A certain level of fame

I haven't had fancy cable television for over a year now, having scaled back from the full-on deluxe line-up of 150+ channels (including three MTVs and however many ESPNs there are now) to the sub-basic package which consists of my four local network affiliates, an independent station that airs nothing but sitcoms with all-black casts and what I'm pretty sure is Hungarian C-SPAN (all of which costs me about .84 a month). As a result, I don't get things like The Food Network. And yet, because of the pervasive nature of fame and celebrity in our society, I know who Paula Deen is. Rather, I'm aware that there is a person named Paula Deen who is a personality with her own cooking program on The Food Network and that she has a fiercely devoted fanbase and this makes her a huge star. In spite of the fact that my exposure to Ms. Deen on television is limited to this...

...even I am aware that she is a huge star. Because thanks to my friend Taylor Eason, I learned about a "recipe" on Ms. Deen's Food Network web site for something called "English Peas". If you don't feel like clicking through, here it is, in entirety:


Ingredients


1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
2 cans (14 1/2-ounces) English peas, drained


Directions
Melt the butter in small pot and add the peas. Cook over medium heat until peas are warm.


Seriously. That's the whole thing. (If you didn't click through, you're probably feeling pretty good right now because it clearly would have taken more time and effort to do so than to just read it right here, but you really should click through and read some of the comments left by readers)
This proves that Paula Deen is a huge star because you have got to be a huge star, or at least have testicles the size of frozen hams (which is the same thing) to pass that off as a "recipe".

Speaking of peas, meet the Paula Deens of funk

What's next for Paula Deen, uploading a picture having one of her assistants upload a picture of the directions on the box of something she bought at the grocery store?

"Here's your ****in' recipe; I'll be in my trailer, bitches."

If this is any indication, it looks like The Food Network is becoming to food what MTV has become to music. In which case, thank you Paula Deen for validating my decision to dump cable.