Semi-Homemade Cooking

[fresco]

Somehow, I don't think one good or bad tv example is going to make much of a difference.

The cards are stacked against a widespread revival of home cooking from scratch. You would have to turn back the clock to a time when there were two parents in almost every household, one parent (invariably mom) stayed home and dad worked a regular day which usually ended at 5 p.m.

And this seems to be about as undesirable as it is implausible.

Fresco:

I respectfully disagree. My wife and I both work full time and we have a 6 year old. We have a "Mostly Homemade" dinner at the dining room table an average of 6 nights a week.

I pick my son up at 5:15, take him home and we work at getting dinner together. And dinner for me is rarely from a box, can, or takeout. I bake all our bread and make our breakfast cereals. I make our sausage and hope to learn the fine craft of cheesemaking soon.

And yes, in my spare time I've been known to knit a sweater, blanket, or scarf. I know not everyone has the interest or the motivation to take it that far. But many people won't ever try if someone is out there telling them that feeling your family crap is the way to go. It is really, when you boil it down, a matter of priorities.

We need someone out stumping for families to eat dinner together more often, with the tv off and the phone turned down. We need a cheerleader to say "Get in that kitchen and rattle them pots and pans!" And we need someone teaching basic cooking skills without pretense and giving people a boost in self esteem.

Damn -- we need Julia back. G-d bless her!

I'm sure you manage to do this, and that's admirable. But the fact is, the trend is against home cooking right across Canada, the United States and, horror of horrors, Europe, including France and Italy.

Indeed, I often think that the deep interest in cooking and artisanal food among educated, affluent people is more nostalgia for a bygone era than anything else.

Wasn't it McLuhan who first observed that objects and practices become revered just as they are becoming obsolete?

[krisdata]

She made spaghetti, out of a box, with sauce from a jar, and everyone's favorite virtually everlasting "grated parmesan cheese."  Now, I still cook this occasionally because it's easy, but I wouldn't exactly call it high cuisine.

Most of us make spaghetti out of a box. Am I missing something there? Sometimes I make fresh pasta, but it's just different and rarely approaches the quality of the best packaged dry pasta from Italy. Jarred sauces vary, but there's no reason why one couldn't be excellent.

I'm sure it was standard "whatever's on sale" spaghetti and it might have even been Hunts spaghetti sauce out of the can. And it was perfectly good food (especially to my child's taste buds). But to these other kids, it might as well have been a top-notch steak dinner. In their house, boil, drain, sauce was too much dinner preparation...

[Raynickben]

I just watched the show for the first time.

Did you know that she INVENTED Beer Margaritas? Yes, it's true. She said it 3 times. I guess the fact that I have had beer margaritas for years was all in my imagination.

And what's with her shoving whatever she has just made into her mouth and then talking to the camera? That's just obnoxious.

[Katherine]

Did you know that she INVENTED Beer Margaritas? Yes, it's true. She said it 3 times. I guess the fact that I have had beer margaritas for years was all in my imagination.

[HotCanary]

Do you know what she does with pixie stix? Check out the Linen

Dusting Powder in Minute 14:

17 MINUTES

Edited January 12, 2004 by HotCanary (log)

[Mabelline]

Well now, isn't that special? I guess we can safely assume that she doesn't live anywhere with humidity or fire ants...although that does give a person ideas....

Edit to add: You think that was bad, go back and see the "Champagne Perfume"! Which I guess should be "Sparkling Wine Perfume"?

Edited January 12, 2004 by Mabelline (log)

[Comfort Me]

Do you know what she does with pixie stix? Check out the Linen

Dusting Powder in Minute 14:

17 MINUTES

Eeeew!

Pity the poor fool who has to wash out HER lingerie!

[laurenmilan]

Oh hell, Sandy, you're a trophy wife. Just lay there and earn your next TV series.

[Comfort Me]

Oh hell, Sandy, you're a trophy wife. Just lay there and earn your next TV series.

To get her in the mood, he fakes a heart attack.

[laurenmilan]

Oh hell, Sandy, you're a trophy wife. Just lay there and earn your next TV series.

To get her in the mood, he fakes a heart attack.

*spews coffee*

Damn you, Comfort Me. Damn you.

[Mabelline]

Sadly, I just now realized what Miz Sandra brings to mind- a little girl playing adult. But what makes it sadder yet is the fact there's a generation of women out there who rely on her to help them navigate in society. My oldest daughter calls her a freak of nature...

[Andrew Fenton]

The canned shit at least has some nitrous oxide content. The crap in the tub is noteworthy because it has no known useful purpose--like Sandra's show.

No argument from me on the essential wrongness of Cool Whip. But is whipped cream in a can really "shit"? I thought it was basically cream plus sugar plus gas to whip it. Not the same as cream whipped up fresh, but nothing objectionable either.

[bergerka]

All right. Ok. Yesterday morning, I finally caught an episode of this show on tv.

This HAS to be a put-on, right? No one seriously makes "taquitos" by cooking up "beef chorizo" in a nonstick pan (scraping with a FORK!), adding salsa from a jar and like a pound of (pre-shredded?) cheddar cheese and rolling it up in corn tortillas...then baking them???? Right?

Now, anyone here who knows me knows my cooking skills are basically nonexistent...but based upon this chick's show, I could have a perfectly successful cooking program on the food network and ANYTHING I MADE would be better than the shit she was putting together.

I have to go now, my baby ferret is "helping" me type this answer and he's ready to move on to the next website.

K

[fresco]

We get some pretty bad stuff up here, but Food Network Canada seems to have passed so far on carrying Semi Homemade. I feel deprived.

[Comfort Me]

We get some pretty bad stuff up here, but Food Network Canada seems to have passed so far on carrying Semi Homemade. I feel deprived.

What you might be feeling is a phenomenon known as "Survivor's Guilt".

[fresco]

That's all right. Reading about it is the next best thing and quite appropriate. I think a "real" encounter with Semi Homemade would not be right, somehow.

[Cusina]

I'm sorry.  I'm still stuck on this post.  I could almost - ALMOST - deal with the vanilla pudding cup idea (after all, there's always room for Jell-o...pudding), but COOL WHIP?????  WTF???????    That is the most heinous shit on EARTH!

A long time ago, some friends invited us over to share some strawberries and whipped cream they brought back from a weekend in the country. They were fine field ripened berries and my jaw dropped when I saw them plop Kewl Whip, or whatever it was called, on them. Whipped cream would have highlighted the berries wonderfully as would even a little thick cream that wasn't whipped. The nondairy product just ruined the berries. It greased the tongue in such a way as to shut out the berry flavor. Nothing is made better with this stuff, it is only made sweeter and I suppose the food glides off your tongue and down your gullet faster unless you gag on it. I scraped off as much of the stuff as I could and sheepishly muttered something about not really being a fan of whipped cream. I blame it, like everything else, on my mother who raised me not to say "I can't eat this shit" when I'm a guest in other people's homes.

I am not a healthfood freak or a worshipper of Alice Waters and the Chef's Collaborative. I support science in the kitchen, but Cool Whip is a freak of science. Villagers with pitchforks and torches is an apt image.

Oh I feel your pain. Dessert at MILs... beautiful strawberries. Such a treat for a northerner this time of year. Served over low fat frozen pound cake and topped with an ocean of cool whip. Gack. There was just no way to rescue those babies or escape eating it without insult.

Ms. Lee is pretty much a big tub of cool whip, really. All plastic and fluff, no flavor and chock full o' enough preservatives so that she lasts way longer than you would think possible. Eventually though, she'll dry out into a white, unapetizing, flaky lump and get tossed out with the rest of the garbage.

[Mabelline]

Cusina, looking at your sig made me recall reading Sophia Loren's cookbook, and that made me think how cool would THAT be for a FNW special- Sophia Loren's Passionate Cooking!

[Mottmott]

I've no hankering to do it myself, but perhaps someone might want to try some of her formulas to see how they turn out.

But then you'd have to do chemical as well as nutritional analysis to really compare it with made from scratch food..

[bloviatrix]

Ms. Lee is pretty much a big tub of cool whip, really. All plastic and fluff, no flavor and chock full o' enough preservatives so that she lasts way longer than you would think possible. Eventually though, she'll dry out into a white, unapetizing, flaky lump and get tossed out with the rest of the garbage.

I just spewed scone all over my keyboard. That's really classic.

[hjshorter]

I was gonna volunteer to be the guinea pig who tries one of the "recipes" but it would involve a trip to the store to buy all of the premade shit. No thanks.

Now that I've seen the "recipes" for myself - holy cow they are appalling. I'm not anti-convenience. I use canned beans, spaghetti sauce from a jar, and salad in a bag sometimes. But there is no reason whatsoever to buy chicken in a can. None. If you can't (or won't) make it yourself, every grocery store sells rotisserie chickens that are a billion times better than chicken in a can.

[laurenmilan]

Ms. Lee is pretty much a big tub of cool whip, really. All plastic and fluff, no flavor and chock full o' enough preservatives so that she lasts way longer than you would think possible.

I'm betting one of these days we'll find out she's 175 years old...

[GSBravo]

I watched this show the other day, and tried to keep an open mind about it. But, she's not a likeable person. I found the constant "Now I want you to' and "What I want you to do" irritating.

I came away with the sad impression that she probably does eat this stuff and likes it. I'm sure she serves it to her friends, who in turn serve it to their friends. And they all like it. They think this is good cusine.

Now I don't have a television show or a cooking degree, don't know if she does, but I can cook better than she can.

I blame all of you, if yawl hadn't talked about her I wouldn't have watched. And changing the channel wasn't an option. As mentioned up post, it's like watching a train wreck. You can't look away.

[Mottmott]

Ms. Lee is pretty much a big tub of cool whip, really.  All plastic and fluff, no flavor and chock full o' enough preservatives so that she lasts way longer than you would think possible.

I'm betting one of these days we'll find out she's 175 years old...

[pjs]

The canned shit at least has some nitrous oxide content. The crap in the tub is noteworthy because it has no known useful purpose--like Sandra's show.

No argument from me on the essential wrongness of Cool Whip. But is whipped cream in a can really "shit"? I thought it was basically cream plus sugar plus gas to whip it. Not the same as cream whipped up fresh, but nothing objectionable either.

Maybe not shit but not real whipped cream either. It's over-sweetened with corn syrup. Extra ingredients include: non-fat milk, vegetable mono and diglycerides, natural and artificial flavor. Also, as laurenmilan mentioned, the texture is all wrong. It's OK for what it is. It does cost less than Cool-Whip, but a pint of heavy whipping cream is still the least expensive and best tasting.

PJ

Edited January 13, 2004 by pjs (log)