Product Description

Popular Lifestylist® Sandra Lee turns her `Semi-Homemade` concept to cooking-the shortcut way to gourmet-tasting, homemade meals. Sandra Lee has been making everyday lives a little bit easier for over ten years. Now, she brings her fresh, practical ideas into the kitchen with her very rst cookbook. The idea is brilliantly simple: 70 percent of the ingredients are preprepared and store-bought, 30 percent are fresh, and Sandra adds extra hints and tips to help transform these recipes into delicious, tempting meals. The results are fabulous every time: perfect homemade cooking, the easy way. Semi-Homemade Cooking includes 101 mouthwatering recipes such as Pumpkin Cinnamon Pancakes, Southwestern Turkey Chili & Cornbread, Sweet & Sour Pork Kabobs with Fried Rice, Curried Bowtie Salad, Kahlua Tiramisu, and Fiesta Fondue. It includes recipes for breakfast, dinner, appe-tizers, soups, salads, desserts, and more-all can be prepared in less than 30 minutes. Gorgeous, full-color photographs accom-pany each recipe, as well as recommendations for Sandra`s favorite brands, grocery store shopping tips, leftover hints, storage suggestions, and music and wine selections to round out the perfect meal. Sandra Lee lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband. This is her rst cookbook.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1666179 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-24
• Released on: 2007-10-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

From Amazon.com
Does the thought of cooking from scratch make you panic? Do you stand in front of your supermarket's canned vegetables display frozen with indecision? Is your fridge filled with takeout containers, and your oven used for storage? If you answered these questions with an emphatic "Yes," Sandra Lee's Semi-Homemade Cooking might be the cookbook for you.

There are plenty of excellent quick-and-easy cookbooks out there, but this book feels like a cross between a giant advertisement and one of those free recipe books you get with mail-in proofs of purchase. Every ingredient that can possibly be branded is labeled as such. Lee's Salad Chinois is made with Swanson premium chunk chicken breast, Kikkoman soy sauce, McCormick ground ginger, Hellman's or Best Foods mayonnaise, La Choy chow mein noodles, Fresh Express prepared green salad, Chun King chow mein vegetables, and Dole mandarin orange segments. Gnocchi Dippers are whipped up with Alessi gnocchi, Bertolli olive oil, and, believe it or not, Kraft Velveeta cheese. The Malibu Rum Cake includes Malibu Rum, Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe yellow cake mix, and Jell-O vanilla instant pudding. And not only does Lee dictate brand names, she chimes in with advice on music and wine selections, as well. One can only hope that Wolfgang Puck wrote the introduction to this book without ever seeing it. --Leora Y. Bloom

From Publishers Weekly
Replete with high-gloss, high-glam food photography, Lee's debut looks like a sophisticated cookbook, but closer inspection reveals that most recipes offer little a neophyte couldn't figure out for himself. A professional "lifestylist," Lee includes recipes such as a Golden Mushroom Soup that's simply a gussied-up can of Campbell's, and a Kahlua Tiramisu that demands three containers of refrigerated pudding. Harried home cooks might appreciate her shortcuts on the nights that authentically homemade meals are strategically impossible, but some will take issue with her use of brand names for virtually everything but the cooking water-a decision that, unfortunately, makes the book read as though it were underwritten by Nabisco, Kraft and Swanson. Pumpkin Cinnamon Pancakes, for example, call for Aunt Jemima pancake mix, and the Tropical Salmon necessitates French's mustard and Sunsweet Fruitlings. Lee even extends to animals the prospect of semi-homemade dishes: the chapter on pet foods includes a recipe for Kitty Tuna Cakes, wherein the intrepid cat-lover is instructed to fry Purina Pet Chow and StarKist tuna into patties. With a eye towards crafting the whole dining experience, Lee also suggests wine and music for some of her creations: pork kabobs, for instance, call for Hugel Gentil (an Alsatian white) and Celine Dion. Television appearances and Lee's sunny persona will help sales, but purists should look elsewhere for quick recipes.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Sandra Lee is known to audiences nationwide from her many appearances on the QVC shopping channel and numerous network and cable television programs, demonstrating her hugely popular product lines for the home.

She has shared her many down-to-earth secrets to decorating, gardening, and crafts, creating a lifestyle that is beautiful, affordable, and, ultimately, doable. Sandra and her many Semi-Homemade solutions have been featured in Good Housekeeping, Redbook, Country Living Gardener, Better Homes and Gardens, Woman's World, Victoria, and People. She has appeared on many television programs, such as NBC's Today, FOX's Good Day LA and Good Day New York, and several popular cable shows aired on such networks as Lifetime Television for Women, The Discovery Channel, and TNN.

Sandra now turns her friendly, realistic approach to cooking with her very first cookbook, Semi-Homemade Cooking. She is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals and studied at the acclaimed Cordon Bleu. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband Bruce and Aspen, their dog.