopefully give us something that would take care of us if we took care of it

And y'all can see Gertie's hanging very close to me this morning

I don't know if she's going to let me get up to the stove to make this dish or not

But the first dish I want to share with y'all is McCall's shrimp salad

It has a wonderful, wonderful flavor. And I'm going to start by throwing in an old bay

It's like a crab seasoning or a shrimp seasoning. And I'm going to add my shrimp

When I first started out with the bag lady, I just started out by doing sandwiches

And in no time, our customers were telling me what they wanted

And before it was over, not only was I making sandwiches, I was making hot meals

I was making desserts, I was making soups, and I was making like three or four different salads

for everybody to have. A nice choice every day. So it really, the food really got kinda, kinda intricate

very, very quick. Alright, now these shrimp are not gonna take but a couple of minutes to cook

And when I take them out, I'm gonna cook the rice that I have right here

It's just a white rice. white rice, I'm going to cook it in that seasoned water, which is going to make it just really pop

with flavor. Let's move on down to my almond chicken salad. This is just boiled chicken

It's two breasts. Now I'm going to take a half a cup of mayonnaise and two tablespoons of lemon

juice, and I'm going to mix those together. And I found y'all that the simplest ways that I did

things always seemed to be more pleasing. Now I'm just going to add these two ingredients together

and I'm going to toss my chicken in the bowl. I mean this is almost just like stupid easy

I'm going to add celery and I'm going to add slivered almonds

There's not even any boiled eggs in this chicken salad and I'm going to season it with pepper

and a little salt, and then just toss it with a mayonnaise mixture

All right, and that's how simple that salad is. It's so good

The lemon juice just parked it right up Now I want to show y how I would package these meals

to send out. If I can open the container, it's been quite a few years

since I've bought these little containers. But I would just fill my bottom up with lettuce

with lettuce. If you pack your own lunch, this is a great way to do it

You can save your containers from the grocery store when you buy strawberries or blueberries

You can save those and package your lunch up in these little containers

All of my salads, I garnished them up real pretty so they would just, like

irresistible looking. Now, I would package this with a lemon twist on it

and then I would sprinkle it with the almonds. And, of course, it's not complete without a little parsley

But it was a perfect way to package my Bag Lady lunches

Makes me weepy to think about those days. Well, let's move back here to our shrimp

because they're ready. I'm going to take them out, and I'm going to put our rice in

and I'm going to take a quick break. And when we come back, I'm going to be finishing up

this spectacular shrimp salad. And then I'm going to be sharing with y'all

a cheesy noodle and the most wonderful little sour cream biscuits that you ever put in your mouth

I wouldn't let a bag lady meal go out without one of these muffins in there

So I'll see y'all back in a minute. Y'all stay with me because I'm really reminiscing about those bag lady days

Thank y'all for coming back with me. I'm walking down memory lane in case you've just tuned in

And I'm talking all about the tedious bag lady days. And I'm preparing dishes that I made back then

But anyway, our rice is done, and it's so deliciously flavored from being where those shrimp were

And the seafood ball is so good. Now, I'm just going to toss our shrimp

Oops, I see some water in the bottom of those. Let me just give those a couple of shakes because I don't want any liquid in this

I don't want it to be soupy. Now, if you want to stretch your shrimp a little bit further, you could chop them

but I'm using a smaller shrimp, and I really like to see the shrimp

and I like it to be generous. And all we're going to do now at this point is toss in some mayonnaise and chopped green olives

Normally I'm not wild about these, but these give a great flavor to this dish

And a minced onion, fresh onion. All right, let's give it a taste and check it for our seasonings

Oh, it's so good. Oh, and it's hot. So you may want to be careful when you're putting in your seafood bowl, your seasoning

might want to kind of be careful because it does have the heat to it

All right, and I'm just going to pile this up. But look how pretty that is

And you can stick this in the refrigerator, and it will just get more flavorful as it sits

Look how good that looks. Love that dish. Y'all, please try that recipe

All right, let's move on down to another recipe that I just love, my creamy cheese noodles

Now, I'm gonna start with a package of very fine egg noodles

You can see they're the finest of the fine. And this made a nice little hot lunch

And all I'm gonna do is take our noodles. I'm gonna add a cup of cottage cheese

a cup of sour cream, and you can change this around. You can certainly add different cheeses

and I'm throwing in a half of a grated, an onion that been grated on a hand grater and a little Worcestershire sauce and a little garlic salt

All right, so I'm just going to mix this up and give it a taste to make sure the seasonings are right

You know, sour cream really demands a lot of salt. So we'll want to make sure we got those seasonings right

Alright, let's see if we... Mm-hmm. That's right on the money now

Alright, so I'm just going to toss this in our casserole dish

and I'm going to bake it for about 25 or 30 minutes

And when I would make hot meals for the bag lady, I would make them the night before and refrigerate them

because there was a law that stated that your food had to be kept at a certain temperature

And so when I packed it in the coolers, I had to make sure that it got no higher than 40 degrees

So I would chill all the hot dishes because the one stipulation

if you bought a bag lady meal and you bought something that was to be hot

you would have to have use of a microwave in your office. But, of course, there's hardly an office around now that doesn't have a drink machine and a microwave and a coffee maker

So this would come to you cold, and you would just pop it in the microwave

Doesn't that look delicious? Just noodley and cheesy. All right, so like I said, I'm going to bake this in a preheated 350-degree oven for about 20 or 25 minutes until it's hot and bubbly

All right, so we got that cheesy noodle bake in the oven, and when we come back, I'm going

to pull it out and I'm going to taste it. But then I want to share a very, very special recipe with you that us girls in the South

we feel like we can't have a party without, and I certainly couldn't send out a bag lady

without one of these little muffins tucked in the corner. So I'll see y'all back in a few minutes

We're talking about the bag lady. Before the break, I told y'all that I wanted to share

a very special sour cream muffin recipe with you. you. But first, let's look at this cheesy pasta dish that's ready over here in this oven

It's really, really good. All right, let's move on to this little muffin, y'all. I'm gonna start

with two cups of self-rising flour. Now that's self-rising flour. If you grab plain flour

these won't work so make sure that you know what kind of flour you're working with. I'm

going to add a half a pint of sour cream and two sticks of melted butter. That's where

the richness comes in. Alright now we're just going to stir this up and then I'm going

to drop them in an ungreased muffin tin. This is one of those great little no fail muffins

You can see we're not kneading this and rolling it. We're just going to drop it into the muffin

tins. And we're not greasing it because we've got so much butter in this that these are

not going to stick. Now I'm making these in a regular size muffin tin today because I

want y'all to be able to really see them. I want them to have some size to them. All

All right, we're almost done. Now I've got the oven back here preheated to 350 degrees

and we're gonna bake these for about 25 to 30 minutes. If you're making these in a miniature muffin pan

you'll wanna cut back on your cooking time because those won't take nearly as long

probably about 15 minutes in the miniature pan. All right, we're gonna slip these in the oven

and check on them in about 25 to 30 minutes. But in the meantime, I've got another pan over here

ready for y'all. Oh I hope they good and hot Look at those sour cream muffins And y this might possibly be the only bread

that I don't add more butter to because of the butter that's in them. Look at that muffin

It's a great recipe for your children if they're beginner cooks. Doesn't it look positively out of this world

And I have some wonderful homemade blueberry preserves ready and waiting on this

Look at the texture. Doesn't that look delicious? I wish y'all were here with me to sample this

They're incredible. Just incredible. You definitely don't have to be a bag lady to make these

Well, while y'all are gone, I'm gonna be eating the rest of this muffin

and when we come back, I've got a couple of little tips that I want to share with you

in case you're ever in an emergency. See y'all in a minute

You know, when I first started The Bag Lady, I told y'all that I did it out of my home

Well, our home consisted of a two-bedroom, one-bath house, and there were six of us living in this house

I didn't have a whole lot of storage space. It seems that I could never get everything I needed in that kitchen

because it was very, very small. and invariably I would have everything ready to put together

run to the refrigerator to think I had a product and got there and found out that I didn't

Well, this tip I want to share with you is an easy way to convert regular whole milk into buttermilk

And this works great if you're a single person or just a couple

and you don't drink buttermilk. but you use it in recipes. And the least size you can buy is like a quart

So this is a great way to whip you up some buttermilk

All right. To our one cup of whole milk, if you don't have white vinegar

you can use a fresh lemon juice. I prefer the vinegar. And we're going to add one tablespoon to that cup of milk

And we're just going to sit that to the side and let it sit for about five minutes

And when you come back to it, it's going to look like buttermilk

You know, and how many times have you gone to the refrigerator thinking you had sour cream and you didn't

Well, here's a quick substitute for a last-minute sour cream. You need 3-4ths of a cup of plain yogurt

and a third of a cup of melted butter. Whip that together, stick it in the refrigerator

and when you're ready to pull that hot baked potato out of the oven, you've got a wonderful sour cream topping

and nobody will ever know that they're eating yogurt. You know, I'm so busy these days

that oftentimes I don't even have a minute to reflect back about the days when I started the

bag lady and then those very humble beginnings. But doing today's show has allowed me to reflect

and just think about those days and think about the trials and tribulations and the pleasures when

I felt like I succeeded. In fact, if I don't leave you but with one message today, I want to

encourage you. If you have a dream, follow it. Go after it. You know, there's no sin in trying and

failing, but the sin is in not trying at all. So I wish you luck if you're thinking about

starting your own business. And if you're not, sit back and enjoy some of these bag lady recipes

The almond chicken salad is delicious. The cheesy pasta is so good. And of course, McCall's

plantation shrimp salad is out of this world. But these little sour cream corn muffins, y'all

they should come with a warning. You will not want to have another meal unless there's a muffin

on the table. So until next time, y'all, I send you loving best dishes from my kitchen to yours