Spunky and self-made: Sandra Lee
Ubiquitous
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
When Sandra Lee was 15 years old, she looked her mother straight in the
eye and announced that her future would be a good one.
She got the beating of her life.
Sandra left home that day. Exhausted from spending years as the primary
caretaker of four younger siblings, emotionally spent from the thankless
ordeal of rescuing her mother after a suicide attempt that nearly
succeeded, shaken by a rape attempt by her former stepfather, and now
more bloodied, black and blue than she’d ever been before, the teen fled
for shelter with her boyfriend’s kindhearted family.
Sandra didn’t know it then, but she was only a few months away from the
haven that would change her life forever: Wisconsin.
Today, it’s hard to imagine the 40-year-old Sandra Lee as anything other
than the celebrity lifestyle expert she’s become. Her upbeat persona has
led many to suppose that her success was effortless, her upbringing
comfortable and coddled.
She’s the CEO of Semi-Homemade, Inc., the New York Times bestselling
author of a string of cookbooks bearing the Semi-Homemade name and a
guest lecturer for Harvard Business School conferences. She’s an
entrepreneur who for years ran an industry-award-winning business based
on do-it-yourself window-treatment gadgets she invented using clothes
hanger wire. She’s a tireless worker for charities including UNICEF,
Project Angel Food and Share Our Strength, and a trustee of Children’s
Hospital Los Angeles.
But she’s probably best known as the chipper host of Food Network’s
popular show Semi-Homemade Cooking. For each strongly themed episode,
Sandra personally develops an array of recipes including her signature
“Cocktail Time,” dramatic “tablescapes” that incorporate anything from
garden ornaments to dime store props for 3D effect, a complete overhaul
of the set’s dressing and even a coordinating wardrobe for herself,
sometimes with multiple costume changes. She’s done this over 200 times
since the show’s debut in 2003.
She balks at the suggestion that the themes express who she is: “It’s
not me coming through. It’s not job to dictate what you should like and
what you should not like. My job is to show you, if this is your taste,
this is how to put it together with the minimum of time, effort and
expense. Because I’ve already done it every which way there is to do it.
By the time it’s on the air, it’s perfect.” The sheer volume and scope
of projects covered in each show can seem overwhelming, but, Sandra
explains, “No one’s going to make everything that’s in any episode. You
might see one thing and say, ‘I can do that.’”
Sandra is known for an exuberant cooking style that uses lots of
brand-name mixes, jars, seasoning packets and cans, for her
full-throttle ruffles-and-lace decorating, and not least for a blazingly
sunny disposition. This last, paired with her willowy, California-blonde
good looks, seems to have predestined her success as the upbeat
multimedia juggernaut she’s become. But her background of poverty, abuse
and family hardship tells a different story.
In her newly published memoir, “Made From Scratch” (Meredith), Sandra
recounts her rocky upbringing. Born to teenage parents, at the age of
two she and her younger sister were deposited at the Santa Monica home
of her father’s mother. There she spent her happiest childhood years.
“Grandma Lorraine,” whom Sandra called “Mommy” at that time, worked hard
to make home a special place to share with loved ones. She kept an
immaculate house, cooked good food, made crafts with the girls, took
them to church. When it was time for celebration, she went all out
making decorations and treats, playing on a shrewd inventiveness that
made the most of the slim paycheck she earned working at a cafeteria.
Sandra lovingly recalls the simple foil pie pans she upturned to make
“grand, shiny silver cake pedestals” at birthdays. The lesson in
repurposing mundane objects would serve Sandra well later in life.
At six, when Sandra's mother and new husband took the girls to live in
Washington State, the peaceful rhythms and special celebrations were
gone, replaced by chaos, mess and violence. By the time Sandra was
eleven, her stepfather was gone and her mother was immobilized by
depression. Sandra took over the household responsibilities, buying
groceries by bicycle, rationing food stamps through the month, cooking,
cleaning, minding four children, raising extra money by selling bunches
of flowers she picked from empty lots, dodging her mother’s beatings and
admonitions that she wasn’t helping around the house enough -- and going
to school, where she hid her bruises from the school nurses.
Just before her sixteenth birthday, Sandra left Washington for the
Onalaska townhouse her father shared with his girlfriend. “I got there
just in time,” says Sandra, speaking from her recently adopted city of
New York. “If I hadn’t gone to live in Wisconsin, we would not be having
this interview. I would not have become the person I am. There’s a
sensibility in Wisconsin and the Midwest that’s wonderful. The values
and morals are really prevalent in the society. ”
Her father’s household, too, dissolved into domestic violence, but
Sandra believes Wisconsin life saved her. “The kids in Washington were
doing drugs, but Wisconsin was a very different environment. There was
really no bad crowd to get involved with.”
Grandma Lorraine helped Sandra find her own apartment in Onalaska. “It
was the best and the worst time in my life,” Sandra recalls. “It was the
first time I was really on my own and had to just focus on myself, to be
still -- which was just odd and awkward. On the other hand, it wasn’t
the chaos I was used to in my life in Washington. I was more peaceful
and serene. I didn’t have parental guidance or supervision, but there
was also this quiet environment. Being able to grow. I read. I focused
on school much more. I was the entertainment editor, and in charge of
advertising at the school newspaper. I joined cheerleading.”
Here Sandra says she developed the distinctive aesthetic of her show’s
coordinated set dressing, tablescapes and wardrobe. “It’s very
matchy-matchy, just like Wisconsin. When you’re in cheerleading, your
hair-bow matches your purse matches your book cover. Everyone matches.
All the time.”
Unaccustomed to what seemed like loads of free time, Sandra went to
work, too. “My first jobs were at Hardee’s and Penny’s Shoes. Then I
went to the pet store in the LaCrosse Mall. The work ethic and the
support and the understanding -- Wisconsin was just a super terrific
place to be.”
Then there was the food. “I experienced different foods in Wisconsin
that I never had before. Brats were one, which I loved immediately.
Sunfish was another -- I love sunfish to this day. Just flour and salt
it, then saute in butter.”
After high school, Sandra headed to the UW-La Crosse to study physical
therapy, “a great way to help people -- I got that from taking care of
my brothers and sisters.” But the girl who once helped support her
family selling value-added wildflowers found business classes more
riveting. “Five of us got together and opened up an ice fishing shop,
you know, on paper. You had to do per-square-foot dollars and figure out
employee scheduling, everything. After that class, I said, ‘OK. I want
to own my own business. This is just too much fun.’”
Cocktail Time, as well as the show’s occasional grilling segments, she
says, comes straight from her experience of “grilling, cocktail
waitressing and bartending at the Holiday Inn on Mississippi River. I
learned to grill on that deck grill, in a very small space. I definitely
learned creative cocktails on the deck. We’ve shot 200 themes. Who else
could pump out 200 different cocktails? You need the expertise of being
a Wisconsinite.”
In college Sandra also discovered the pleasures of entertaining for
friends. She had no money, but as she had learned from Grandma Lorraine,
“there’s no reason things can’t be special, no matter what your budget”
(this attitude would later become central to the Semi-Homemade
philosophy). So she learned to improvise in the kitchen. “I would make
‘Boone’s Farm Strawberry Shortcake,’ she recalls. “All you do is just
simmer thawed-out strawberries, macerated in Boone’s Farm Strawberry
Wine. Let it all melt together -- the alcohol cooks out. That was the
only thing we could afford.”
It took several years, a lot more life experience and an intensive
course at Le Cordon Bleu’s Ottawa campus for all these elements to
coalesce into the overarching concept of “Semi-Homemade.” And when it
did, the message resonated with millions of homemakers. No publishing
firm would touch her first book, “Semi-Homemade Cooking,” so Sandra
self-published. The book became a grassroots phenomenon, and soon major
publishers and the Food Network were lined up to get Sandra -- and her
Semi-Homemade brand -- on their team.
“Semi-Homemade was really created so that the busy homemaker would have
the time to sit down with the family,” Sandra explains. “It’s the
solution to bringing the family back together at the table, without
sacrificing quality or taste. It’s 70-30, right in line with how your
grocery is laid out -- all the ready-made products in the center, and
the 30% of the perimeter has the bakery, fresh meats, and produce.”
But some critics argue that 30% homemade is 70% short of real cooking.
The New York Times review of the first Semi-Homemade cookbook was
scornful. Members of Internet forums make gleeful sport of her menus and
recipes, disdaining her advice to, for instance, stir together
ready-made ranch dressing with sour cream and hot sauce to make a dip
for deep-fried olives (she specifies buying them already stuffed with
blue cheese) in tempura batter mix. The contempt doubles at her examples
of repurposing, as when the strained-off olive liquid plays a role in
Cocktail Time.
Sandra bristles at such attitudes. “They need to quit, these purists,
being condescending. I take offense, and I take offense on behalf of
millions of women who are working. Who want to take five minutes to sit
down with their family. Or to look nice. Taking a shot at Semi-Homemade
is absolutely ridiculous. They’re not even taking a shot at me; they’re
taking a shot at those women.”
She continues, “Everything I do on the show, I ask first, does this work
for Colleen Schmidt [Sandra’s best friend from college] of Fredonia,
Wis., who’s on her second marriage and is raising two children? Does
this work for Kimber Lee, who’s got no nanny to help her? If it doesn’t
work for them, then it doesn’t work. Anything that creates helps create
time and a platform for good family values should be greeted with open
arms.”
Sandra sometimes has to fight this battle on her own show. For this
year’s Christmas episode, a producer nixed a centerpiece of white,
powdered-sugar doughnuts adorned with “tiny blue candies that you stick
in the holes of the doughnuts,” Sandra explains, and draped with blue
fruit leather, all affixed to a craft styrofoam cone.
“They didn’t want me to do this doughnut tree. It was drop-dead
gorgeous! I just think the woman in charge didn’t understand what it’s
supposed to be about. I said, ‘I understand that it’s not New York, L.A.
sophisticated,” Sandra says, her voice becoming hot as she recounts the
skirmish. “I said, ‘It’s not about you. It’s about what Colleen Schmidt
Wayberg will use to make the holidays easier, better, faster.’ That’s
what Christmas is supposed to be about. If you did that at your holiday
party, everyone would say, ‘You are so clever!’” The producer relented.
“They don’t even know how to tell me, ‘No,’” Sandra says.
It’s a bit boastful, but that’s OK. Years ago, Sandra Lee decided to
look straight in the eye of someone who wanted to beat her down, maybe
for good. You wouldn’t expect her to back down now over a doughnut tree.
--
It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which
the liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn
our military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad
for them, it's failing.