I'm at a loss for words.
Oct. 26th, 2006 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valis2I'm watching an episode of Sandra Lee's Semi-Homemade cooking.
Look, I'm not a cook. At all. Nor a baker. I hate cooking. I'm awful at it. So really, I'm not one to criticize a cooking show. Except that...holy cow. This show completely boggles my mind.
The host claims that she is saving time. She seems to rely upon buying store-bought food, and then adding an extra ingredient to make it appear that she's made the food from scratch.
I believe, however, that this show is entirely devoted to the illusion of making cooked food look as if you have made it from scratch. It's a very strange niche to explore. How many women really want to buy packages of dried gravy and pass it off as real gravy? Are there really that many women who are interested in such tomfoolery?
This show is filled with "widgets," booze, an obsession with creating "tablescapes," and a relationship with buttermilk which, quite frankly, frightens me.
Worse yet, when I try to give this show the benefit of the doubt, thinking, well, perhaps single mothers or those who don't have a lot of time would enjoy this show, I run into a logistics problem. You see, her "recipes" call for all sorts of canned goods, store-bought prepared foods, extra ingredients, and strange, single-purpose tools. The problem? It all seems more expensive and less tasty than just making it from scratch.
Seriously. I know nothing about cooking, but I watch Rachel Ray once in a blue moon, and she has 30 minute meals which look tasty and simple. She has a recipe today for a mushroom salad which does not, as far as I can tell, contain a single prepared food, yet looks quite yummy, and probably doesn't take that long.
Compare that with Sandra's meal today, which included a berry pie made with frozen berries, canned pie filling, premade pie crusts, and an insane "widget" whose only purpose is to fake a lattice top for pies.
Who is her audience? Vain middle-class women who want to somehow appear like wonderful cooks, and have the money to spend on all of these extra ingredients? It's bizarre.
This is all![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gillieweed's fault for pointing out this insane phenomenon.
Look, I'm not a cook. At all. Nor a baker. I hate cooking. I'm awful at it. So really, I'm not one to criticize a cooking show. Except that...holy cow. This show completely boggles my mind.
The host claims that she is saving time. She seems to rely upon buying store-bought food, and then adding an extra ingredient to make it appear that she's made the food from scratch.
I believe, however, that this show is entirely devoted to the illusion of making cooked food look as if you have made it from scratch. It's a very strange niche to explore. How many women really want to buy packages of dried gravy and pass it off as real gravy? Are there really that many women who are interested in such tomfoolery?
This show is filled with "widgets," booze, an obsession with creating "tablescapes," and a relationship with buttermilk which, quite frankly, frightens me.
Worse yet, when I try to give this show the benefit of the doubt, thinking, well, perhaps single mothers or those who don't have a lot of time would enjoy this show, I run into a logistics problem. You see, her "recipes" call for all sorts of canned goods, store-bought prepared foods, extra ingredients, and strange, single-purpose tools. The problem? It all seems more expensive and less tasty than just making it from scratch.
Seriously. I know nothing about cooking, but I watch Rachel Ray once in a blue moon, and she has 30 minute meals which look tasty and simple. She has a recipe today for a mushroom salad which does not, as far as I can tell, contain a single prepared food, yet looks quite yummy, and probably doesn't take that long.
Compare that with Sandra's meal today, which included a berry pie made with frozen berries, canned pie filling, premade pie crusts, and an insane "widget" whose only purpose is to fake a lattice top for pies.
Who is her audience? Vain middle-class women who want to somehow appear like wonderful cooks, and have the money to spend on all of these extra ingredients? It's bizarre.
This is all
gillieweed's fault for pointing out this insane phenomenon.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-27 03:00 am (UTC)Hey, I've used frozen berries and frozen pie crusts. I've used biscuits in a can. But I've never managed to make as big a mess as the Semi-ho manages to create on every single one of her craptacular crapfests! My favorite, the "burger dogs" that look exactly like turds on a grill.
As far as time saving...HA! That lattice pie crust thingy must take 10X longer to clean than it would take to make a real lattice crust on a pie. And you can used prepared dough for that too.
Anyway, her "cooking" is just an excuse for her to swig gallons of booze over the course of 20 mins or so. Who knew there were so many flavors of vodka?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-27 03:40 pm (UTC)I loved it when she compared her apple pie punch to her grandmother's homemade from scratch apple pie. I wonder what her grandmother thinks of this abomination of a show?
Isn't it funny that her grandmother taught her how to cook, and Lee rejected it all in favor of ranch packets?
As far as time saving...HA! That lattice pie crust thingy must take 10X longer to clean than it would take to make a real lattice crust on a pie. And you can used prepared dough for that too.
YES! I cannot imagine this show benefitting anyone who really does need to save time or money. Seriously.
Anyway, her "cooking" is just an excuse for her to swig gallons of booze over the course of 20 mins or so. Who knew there were so many flavors of vodka?
I didn't realize how boozy she was until this show! It's kind of scary.