Sandra Lee - There Should Be A Law

Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee
Fruity Family Food
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But please don't.

Ok, I'll be honest, I've never actually watched a full episode of Sandra Lee before. I got nervous when I saw her putting some kind of horrible mint candy into instant hot chocolate. You know, generic candy from the drugstore. That’s certainly not a recipe that belongs on the same network as the Esteemed Lady of Barefootedness.

Alright, I'll try to watch. Sandra goes into her pantry. What are those pink things in the tall jar? I'm worried now. What if she's using those? She's going to SHOW us the best thing we've ever SEEN, she says. That's good. I don't mind LOOKING at something, as long as I don't have to eat it. She's picking up the WHITE CAKE MIX. It's in a clear bag, not a box. That is helpful, though, because I've never actually seen that before. But what's the deal?...she's worried we'll see that it's the Acme brand and not Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines.

"All my girlfriends loved blah blah blah." Yeah, because they prefer you in the kitchen cooking crap to stealing their husbands. BY the way, are they shooting her through a filter? Sandra looks strangely artificial. Maybe it's all the chemicals finally floating to the surface...Ok, she's "cooking", wink wink. Wait, those are real eggs. Maybe she ran out of the powdered ones. She's using the WHISK attachment on her Kitchenaid. WRONG! The flat beater is always called for when adding gunge to rubbish.

She seems strangely nervous and a little bordering on the frantic - I guess you can't be in a room with all those the additives without some down-side. And why is she wearing a WHITE tunic top, whose sleeve is about to go into the trash she's cooking? Oh, I forgot, she's not actually cooking. I have a great idea. This show should be on HGTV and she could substitute powdered cement for the white cake mix, with little difference in the final product.

She finishes her Muffins. She breaks one open. They look unnaturally perfect. She takes a bite. I KID YOU NOT, she almost runs off camera as if she's about to hurl. I'M NOT KIDDING!

After a bit of mouth freshener, she comes back to do the Apple Pilaf. Ok, I'm beginning to get it. There isn't ONE part of her cooking of which I can approve. She's using GOLDEN DELICIOUS apples for the Pilaf. (I use the word Pilaf VERY loosely, believe me). NEVER do you COOK with Golden Delicious apples. It's typical that that's the one she would choose: overly sweet and a bit mushy. And I forgot this isn't about good cooking, it's about....what is it about anyway? I'm feeling my brain cells going the way of my taste buds.

Oh, here we go again. INSTANT long grain rice. Sorry, that is for dogs only, and I always felt guilty even doing that. I blinked and she finished the dish. Yeah, why should you spend more than 75 seconds making a pilaf?

We're on to dessert. Oh wait, that is a jar of lemon curd, but it isn't for dessert. It's for the chicken! No, PLEASE DON'T DO IT. I'LL TALK! UNCLE!!! ANYTHING! She did it. She's making a glaze with jarred lemon curd. Ok, I see now. This is the scary stuff that foodies talk about – the stuff of legends. Now she's saying "When I come back...."

Please...don't...just don't...come back.

There's ANOTHER recipe? Strawberry pie. Naturally she’s using a ready made crust – but this one she has to roll out. Whoo Hoo! Is there any natural food to be found in her kitchen? Any whole grain? Or is it all maximally processed WHITE flour, WHITE sugar (both of which she stores on TOP of her oven), and let’s not forget the INSTANT rice. I think I’ve figured out why she’s wearing white. It’s a subliminal message. Everything is white, nothing is real. Everything is messed with until it achieves a state of such artificiality that you don’t even know what it was meant to be in the first place.

Sandra carries on. (Sorry, I’m talking about the recipe. I have no first-hand knowledge of how she conducts herself in her personal life.) "It's a good pie for a HOEDOWN!!!" Oh, so that's who her audience is. I’m sorry, but that’s a huge diss to the fine culinary tradition of our southern states.

Wait, she’s cutting the pie. Gosh, it’s flat. It could really use some silicone. She probably knows the best place to go for THAT. She’s going to taste it. Will she gag? She holds it on the fork and puts it in her mouth and, conveniently enough, the camera cuts away before she can spit it out.

Don’t make me tell you about the TOFU smoothie and her “Tablescape”. Watching her, I do feel as if I’ve just been on Mars, so I guess moonscape, outer-planet scape…TABLEscape…it’s all the same.

Here is my dream for you, Sandra, and the rest of the Food Network watching-universe. You need an intervention and QUICK. Can’t you just see Emeril, Mario and Bobby surrounding her in her pantry full of evil white powders - yeah, sure it's "White Cake Mix". They force her to discard the jars of iniquity and the powders of perversion. (WAIT, Boys! I don’t think those things can go in a landfill or they’ll destroy our planet forever. Get Al or Leo on the phone.) Sandra’s pleading, "No, Bobby, no, I NEED my Betty Crocker to function". "Emeril, PLEASE, don't take my Marshmallow Fluff. What will I slather on my breas...
my bread, I mean......" “Mario, those individually-wrapped-cheese-food-slices NEED to be in the fridge. We may need supplies for the next ice age."

They're patient, but firm, this Culinary Trio of Recipe Rescue. They take her out of the house...get her on a plane to Tuscany - where for the next 3 months, she eats nothing but freshly prepared vegetables and meats from real animals. She has no contact with anything from a box, except pasta, oh, and all her belongings that her family has shipped to her, because THEY'RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE! She lives out her days among the Cypress Trees of Monticchiello and we never hear from her again. Even better, we never see the abominations that she's wrought in the name of FOOD.