Text the Peeps: Aunt Sandy Is Going Down Once More!

[Ed. note: I wrote about the first four chapters of her cookbook from 2007 to 2010. Please keep that in mind in terms of wording, attitudes, etc. Enjoy!]

Last weekend, Ian and I went home to visit our families and celebrate my father’s birthday. During our stay, we visited the local bookstore as we often do, and I came across an enemy of my past that has been cropping up EVERYWHERE recently: Sandra Lee.

As some of you are aware, I hate Sandra Lee with a passion, but that hatred had dwindled significantly while I was worrying about other aspects of my life (getting a job, getting married, staying married to Ian…lol). Lo and behold, Sandra came back into our lives with four holiday specials on HGTV that Ian and I tried to watch, but that were so horrific we could barely stay tuned. Sandra using former cancer patients for her benefit was SO exploitative it made me sick to my stomach (the terrifying red Christmas tree pictured above certainly didn’t help either [Ed. note: can't find this image anymore, so here's her Cocktail Tree instead!]), but after the holidays, I lost interest once again.

Cablevision certainly didn’t help by shutting down Food Network and HGTV transmissions, effectively cutting Sandy out of our lives for the time being.

Anyway, while Ian and I were at the bookstore, I started rummaging through the displayed magazines and came across the Semi-Homemade winter magazine, complete with Sandra’s soulless eyes staring back at me.

I had to kill some time while Ian spent his usual half-hour staring at DVDs, so I started flipping through the pages and came across “Heirloom Easy” (e.g. how to take the good food your parents/grandparents made and turn it into crap quickly and easily).

One heirloom recipe for a brownie sundae is what finally pushed me over the edge and brought back my HATRED for this woman. Sandra’s brownies consisted of boxed brownie mix (nothing wrong with that, but certainly not “heirloom” unless her mother was Betty Crocker), some eXpresso (yes, that is misspelled on purpose since that is the way she pronounces it), basic ingredients for brownies (oil, water, egg), vanilla ice cream, and store-bought hot fudge and caramel sauce. That is IT.

How in the world is this a “recipe,” let alone an heirloom recipe? How does this woman continue to amass a freakin’ empire when her recipes consist of desserts I could and did make when I was 8? Why is this woman dating a Cuomo and starring in two shows on the Food Network?

Ahem. To make a long story short, I am finally going to complete the task I set before me so many years ago and will finish defining the 9 Rings of Hell according to Sandra Lee’s cookbook for kids. If The Inferno is coming out with a new edition featuring a video game poster for its cover, than I better get on the bandwagon and publish my OWN version of Dante’s classic, Sandra Lee style.

Each week, we will enter another ring of Sandy’s hell, so get ready to once again experience the terrifying depths of Sandra Lee’s ignorance about cooking, children, taste, etc.

In other words, Text the Peeps! Aunt Sandy is back!

Letter from Sandy

Move over, Mom and Dad. In the kitchen, kids rule!

Taco Mac … Potato Bombs … Dino Cookies … what do all these bodalicious dishes have in common? You! Cook ’em, eat ’em, and show ’em off. I’ll show you how to do it step-by-step the Semi-Homemade way. It’s a cool kind of cooking by the numbers. Start with 70% stuff off the store shelves, add 30% of your own brand of mojo, and give it up for a dish that’s 100% yours. Now that’s math you can count on.

Hey, this stuff isn’t hard! If you can stir, you can cook. I started baking from the Bisquick box when I was 10 years old. My 6-year-old nephew, Bryce, dials up dinner, all by himself. My 9-year-old niece, Stephanie, bakes up batches of fun, while 12-year-old Austen makes mad movie munchies. Come weekends, 13-year-old Danielle serves up super snacks at sleepovers, and when it’s time for lunch, 14-year-old Scott is the man with the pan. Even 5-year-old Blake cranks up TV dinners with a little help from 13-year-old Brandon, who can’t get enough of brainiac snacks. And while 3-year-old Katie can’t cook (yet!), she sure does like to shake things up in the kitchen.

When you cook, you get to choose, so fix your fave. Get jammin’ in the a.m. with a Good Morning Parfait, make Mini Melts for lunch, then flaunt your stuff in front of the fam with Cowboy Meat Loaf for dinner. If you gotta eat your veggies, power-packed Pasta Zoo with Peas and Carrots is the way to go. And homework is much easier to swallow when you have smart snacks like BLT Dip and Pizza Braids. Smooth move whipping up the PB Smoothie—it’ll go down slooow good with Cheesecake Sandwiches at an after-school jam session. And when you want something wet and wicked, a Tropical Cooler is “chill” the one.

Think you’re clueless in the kitchen? It’s all good. Straight up instructions come with every recipe. Get the 4-1-1 on lingo and tools, plus radical tips on how to create meals of your own. And every dish is ready in a hot minute, leaving you time for kickin’ it with friends.

Learn how, then school the peeps … or show the ’rents wazup. Later on the mall … but for now, the kitchen’s where it’s cookin’!

Dish delish!

UPDATE:

Here are all nine chapters and their corresponding Rings of Hell—

• Bright Breakfasts: Limbo

• Lazy Day Lunches: Lust (swirling winds)

• Meal Mania: Gluttony (vile slush)

• Everyday TV Dinners: Avarice and Prodigality (jousting)

• Brainiac Breaks: Wrath and Sullenness (fighting and drowning in the River Styx)

• Movie Munchies: Heresy (flaming tombs)

• Sleepover Sensations: Violence, Murder, Suicide, Blasphemy, Sodomy, Usury (immersed in boiling blood river, gnarled thorn bushes, chased by dogs, flaming sand)

• Groovy Goodies: Fraud, Pimping and Seducing, Flattery, Simony, Sorcery, Political Corruption, Hypocrisy, Theft, Fraudulent Rhetoric, Divisiveness, Falsification (whipped by demons, immersed in human excrement, inverted baptism, heads twisted, immersed in boiling pitch, don gilded lead cloaks and walk listlessly, bitten by snakes and lizards, encased in flames, hacked into pieces by demon, afflicted with diseases)

• Dynamite Drinks: Treachery (Caina, Antenora, Ptolmea, Judecca, all frozen in lake of ice to varying degrees with Satan in the center)