The College Student's Guide to Sandra Lee

Over the past few weeks, I have been spending my time mulling over the fantastic creature that is Sandra Lee, and her 'cooking show', Semi-Homemade Cooking. Her stated cooking philosophy is '70% store-bought ingredients, combined with 30% fresh touch, letting you take 100% of the credit'. As a person who generally disdains having to cook things out of a box, much less cooking from scratch, her philosophy should have some amount of resonance with me. But it doesn't, mostly because the presentation of it on her show is absurd to the point of parody.

To start, her manner of speaking and general vocabulary continually straddles the line between 'slightly deficient' and 'cloyingly condescending'. Whenever she expresses surprise at a perfectly reasonable, expected outcome during preparing ingredients (such as juice escaping while cutting a lime, or grill marks on pineapple slices after grilling), I don't know whether to say 'Bless her heart' or 'This isn't my (or your) first time in a kitchen, Sandy!' And that's not taking into account her descriptors of food ('fancy-dancy', 'great (or other vague) flavor', 'thick n' delicious', 'this smells so good!' come to mind), which don't say a damn thing about the food itself. And of course, my favorite Sandraisms come in the following variety, paraphrased: "You'll fool your guests into thinking that you're a better cook than you really are!" Without touching that last assertion, the radiant glow that sparks in her eyes when saying these statements shows that her philosophy is based more on appearances than actual taste.

Not that it succeeds on that front, either. I keep my mind open when it comes to her dishes, but a fair share of her dishes are either unappealing to look at, or they're impractical for the event at hand, and if I were served them, I would have reservations about their presence on my plate. A certain meat 'pizza' comes to mind; over the course of the episode, it had to be switched out twice, looked more like an oversized calzone, and she didn't cut the bulbous thing once. It doesn't help that the pizza was for serving at a poker party; goodness only knows how they were supposed to eat it while playing cards. On the other less-pretty side of the spectrum, there was what I'm guessing was her interpretation of bananas foster, featuring a delightful banana rum sauce that looked like goopy overcooked sugar in the pan, which was haphazardly poured over ice cream and (store-bought) cookies. I've barely begun wading through the depths of her food; I've heard horror stories of how bad her food can get, but I'm going to stick to what I've seen with my own eyes.

There are two things that I haven't touched on yet, that probably warrent their own post together: Cocktail Time!, and the tablescapes. There's not much to say about the 'scapes that doesn't reinforce what I said already (massive preoccupation with appearances, and way overdone), but Cocktail Time is a different beast altogether. This is the segment of the show that, through sheer dumb luck, is more absurd than everything before it. Sandra prepares a lovely cocktail to serve to her guests, and while it doesn't go with any of the food, it's usually the same color as everything on the set, and it's guaranteed to be at least 33% liquor, most likely around the 50% mark. This is where the college coeds, looking to find new drinks for the next big party/drunken-disaster, need to perk their ears up. In most cases, her drinks and punches are only a trashcan and bottle of everclear away from Jungle Juice. You'll probably want to leave off the various choking hazards, though. The way she prepares her cocktails ('A cup, cup and a half, two cups [of tequila], depends on how much fun you wanna have at your party!') exposes the real deception and appearance she's trying to portray: that she isn't a middle-aged not-cook, and that she's still 'cool' and 'hip' and 'fancy-dancy'.

Unfortunately for her, it's not working, but I'm willing to stick around on her journey; for all of the shit I've given her, she manages to give a good piece of time-or-money-saving advice once in a while. And even though I mentioned them once, I haven't lambasted the paltry production values of this thing, mostly because they're one of my favorite parts of this show. Nothing screams 'The editors don't get paid nearly enough' or 'Why bother making sure Sandy's script is right' like watching a badly-sync'ed cutting sequence, or a 15-second-long voiceover that sticks out like edible food on her gaudy tablescapes, respectively. It's things like these slip-ups, and her Sandraisms, that keep me coming back day-to-day, rather than hoping that she'll make a decent recipe or a drink that won't knock me on my ass. I can't emphasize how much I love her special brand of absurdity, as if she's a random, kooky housewife playing the part of a cooking show how; if I wanted a real cooking show, I'd watch Rachael Ray.