Everyone Loves a Boston Girl

Last week in the midst of party planning, I called my mom to get a good sangria recipe. She couldn’t find hers and was giving me suggestions on where to find one. “Check out that woman’s page…you know, the crazy one. Sandra Lee?” What? My own mother, flesh and blood, the one who is partly responsible for making me the food snob I am today was suggesting I look on Sandra Lee’s website? “Mom…” I said, “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just tell me to follow a recipe from Sandra Lee.” My mom laughed, “I know how you feel about her, but you know she’s always drinking on her show…I think she’s an alcoholic. So I’m guessing she’d have a good sangria recipe.” Point taken.

But after looking on her website for .5 seconds, I realized how much I despise Sandra Lee and her 70/30 philosophy (she combines 70% store bought products with 30% fresh and creative). I am by no means a skilled chef, but come on; half the stuff she makes is complete crap. However, I can’t stop watching her because it just intrigues me that a woman like this has her own show.

Reasons I just can’t respect the queen of semi-homemade:

• I believe that she fools people into thinking cooking is really hard and something you shouldn’t take time to do. When she makes cakes, she makes them from a box! I mean, if you are short on time or just want a quick cake making it from a box is fine, but do you really need Sandra Lee to tell you this? Frosting is probably the easiest thing in the world to make from scratch, but Sandra always chooses the packaged stuff. Or worse…she uses Cool Whip! AND her recipe for macaroni and cheese instructs “cooks” to use Kraft macaroni and cheese! Yeah, I need a recipe to tell me that.
  
• I don’t really consider anything made with cream of mushroom soup or cheeze whiz to be actual cooking. She uses cream of mushroom soup A LOT and once had a full show on cheese whiz.
  

• She has “tablescapes” each episode, in which she decorates for her parties. Oftentimes these are horrendous and oftentimes she dresses up to fit with them. I’m willing to estimate that in the history of her show 2 people have used a tablescape of hers. They scream theme party taken wayyy too far.

• The woman decorated her entire Christmas tree with barware. She called it her cocktail tree and had a nutcracker on top holding a martini. Enough said.
  
• One of the first times I watched her she said something along the lines of, “I’m using Reggiano. But you can use Parmesan if you like.” Umm, OK? She also confuses mascaropone and marzipan, two very different food items. I expect a little more from Food Network chefs.

• She’s a huge alcoholic. Drinks a lot in each episode and tells stories about drinking so much she passes out. So sad it’s entertaining. Sometimes I tune in just to see how much she’ll drink today.