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 12:21 pm (UTC)There's nothing wrong with using convenience foods. There's nothing really wrong with "passing off" convenience food as your own. I've never seen a Mrs. Paul's package with a copyright claim on it, or a Swanson pot pie threatening jail time for anyone not citing the XYZ Conglomerate.
It's nice if you have the time to make everything from scratch, it's nice if you have the ability to make everything from scratch, but face it no one wants to, or has the time to be Pioneer Woman! every day. Hell even St. Alton uses prepared pastry and frozen vegetation when it's not going to make a diff. Those in the know have even caught him advocating imitation vanilla for baking (Made of wood? Ew!)!
The problem here is that most people don't brag about using nothing but trans-fat convenience foods and they certainly don't have their own cooking show and pass themselves off as kitchen goddesses.
As far as FoodTV goes, The Lee shows are pure comic relief, culinary TV Bloopers if you will, in contrast to Rachael (Enough Already!) Ray and Booby Flay's Horror and Suspense programming blocks.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-27 03:49 pm (UTC)Totally, I agree. Sometimes you really do need to save time and money, and it can be a real pain in the ass to cook from scratch every day.
The problem here is that most people don't brag about using nothing but trans-fat convenience foods and they certainly don't have their own cooking show and pass themselves off as kitchen goddesses.
Yes! Absolutely. Her cooking is not healthy, and her shortcuts aren't always helpful, unless you're in a certain bracket and you want to "look" a certain way. The show is a train wreck, I swear, and even though I was horrified, I was fascinated as well. Mostly with the thought of, "Who the hell is actually making this food in real life?"
I really dislike that a smart concept (taking shortcuts in cooking) has been turned into such a weird mix of Keeping Up With The Joneses and that she's taken the idea of masking the shortcuts so insanely far (I mean, seriously, buying a "widget" to make the pie look latticed?). As you have pointed out before, it doesn't save money, and it's hard to clean it up.
She's a loony.