If you have ever seen Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade’s tv show on Food Network, you would know what Sandra Lee is all about. Her cookbook is a definite extension of herself. Her point? Make delicious homemade food that looks like it took hours in a very short amount of time. Her shortcuts are to incorporate store bought items (like the pre-made sugar cookie dough I sprinkled over my berry cobbler). By buying particular items that would take a good amount of time to make you cut down your recipe time but achieve the same amazing result! I was initially fearful that having so many store bought items in a recipe would make it difficult to complete but everything sounded at least semi familiar to me and I think I could find all of these ingredients at my local grocery store. The amount of each ingredient was precise so I had no trouble determining the size of each item to purchase.
I adore looking at photos with a cookbook and I am proud to say this cookbook has gorgeous tantalizing full page color photos for most of the recipes. I need visualization to see how the recipe is going to look to judge whether I should take the time cooking it and these photos do the recipes justice! The first 16 pages are discussing introductions and real basics in cooking. For most cooks you will bypass that. An entire chapter is spent on breakfast, which for me, I would rarely use as breakfast in my house is always a quick fix. Then the book carries on with typical chapters such as lunch, dinner, desserts, and appetizers and so on. What did surprise me was the pet food recipes chapter at the end of the book. I rarely expect to see pet food recipes in a typical cookbook. Given how pets have become such a member of the family now, I would think it would be widely advertised or even given their own cookbook! Granted, this chapter is going to be subject matter that will not appeal to everyone.
The layout of each recipe is extremely easy. Recipes are kept on a single page so there is no need to flip back and forth and possibly dirty up your cookbook! Also, each section is classically divided in a way that you just can’t go wrong! There are more than 100 recipes in this book and the ease of each recipe is enticing. Between that and the gorgeous pictures I hope to continue making recipes out of this book!
If you have seen Sandra Lee’s show, you know that presentation as in how you set your table, music and wine are part of the deal in making a meal entertaining and the book goes on to portray this. A few pages on wine and music are also in the cookbook, but it wasn’t really much instruction. However, the chapter on cocktails had some awesome simple recipes for delicious looking cocktails. The book in its entirety was a good inspiring cookbook and picking out recipes from this is fun with the photos and ease of the recipe with store bought items added.
If you have seen Sandra Lee’s show, you know that presentation as in how you set your table, music and wine are part of the deal in making a meal entertaining and the book goes on to portray this. A few pages on wine and music are also in the cookbook, but it wasn’t really much instruction. However, the chapter on cocktails had some awesome simple recipes for delicious looking cocktails. The book in its entirety was a good inspiring cookbook and picking out recipes from this is fun with the photos and ease of the recipe with store bought items added.
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