Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

@Iz - I don't know about you but I'm a bit jealous of bareneed, I wish I didn't know who Schmandra was either.

@bella ~ I'm not buying it.

@bareneed ~ Then where did you hear of Alton and Ina??????

@bella ~ before I would believe some other things!

Thanks for the heads up (or, should I say, boobs-up!) PerkyMac - I had time to watch a short clip of the youtube link you sent and I am beginning to get the picture!

bareneed: She's a TV cook who is reviled in Lower Canada (aka, the USA; aka, the head on which Canada sits as a hat) for her preparations.

Some give her sympathy for her rags-to-riches upbringing. Some say she benefited from a relationship to a TV producer, or something.

She's reviled by some for her canned-goods and shortcuts approach to cooking, while others can't stand the fact that her "kitchen" changes color (we're talking cabinets and tabletops) for each show, to match whatever she's cooking.

She could be silly, she could be a culinary fraud, or she could be a New Age Jackson Pollock. I don't know and don't care. I don't watch her show except for that "reality TV" aspect of waiting for a disaster to happen. And like so many American (not Canadian, sorry) dupes, I never get to see the trainwreck.

@Tiki--don't forget, her outfit has to match the kitchen, food, and "tablescape" as well.

I don't understand the flack that Sandra Lee gets. Her target audience is not the hard-core 'all-organic, lets grow only our own food, raise and slaugter our own meat, eat only our homemade breads (or buy a $10 loaf) hold hands, and sing "Kumbai-ya" crowd. Her target audience is the nine-to-five, hectic-scheduled, living on a tight budget crowd. Instead of recommending people buy five different spice jars at $4.00 a pop, she recommends buying a $1.50 blended spice packet that contains all five ingredients. She will use a store bought cake or canned soup. Paula Deen, and yes, even Ina Garten and Giada use them and they are heros. Sandra uses them and she is the anti-christ. Personally, I think that the Sandra-bashers are intimidated by her because she is an attractive, successful, thin and fit woman rather than seeing her for what she is trying to do, help middle-class, hardworking people put dinner on the table.

Please give the date or name of the show that Ina Garten used a store bought cake. If anyone bakes it is Ina.
Giada using a store bought cake? I will let you name the show and the air date. Good luck with that.
If you guys cannot tell we have been fooled. SLop is not worth talking about.

Sandra Lee is frakkin' clown shoes.

Kwanzaa cake. Oh my heavens. I mean...just...oh my heavens.

Grrr, that's what happens when I type at night and don't read what I type - I meant to write, of course, twice as much, not twice times as much (Wrote "three times" first, but then decided to take the regular, not sale price of chicken breasts as a base, deleted "three" but not "times". Sigh).

I am not the one who needs to get out more. :-O

I too only discovered Sandra Lee reading Serious Eats because I don't have cable!

Hell, let's end this thread, before it gets too personal! I now know who Sandra Lee is, and I can understand all the negative comments. Like my fellow Canadian, Maureen, said - she has never been on Canadian radar - we get plenty of USA cooking shows with various chefs and cooks - but - all I can say is - good old Sandra was turned away at the border! Thank goodness for those border guards.

@michigander. unh unh unh. We aren't against someone buying a cake if they work all day. We are not against boxed or canned stock if you worked all week or don't know how to do it.
We ARE against what she does to the items while trying to tell us it's like homemade.
Buy a nice cake and serve it. Buy a delicious pre-made soup and enjoy it.
Are these struggling middle class working people dressing to match their dishes and kitchen according to the theme of the day?
That's not a show. Well, it IS a "show".
It gets us talking.
They say negative attention is still attention.
She is thin. That's all.

And for the record, Rachel Ray while slightly annoying in her own right, is the one taking care of the busy working people on a budget.

I like Sandra Lee as a person, but If I were having a party, I'd ask her to bring Jell-O Shots.

Her show is called "SEMI-homemade". The word "semi" means "almost" or "not entirely". She doesn't claim anything to be homemade (hence the title of her show...)

Some people don't know how to cook very well, some people don't have time, some people like to cut corners while cooking. So what? What should those people do? Only eat-out? Hire personal chefs? Continue to waste time and money on ruining foods they try to prepare from scratch? Starve?

Sandra Lee's show just gives people the idea that you don't have to choose between either cooking from scratch OR eating out of a box. You can mix them up and use store-bought foods as shortcuts to make a pretty decent meal. It's pretty simple... and I don't see anything wrong with that.

@bareneed

Thank's for posting this; I was afraid to ask too :D
You hear about this chick ALL THE TIME!
Go Canada!

Okay, I just watched the Kwanzaa cake video. I don't think anyone would disagree that it's... it's... God, is there even a WORD for it? Vile. Maybe vile.

And yes, I agree that no serious foodie would watch SL w/ serious intent.

However: you don't start a toddler learning to read by dragging out "War and Peace" or Kafka's "Metamorphosis." You start 'em out w/ simple stuff, because that's where they are developmentally. "Sesame Street," "Square One," "The Electric Company" and "Captain Kangaroo" (alright, I'm dating myself) are/were created to deal w/ kids at different developmental ages. Very few adults would snicker at or deride Little Golden books or Thomas The Tank Engine books... and I say that it's the same w/ "Semi-Homemade."

There really *are* people who don't know how to cook much, or try to bring a menu together, or even decorate nicely. (Trust me, I know a few people who fit this description.) And for that reason I'll defend SL. Everybody who cooks had to start somewhere, or get an idea of how things might go together, etc. I'm sure there are LOTS of foodies who started to enjoy cooking by coming up w/ a few god-awful permutations from the Canned Food Recipe Cookbook. She shows how all of the elements can all go together, and I say that's fine because that's where some people need to start.

"Graduating" from "Semi-Homemade," I could see a foonie (ok, a combo of "newbie" and "foodie" - the alternative was newdie...) moving up to "How to Boil Water" or Sara Moultin's show.

I'm not sure that she's trying to educate people on cooking techniques, I just think she's giving a certain pocket of people ideas about what to cook. Obviously she's not targeted towards foodies, but non-foodies need to eat too and they don't always want to eat out of a bag or box. Not everyone who cooks is interested in learning how to be a master chef...

And the table-scape thing is pretty lame but I think any normal person would understand that she's just giving people party ideas. Sandra Lee is festive in kind of a cheesy way and some people just happen to dig it.

Now I wonder about the lineup for Food Network Canada.

Could it be better than FN USA?

Wait, that's a dumb question. What I mean to ask is, what's the lineup? Is that grill guy still working up there?