Paula Deen's Southern Cooking Bible: 300+ Classic Southern Recipes for Delicious Home-Cooked Meals | Perfect for Family Dinners, Holiday Feasts & Southern-Style Entertaining

I purchased Ms. Deen's book several days ago in support and wrote a lengthy comment at that time to express my opinion. It is the 2nd Paula Deen cookbook I have purchased from Amazon, and truthfully, I don't remember ever using one single recipe from the first. I hope to find more to my liking from this book, but even if I don't it will stand front and center on my kitchen bookshelf. I've always admired Mrs. Deen for her grit and determination and her efforts as a single mother to provide for her family. I have also purchased from Amazon the story she wrote about her life and enjoyed that book immensely. From that book, you learned she isn't a saint, and she doesn't profess to have always lived her life in accord with what some narrow minded people would consider acceptable behavior for a "lady." Had this firestorm not sprung up due to her admission and honesty, I would not have purchased this book. My original comment has not appeared. Perhaps what I wrote was too lengthy, or maybe I used the word that now is even more offensive to some than the "n" word. I mentioned that I was a Christian. I won't repeat everything I wrote, but I do have questions to address to the Food Network, at least one of her publishers, Wal-Mart, maybe Amazon in the future, and particularly to Smitfield Food. You all have had a commercial relationship with Mrs. Deen for years. Did you ever observe any racial tendencies on her part? If not, is it possible those tendencies do not exist? If you did notice these tendencies, are you not hypocrites because you were willing to make money off of her if no one else knew? Why not judge Mrs. Deen for what her life is today, not 20 or 30 years ago, or maybe even 5 years ago? Life events and time do change us and sometimes makes us better people. To each member of the board of directors of companies who have dropped her, look at yourself today, and with honesty, look at yourself in your younger years. Are you the same person you were then? If so, then you haven't progressed at all as a person. Smithfield, out of my home state of Virginia, is in line to be bought by a company out of China. A country that by law limits families to one child resulting in forced abortions or children, most often girls, being placed in orphanages. Smithfield's customers are American families but yet they can't stand by a woman who has admitted to a mistake in her past and apologized but they can accept being owned by a company out of a country that represses it's people? What I've written isn't really a review of Mrs. Deen's book, but in a way it is because I am willing to buy it with no expectations of ever actually using it because I believe it's author deserves my support.