food porn

I was going to claim I saw the most amazing TV this weekend, but then I saw that Hello Kitty video.

Sandra Lee of Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee, the person that everyone with taste loves to hate, really out did herself with her Halloween Special

I wasn’t fully watching it, I was flipping back and forth between something good, maybe Rugrats. She had a different costume for every commercial break, and they seemed to get progressively more feminine, from regular witch to super princessy princess. And let’s not forget the hairpieces!

But, the best moment of TV, possibly ever, was watching her make her Pumpkin-Cheesecake Petits Fours

Lets forget for a moment that both pumpkin pie and cheesecake are much easier to make than tart shells. So she rolls the dough, cuts it out with an empty can (Semi-homemade cutters too!) and puts it into the tart pan to bake. No big deal, so far. Then she takes a store bought pumpkin pie and proceeds to scoop out all the filling with a spoon. And when you think it can’t get any better she takes a store bought cheesecake and scoops out the cheesecake into another bowl. Never in my life have I seen anything like it. It was a train wreck, too fascinating to turn away from. Scooping the insides out. Then she proceeds to add a bit of cream to each bowl, and puts the mixtures side by side in a piping bag, and pipes the newly formed train wreck into a miniature shell.

I am dying to try this! Unlike most of her recipes, she doesn’t really add anything bizarre to ruin this one. And, more than anything, I’m dying to scoop the insides out of a pie. If they started a scooping the insides out channel, I’d probably watch. I guess it’s kinda food porn. It doesn’t sound interesting when I repeat it, but if you saw it, you’d know!

She first invented her "semi-homemade" approach not to sell products or cookbooks but simply out of necessity: She was working and had a limited budget and needed ways to cut corners. But her first project wasn't cooking -- it was home decorating…. She started out by selling some home decorating accessories in a booth at the Los Angeles County Fair, but it wasn't long before she went commercial, creating product lines for Wal-Mart, Target, Michael's Crafts, Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores, QVC and other retailers. Eight years later, she has created 157 different products.
Sodergren, R. (2004, March 11). Semi-homemade cookbook cuts corners to extend other dining pleasures. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, p. F1. Retrieved October 25, 2005 from LexisNexis.