My plan today was to write about our new little bull calf named Mikey. Mikey came to us in the usual round-a-bout way, a baby cow on the verge of death, but with a twist; this time the animal’s owner was being responsible. She’d decided to have Mikey and his parents humanely euthanized because she’d lost her ability to keep her cows. She loved them and was terrified if she gave them up they would eventually end up in someone's freezer. While we didn’t have the space to keep all three, we couldn’t say no to a baby, and so Mikey arrived and is settling in nicely with no slaughterhouse in his future, ever.

However, I am NOT going to tell you about Mikey today because I just read the most absurd article about Paula Deen who says she is shocked, simply shocked that none of her fellow Food Network chefs stepped up and stood by her side when she announced she had developed Type 2 diabetes. So today, instead of discussing Mikey and the usual dose of glamour*, I’m focusing on an entirely different kind of bull, if you don’t mind.

I used to occasionally watch Paula cook, but only when I was in the same sort of mind frame I needed to watch, oh . . . say . . . the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I would perch on the edge of my seat and try to anticipate what other deadly ingredient she would add to an already lethal dish . . . butter? Bacon? Corn syrup? Liquid lard? And I kid-you-not, I would press my hands over my face to block the horror show unveiling before me, then peer out between two fingers before shielding my eyes again. Paula’s show was the Nightmare on Elm Street of the Food Network for me.

The very last thing I ever watched Paula prepare on TV was this  . . . this . . . thing she made that was so gross I had to turn the TV off and leave the room. Paula fried up eggs, hamburgers and bacon, then layered them between . . . are you ready? Two Tasty Crème glazed donuts (I actually screamed out loud,) and then . . . and this is where I got queasy . . . she and another chubby southern woman ate them while making noises normally reserved for pornographic movies. If I had eaten lunch that day, I’d have lost it. I said goodbye to Paula for good.

Now, I will grant you there are extenuating circumstances in my life that influence my opinion of this woman’s food, and I’ll lay my cards out on the table right now . . . I haven’t eaten a meat product in 30 years and I rescue animals from slaughter, particularly horses. Paula, on the other hand, is personally responsible for cooking and eating the animal-equivalent of the population of Detroit, and that’s before the economy tanked and everyone moved out of Michigan. Also, on my behalf, my parents died absurdly young, at ages 50 and 52, of heart disease brought on by horribly clogged arteries. When my mother was alive we used to jokingly call her, “Mary ‘I have real butter’ Schurman,” and tease her for the many pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream in her freezer. It wasn’t such a giggle after the autopsy results arrived.

I have never again watched Paula’s show, but I’ve seen several Paula interviews since that terrifying donut sandwich. One was when she started losing weight, coincidentally, about three years ago. She insisted she was going to a gym and working with a personal trainer and her diet hadn’t changed one iota. “Just exercise, folks!”  Yeah, right Paula. I call bull on this one. Just exercise, folks, and you will lose all the weight you packed on eating sandwiches made using two donuts (value of 400 calories each) as slices of bread. BULL!!!! (I dare you to watch her video about this on the drug company's website - you'll need an injection of insulin afterwards.)

The next interview I watched was an appearance on The View where Paula plugged her children’s cookbook filled with meal ideas like cheesecake for breakfast. Why no one ever thought of that before as a breakfast option is beyond me . . . In any case, the ladies of The View took a dim view of the calorie dense, overly sweetened, fatty recipes and I cheered them on as they ripped into the Queen of Obscene Food and hassled Paula for encouraging obesity in our youth while she lined her pockets with cash from cookbook sales.

“Get her!” I shouted at Barbara Walters. “ATTACK!”

And Barbara did.

For the past three years Paula has continued to act as if it’s perfectly respectable to poison people, including children, while hiding the shady little secret that she’d eaten herself into a deadly disease. Yet had her secret slipped out, her cash cow of a business might be jeopardized and she’d have to listen to thousands of people chant, “I told you so!”

Three years after her diagnosis, after she locked up a lucrative deal with a pharmaceutical company that will more than cover any losses she might suffer when fans discover Paula’s food really is life threatening, she has the nerve to wonder why the other Food Network chefs are lying low?

Paula’s reputation is now more toxic than her menu.

While I am very fond of our little calf Mikey, the kind of “bull” Paula Deen dabbles in makes me ill. I feel sorry for anyone she might influence with her new rhetoric which goes like this . . . if you develop potentially deadly Type 2 diabetes, don’t worry! Just take the medicine manufactured by the company that pays Paula big bucks to plug for them and go on with your life the way you always have. Don’t modify your diet, exercise or do what’s recommended by health professionals who care about your health and actually know what’s best . . . do what Paula says because she makes lots of money peddling her bull.

So, what else are you hiding, Paula? Heart disease? High blood pressure? Or do we have to wait until you line up your next drug contract to find out?

Yes, Food Network chefs . . . keep your distance. Heck, I wouldn’t let Paula within a mile of my Mikey! And no one knows bull better than he does . . .

*Editor Kathleen Schurman owns Locket’s Meadow Farm in Bethany where she lives a life filled with “glamour” which is her cute little euphemism for “manure/mud/slime, etc.” When she is not writing for the Bethwood Patch she is shoveling glamour, teaching therapeutic riding and occasionally writing a book. But mostly, she’s shoveling glamour . . .