Paula Deen's Magazine staffers Sarah and May came to visit on Thursday, to interview and "shoot" me for an upcoming issue of the magazine. Which meant I had to take myself over to see Doug at Douglas & Co., my long-time hairdresser. Doug fixed my hair so I did not look like the back-end of a poodle, and Katie fixed my makeup. I did manage to dress myself. They're going to include a recipe with the story about me, so Katie, who is taking a cake-decorating class with her two best friends from parochial school, baked the tomato soup chocolate cake from DEEP DISH. The cake looked gorgeous with a fluted border of cream-cheese frosting, and a sprig of deep blue hydrangea from my neighbor Susie's backyard. Me? I just looked like a fixed-up version of me. Sarah, the photographer, spent hours painstakingly shooting the cake, styled just-so on our dining room table, me pretending to eat the cake, me in the sunroom and me on the front porch. That's Sarah and me above, on the front porch. I used to go on photo shoots years ago when I was a newspaper reporter, but I'd forgotten how long a magazine shoot can take--which in our case, was close to five hours. But the girls, who'd driven over from Birmingham, where the magazine is published, were very sweet and lots of fun. There they are, above, viewing the shots Sarah had just taken on their laptop. Lawwd, technology has changed so much from my newspaper days--which ended 17 years ago. In the old day, when we went on an out-of-town assignment, my photographer and I would drive to the nearest Greyhound bus station, or airport, and ship the film back to the newspaper office in Atlanta, where the film would be processed and the pictures printed. It was just barely a step up from scratching pictures on a stone tablet! Paula's magazine, the girls were telling me, is now the highest-circulating food magazine in the business, even surpassing BON APPETIT. You should be able to see the photos and story sometime next spring/summer.