FoodBanter.com - View Single Post - Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee: Picnic of Doom 2

In article >, wrote:
>
>The show begins with Sandra wearing an oversized doily holding those flowers
>she pilfered in the previous episode. She still has that nasty cold that make
>her sound like Kirsty Allie (Oh, now THAT'S a pleasant thought...) and is
>dragging a four foot high wicker hamper full of the raw materials needed to
>make her concoctions. Who the hell does that? Wouldn't it be easier to make it
>at home and THEN bring the finished goods to the picnic?
>
>She starts by making the salad. At first, she's making three salads, then
>suddenly one of the bowls vanishes. Run away, little salad! Fulfilling her
duty
>as spokesperson for the California Almond Council, she adds some almonds to
the
>salad instead of cashews.
>
>She makes sandwiches, using an "adherent" to make it stick together. For
visual
>effect and flavor, she used a slice of wheat on the bottom and wonder bread on
>the top. Most people take the lazy route and use swirled bread to do this. She
>then slices the sandwiches into quarters diagonally but decides to not cut the
>ends off.
>
>We cut to commercial break and see the Food network Labor Day marathon
>promotion which shows Sandra grabbing a bottle of booze. Hee! They got her
>pegged but good!
>
>Sandra tries to imitate Rachel Ray by grabbing an armload of food from her
>wicker hamper o' food and struggles to get them to the table without rolling
>off, giggling that her tomatoes are all over the place. No, I am NOT going to
>make the obvious comment here. She struggles with slicing some bagellettes
with
>a non-serated knife and then gets a tub of mini-mozzerella balls and begins
>slicing them into thin strips, telling us you'll have to slice a LOT of them
to
>cover the bread. Wouldn't it be easier to slice a large ball, or heaven
forbid,
>from a block so you don't have a gazillion little pieces sliding all over the
>place? She uses a couple pre sliced pieces of procuitto, declaring it makes a
>great sandwich meat.
>
>She then works on her chicken salad, proudly displaying some "precooked chick
>in" in what appears to be a plastic container one would use for Chinese soup.
>She mixes cole slaw with mandarin oranges, then cuts up the chicken into tiny
>tiny pieces and mixes it in, decanting the oil the mozzarella was packed in to
>pull the flavors together.
>
>For desert, she takes a store-bought pound cake from what I think she called a
>"rain can" and slices off the top and gouges out a canal. Hmm, I'm
disappointed
>she didn't use an angel food cake but it's been awhile since she gouged a cake
>canal, so I'm happy. She mixes a jar of lemon curd with some Cool Whip from
>another plastic Chinese soup container, telling us not to overstir it or it
>will deflate, but I know better. For some strange reason, she mentions to not
>use the stuff from a spray can because it won't hold up to being stirred (no
>doubt because it contains dairy product and might actually taste good). I have
>a feeling she learned this the hard way... She fills her cake trough with the
>adulterated Cool Whip and replaces the top, then mixes the rest of the Cool
>Whip with powdered sugar, frozen lemonade, and lemon jello. I don't see how
>this will work as a frosting, until she tells us to drizzle it over the cake,
>which she does, until all the frosting has been poured onto the cake. Lovely.
>Sandra then struggles to move the cake to a cake pedestal and then tells us to
>pull the spatula out of the back of the round cake. Thank goodness for telling
>me that! I'd have just left it there all day otherwise! Sandra then tops the
>cake with the pilfered flowers, reminding us to remove them before serving
>because they're inedible -- does she mean the flowers or the cake?
>
>When we return from commercial, we can tell by the graphic on the screen that
>it's now "Sandra's Cocktail Time!". SLop is now holding a bottle of champagne
>and opens it with a whoot. Into a pitcher she adds some frozen lemonade and a
>little bit of shaken up seltzer water. I swear her crew shakes up those
bottles
>to make her look stupid, which she does. She tops of the pitcher with the
>champagne and adds some crushed lemon drops she found in her car. When she
>pours it into the glasses, the first one is mostly pulp. She quickly tries to
>claim that pulp in a drink is a good thing, but I'm not convinced.
>
>Sandra declares that her picnic-scape is based on poetry and Shakespeare,
which
>sounds interesting, until the camera pulls back to reveal it in all its glory,
>at which point I am stunned. WTF? WTF?!?!? She dragged out a dinning room
table
>and used a tapestry for a table cloth and dragged out a pair of big fancy
>apolstered recliners for sitting/reclining. On the table, she used faux metal
>plates and gushed that you can eat "right on top of them". I was seriously too
>stunned to take the rest in, but she apparently ripped out pages from a poetry
>book as napkin decorations and hung a candelabra of Liberace proportions from
>gawd knows where. She then tells us she has to run off to 'freshen up" and
>exits stage left with a wave.

Girlfriend’s voice is sounding really raw. IIRC, she sounded bad last week as
well. I hope nothing is seriously wrong – I’m becoming addicted to
your particular brand of snark, I have to admit, I do start to feel bad for
show-biz types when they are performing while obviously sick, since “the show
must go on” and taping can’t be postponed. Makes me appreciate my stock of paid
sick days that I can take pretty much whenever I need to.

OK, on to the snark. Where was the 30% homemade? The basil leaves? The butter
lettuce? The lemon curd? Seems to me we got 100% storebought/packaged this
week. Sandy, mixing mayo and pesto does not count as homemade.

Oh, the icing on the lemon love cake was such a shame – real lemon juice and
confectioner’s sugar make such a nice glaze. Confectioner’s sugar, lemonaid
concentrate, and lemon gelatin? Someone please pass the insulin, I’m going into
sugar-shock.

I can understand a wine spritzer, but why would you add soda water to a
champagne drink, since champagne already has carbonation? (I know, I know, I
shouldn’t ask.)

I noticed SLoppy ate nothing and gave no foodgasms in this eppy. I wonder if
it’s because she’s sick or just sick of eating her own glop.