My gut tells me that this show will not be Japanese, inspired or passionate. Who's with me?

Just caught the tail end of this epi. Question: Even with the recipes that first look like they might be tasty- i.e. the banana fritters/tempura. Does she always then go too far and gunk it up with some thick, sickly goo? In this case, the coconut green tea syrup. Urrrrp.

Those beef rolls at the beginning looked like they'd been sear-marked with a sharpie.
And yet another way to get protein and vegetables INto the children.

Does tempura mix actually have aig whites in it? I'd go look at the ingredients on my box of mix but I can't get there from here. And, yes, I know exactly which box it's in. Pumpkin pie spice? Why? GAH! She's "babysitting" her banana.

I could have sworn she said PUKE-Cumber shots. Must've been my ears.

Watermelon rum? Leave it to Sandy to introduce me to a new allkyhawl I've never heard of. She could barely wait until she finished pouring before she had to take a drink.

Hee! Japanese fortunes!

Cheep birdhouses=Japanese.

Beef rolls? What the hell? I guess the beef rolls threw themselves INto the mix to save the Asian Slaw. Run, slaw, run! Spoonlet said, “Mom, asparagus is good but it makes my pee smell funny. Does the Yucky Cooking Lady's™ pee smell funny?” And I thought, “Yep—it does. But probably because of the alcohol. Asparagus has nothing to do with it.”

Her shirt looks like something Greg Brady wore. Ick.

Now the white part of the onion is mild. What the hell? Two weeks ago it was too onion-y. Spoonlet is very upset that she's using the “Funny Noodles” for her soup. He loves Top Ramen. He's informed me that he will continue to eat it as long as I don't make it like that

Did she say that wasabi was like horseradish? I thought it was horseradish?

I don't doubt that pumpkin pie spice and bananas might taste good. But I can't see how in the hell that is even Japanese-inspired.

That drink. Jesus, there are no words. Seriously. There are even fewer words for the tableskape.

The faux ivy and faux birds on a birdcage is Simple Sandy’s idea of Japanese design?

“Japanese food doesn’t have to be all raw fish.” I feel so much better now that I know that Sandy.

MissOrchidgal walked INto the room before leaving for the IU football game and cried from the outfit SLop was wearing and how she “thinks” it’s Japanese =( Meanwhile, orchidgal thinks Aunt Sandy is confusing Morocco with Japan.

There’s no way the grill was turned on when she put the beef rolls on it.

And please, stop reading the ingredient list on the packages, Sandy.

“The edamame is in ice water because she wants to shock it to stop the cooking process.” Congratulations, Sandy. We’re shocked too.
What did she screw up about the canned baby corn that they had to do that voice over?

The ‘ tem-pour-a’ mix cannot have everything I need in it if I need to add something to it, Sandy.

“You’re going to want an nice mouthful everytime you take a bite.” Huh?

Driftwood with faux animals and silk flowers with birdcages for the tablescape. Sandy has no idea what Japanese design style is, does she?

Where’s the beef (arrrussippe?). And please shut up about getting protein into kids. Just. Shut. Up.

The drink? THE DRINK!

The tablescape. Are you supposed to eat there or go pheasant hunting? Seriously. And the fortune cookies are such a nice, Japanese decorative touch.

Snads always goes too far.

Hi, all! I've been a long time lurker at the Snad forum, but today I got curious and actually watched the episode to see if it's really as bad as everybody seems to think.

Firstly: Gah! The shirt! The eyeliner! The hair! I'm a reasonably undiscriminating guy, but there's no way in the world I would find her getup attractive.

The beef rolls actually looked reasonable to me, but I don't understand what's semi-homemade about them. Other than the fact that the beef was sliced by a butcher, they looked all home-made to me. I do think it probably takes more than a quick brush of soy sauce to give them GREAT FLAVOR (oh boy do I understand why you guys snark on the flavor now).

The soup, on the other hand...what in the world was that? Ramen noodles? Peas just dumped right in? Is there some reason she couldn't just get regular noodles and cook for an extra five minutes? And since when did the Japanese use Szechuan sauce?

When she was pulling out the noodles, did she say, "Be careful with these because they get mussy"? What is up with her speech impediment? Why is she drawing out and emphasizing random syllables in every sentence?

So wait. After she's fried up some banana tempura (do they actually make that in Japan), she plops them into a mixture of melted sorbet and green tea? Let me get this straight: you've just fried up some crispy banana tempura. And now you're soaking them in liquid so that they get soggy. What am I missing here?

Dear lord, when she said, "You can't have a Japanese meal as simple as that without a SAKE COCKTAIL" her eyes did this really scary wide-open thing that almost made me jump out of my couch and hide behind it. And when she tasted the cocktail, I could swear I saw her grimace right before she put on a smile and called it delicious.

Umm...can anyone actually see past that tablescape? Seems to me that if I'm sitting there, I'm going to have a lot of trouble talking to the person sitting across from me. And seriously, bird cages? What's so Japanese about that?

I honestly don't know if I can stand watching this every week, but at least now I understand what you guys are all snarking about. Wow. I'm honestly deathly afraid that Food Network will rerun the Indochine episode because based on what I've seen her do to Japanese food, I think the Indochine episode would probably leave me whimpering under a table (I'm Vietnamese).

I can't wait to read your reactions to this one.

The "story" behind the tableskape was hilarious. "There was this little boy who lived next door growing up and we'd always collect driftwood from the river and hot glue l'il animals and nest and shit to them..." First, what self-respecting BOY in the 1960s would do this? Collect driftwood and hit people with it, but hot glue??!!
I love the fact that she wore an Indian inspired kurti to cook in (which did NOT go with the black pants), then switched to an embellished t-shirt. Also, none of her foods where easily eatable with chopsticks, but she gave no othe silverware-unless it was hiding in the scrape.
I won't even address the food, because-no.

And since when is there sake in Szechuan sauce?

No Vietnamese food was actually present in this episode-it was mostly Chinese/Indian "inspired" stuff that was mutilated...IIRC.
I just noticed-where's the slaw? She skipped the slaw!

At the first of the show, when it panned over to sake in the cucumbers, I thought she'd say "that's another way to get vegetables INto your kids!"

So, basically, she went down the ethnic aisle at her local groshery, got ALL the bottles of Japanese sauce she could find, then used it all in regular food?

Lastly, I've seen a lot of things at my butcher aisle, and I've seen beef that thin but not that exact square, did you all noticed that? How perfectly square it was?

I forgot about the new time slot, again, so missed the Asparagus is the New Almonds segment. I tuned in right as she was taking the fake-grilled looking things off the grill. Other than the Sharpie ink, they looked OK.

I might make the bannana tempura for the Test Kitchen. But no way am I making the sauce. Steeping green tea in cream for eight minutes? I can't imagine how bitter that would be.

I think the bird cages were supposed to be pagodas.

Hee...she makes the coo-cumber 'shooter' cups that holds about a third of a real shot glass and then SIPS it to taste it!...C'mon Sandy,slam it!

Frozen raspberries will give you a 'burst of cold'???...who knew?

OK,so let me get this straight:

Red and black = Chinese

All white = Black tie

Black and white = clocks

Pink = Indochine

Blue and Green = Japanese


And the biggest irony of this is NO FRICKIN' PAGODA!!!!...at least bust out She-Faux-Buddah for Christ's sake!

Side note: I'm a Loyal Viewer now!...Watermelon rum shots for everyone!

Oh, lord. Sandy always does take things way too far. Drenching those banana things in that green tea thing was going overboard. No need for them. And speaking of the green tea cream sauce, when she was adding the coconut sherbert (?), she says she's just going to add a "heaping spoonful" or something. But she adds like half of the container, balancing it all on a tiny little teaspoon. Thought that was pretty funny.

And something that always really bothers me with her ugly tablescapes is not just the tackiness and ridiculousness of them, but how tall they are. She puts on all this crap and towers it so high that you won't even be able to carry on a conversation with the person sitting across from you because you won't be able to see them.

Xantar, welcome to the horror that is Sandra Lee.

Nothing semi-ho about the beef rolls. Not much Japanese about them, either, but this is SLop we're talking about. And hers were seriously overcooked when she took them off the grill.

And, memo to Sandra: "Sushi" does not equal "raw fish." Sashimi is raw fish. Some sushi contains raw fish, but the only required ingredient for sushi is rice. We used to get inari sushi in Hawai'i that was a ball of sushi rice with a bean-curd cover.

What is her obsession with thawing frozen vegetables before cooking them? I don't think she actually did thaw those peas, she just had to say she did.

When she was making that cocktail (watermelon rum? the hell?), I told MrBee, "Sake experts around the world just screamed in anguish and horror."

The using-caps-as-measuring-spoons thing is starting to annoy me as much as the "thumbs-up" gesture and the failure to burp the maridade bags. Stuff drips down the bottle, and the cap gets all mucky and you can't get the damn cap off the bottle next time because it's dried on.

The tablescape! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Painted driftwood with silk flowers and fake birds and assorted crap hot-glued to it! And the backstory about the neighbor boy! Oh my dear Lord. *wipes eyes* The food might be only lackluster in snarkworthiness these days, but the cocktails and tablescapes never fail to disappoint.

Snady's shirt made me sad.

I really don't think the beef...things would taste good. Nothing says Japanese like sirloin wrapped asparagus painted with teriyaki. And a sharpie.

EWW. She just dumped several tablespoons of pimento jooose in the salad. That'll taste delicious. Too be fair that's probably not the worst part about that salad, but it's what grossed me the most.

What in the heck was with the oddball voice over on the schezzzzzzuan sauce bit? Did she forget one of the 70 ingredients the first time she taped? Actually, why did she tell us about them at all?

EW. Burnt pumpkin pie spices and bananas. I was terrified for her little fingers while she was slicing up those bananas.

I LOVE that she could barely swallow the tiny sip of cucumber "infused" sake watermelon rum piss shot. You KNOW it's a bad 'tail when even Alcholina won't drink it. I'm convinced that nastiness tastes exactly the way Sea Breeze astringent smells. And wouldn't they leak out of the cucumber shot glasses? They seem rather....porous.

That tableskape was just amusing. You can get branches right out of your own backyard and paint them up to put on your table! No thanks Sandyloony. I wonder if she thinks fortune cookies are Japanese? Be sure you fold those internet fortunes *just so*. Heh...iridescent colored chopsticks. To eat soup and edamame with. That should be fun.

You know, as batshit as she is, she really makes me happy. I have a good time rolling my eyes at her, so I guess she's good for something.

Welcome Xantar. I'm so glad you finally decided to see what all the fuss was about. Amazing, isn't it?

The fried bananas... wouldn't be too bad, until you get them soggy by soaking them in melted ice cream. What?

That drink?? I've never tasted sake, so I can't say... but I don't think it would be very good with Watermelon Rum. I don't think Watermelon Rum would be very good with cucumber either. Put the three together, I wanted to gag.

Now I want Ramen noodles for lunch..hmmm, sounds like it's time for a store run.

I thought I heard her say "horshradish"

Weird VO "That is some huge baby corn." Perhaps Danielle picked them out.

Hey idiot, batch frying is not done to prevent things from sticking together, it's done to prevent the temperature of the oil from decreasing and therefore taking longer to cook and absorbing more oil.

Pre-cooked shrimp, I can understand using frozen shrimp, but I don't cook with pre-cooked shrimp, I use raw frozen shrimp. I can only imagine that the shrimp turned out rubbery and gagalicious.

Loved the "Keep it sweet" when she was putting the sugar in her dessert disaster.

What itelligent person thinks that Japanese cuisine is only sushi? Oh, that's right, the example she used was Kimber, answered my own question. Her continual perpetuation of stupid sterotypes really annoys me.

- She did the same thing with those bananas as she did with the "Spicy Rock Shrimp" from Holiday Cocktail episode klassik (ahhhh, memories!) - that is, "Juuust loook how crispy thooose argunna be!" Then soggies them up again with some gakky sauce.

- If my butcher slices the meat into strips for me, do you think he/she would fussily put it on a styrofoam tray and shrink wrap it? Anyone?

- Well, yes, the massive centerpiece would inhibit conversation with dinner guests. If any guests actually showed up, that is.

- But..but..the grill WAS turned on. I quite clearly heard rather LOUD sizzling when the first beef strip went down!

- Sure, give everyone chopsticks to eat with. But make sure you wrap them six ways from Sunday, preventing them from actually being used. Ass.

- Winter's coming. How do I know? Melon baler has been taken out of storage.

Hello, Xantar. You just can't make this stuff up.

Silly Sandy gets it wrong again: Japan = cherry blossoms. This episode should have been pink. I have no idea where the blue and green comes from.

I have to think that the beef would be seriously overcooked by the time the asparagus was even warmed through. I might just have to try the beef rolls for the test kitchen. But I would pre-cook the asparagus and perhaps even pre-grill the onion as a counterpart to Simply Sandy's directions.

And, bizook, I am calling sound effects for the grill noises!

Nothing says "Japan" like an Indian/Thai inspired shirt??

ROFL. "In this bottle of teriaki sauce there is....." Almond paste? Ricotta? Vodka??? ...."soy sauce, sugar and something called rice WINE vinegar." Pause, as (in my mind at least) they cut out Aunt Sand's voice over on how rice WInE vinegar has nothing to do with alkyhol. And yeah, those asparagus/beef things looked like the were attacked by the F'ntastic Grill Marks Sharpie (New and Improved with Edible ink). orchidgal - if you're going to try them for the test kitchen, I think on Everyday Food last season they made a version, which I tried and were actually kinda tasty.

You know you've gotr a lowly job as the prop master on Semi-Ho when you have to RE-PACKAGE RAMEN NOODLES.

Ok. The color of the wasabi from a tube was wrong. Way wrong. I have the same suff in my fridge, and it's bright neon green, non, um, green poo colored.

I hate it, as an eater, when shimp are in a soup or something and they still have the tails on. Take five damn minutes and take the tails off.

The words "tempura" and "pumpkin pie spice' together make me a gag a little. Ya know how I make my semi-ho tempura batter with just two ingredients?? Rice flour and cold cold cold cold cold soda water. And it's great and what tempura should be... very light, lacey, and airy and perfect. Sigh.

Rather than steeping the green tea bags in the cream, this would have been the perfect change to pour in a couple of the "single serve tea mixes" they have out The green tea with cherry blossom might be nice.

Ah... Sands doesn't know the water for your tempura should be cold, but she sure knows the booze should be!!!

Sigh. The cucumber/watermelon booze/saki thing. I love saki. I love cucumber. I love cucumber water... where you add a couple of slices to plain water and just let the cucumber flavor just infuse together. So refreshing. This crap?? WATERMELON?? At least it looks like even she was a little "ew" choking it down. And again... lime juice from a bottle. I noticed it yesterday when I was looking at the recipes... it called for lime juice, and I knew she's use the bottle stuff. I used to go to THE most dive-bar place (wheniwassixteen) where asking for anything approaching a specialty drink or beer would ensure the bartenders would laugh at you the entire night. But they still had quarters of fresh lime and lemon (and the fun joke that there were no cherries allowed in the building) and freshly squeezed lime and lemon juice for classic cocktail applications that may call for it. No "from a bottle" shit. Sands is not even that classy or respectful to the people she serves, with the damned "from a bottle" lime/lemon juice EVERY time she makes a cocktail. Just one of the things about her that drives me nuts.

ROFL at the tablescape story. So.... she grew uo next to Christopher Lowell????

Now that story makes sense...

So Auntie, what exactly are "huge baby corn?" Toddler corn? Tweeners? DO TELL!!!11

Sake has always tasted dry sherry-like to me. Interesting cause it's more like beer than wine, in the way it's brewed and that it's best drunk fresh .

I was going to snark that fortune cookies aren't Japanese. But then, they're not really Chinese either. ;-)

Course for Miss Lee it seems like 'Japan, China, what's the difference. It's all Asia-a-y, right?"

The two voiceovers that were most obvious are also most troubling:

Action: pouring "a cup" (meanwhile, she dumps in nine cups) of frozen peas out of a bag INto a pot of water
VO: "and these are frozen peas that I've thawed"

Action: lifting tea bags out of the saucepan, pointing at them with her other hand
VO: "I've just put four teabags in one cup a (sic) heavy cream; I brought that to a boil and let it steep for eight minutes."

Seriously, how can you fuck up the "script" so bad that it has to be VOd?

That window treatment? 1983 called... they want their day-kor back.

Did you see the way her eyes lit up and got big when she said "watermelon rum"???

Yay!!!! The melon baller is out of storage! WHOOT!!!

I call bullshit on the boy-next-door-driftwood-glue-gun-scenes-of-birdnests story. One minute she's so poor and desitute as a child that she had to feed all her siblings and her dead, rotting mother with one box of Bisquick during the week, and now all of a sudden, she has a glue gun and craft supplies as a child? Make up your mind, Snads.

Did hot glue guns exist in the 60s? I do not remember them.

Edited because spelling is important.

I was wondering the same thing. I think I'm about the same age as Snads (I'm 46), and I don't remember easily available craft items like this. But then, we were really poor, so wouldn't have been able to afford one anyway.

Would you really eat the stalk part of the green onion like that? Maybe it's because I'm not a big fan of onions (love onion flavor, don't like eating the actual onion), I can't imagine eating that tough green part. I can't comment on the edamame salad, since I'm not a fan of it, or of anything else in that salad (except the radishes-I love radishes).

The banana tempura was sort of a good idea, until she soaked it in that sauce. Soggy tempura is nasty.

Another craptacular tablescape that has nothing whatsoever to do with the alleged "theme." So far, all of her tablescapes that I've seen just seem to be excuses to buy out the clearance section at Michaels and go to town. She reminds me of those scrapbookers who put so much "embellishment" on a page that there is only room for a single 3x5 picture on a 12x12 page.

Did she say to put 2 Tablespoons of sesame oil in the soup? That would be way too much - sesame oil has an intense flavor. Plus, it would be oil slicks on top of the soup, wouldn't it?

I heard that too, sunfastrose, and, yes, it's way too much. I think what's happened is Sandy's taste buds have gradually died off due to all the alkyhawl. So she just keeps trying to add more flavor INto everything. And if you can't taste it, you can always see that wunnerful flavor.



Silly, VNutt, don't you know that actual, real, honest-to-God fruit is only to be used as a gernish/choking hazard, or piled up INside hurricane lamps?

"Alcholina" Bwahaha!

Welcome, Domabil!

Christopher Lowell was my first thought as the neighbor boy too, VNutt! Great minds. Whatever happened to him anyway?

What a mess this was. You all have pretty much covered it and only a couple of things stick out in my mind. First, where she dumped the pimentos in the edamame and said, "Those are for flavor." Oh, as opposed to everything else in the salad, right Snads? Second, those sake shooters looked gross. I wonder too that the alkyhall wouldn't seep through the bottom. Of course, with Snads, the stuff probably isn't in there long enough anyway. And what's the point of mixing sake and rum? Watermelon rum at that? She apparently just wants to get as much booze INto herself as possible.

That tablescape was pretty wrong too. Whoever said this was the time for pink (and pale green) was right. Nothing about that table, or the whole show in fact, said Japanese to me. And not a pagoda to be seen! Must be packed away with the Italian topiaries. BTW, pagodas are places for prayer/mediation. So, calling this ep "Pagoda Passion" is just all kinds of culturally insensitive. Snady just has zero tolerance for Buddhism, I guess. See also, "My Buddha, she's faux."

ETA: I thought pale pink and green were a classic Japanese combination? No? Or maybe that's just the Japanese restaurants I've been to. In any case, I agree Divaah46 that no self-respecting Japanese would use even half the crap that Snady does. I picture a very Zen-like, neutral and minimalist decor.

I don't think green is commonly used in Japanese decor. And there would never clutter up their tables with so much crap. Man oh man, I wish some ninjas would come after SandyPants for this dreadful crap.

Baby corn that have become overweight after eating all of Aunt Sandy's great ideas on how to get protien INto children???

Yes, she did say horshradish. And the funniest thing about it was that it was a VOICEOVER!!! Now they need to start doing voiceovers to fix the voiceovers!

If it's true that Birdcages=Pagodas, then:

My Pagoda, it's Faux.

Oh yes. Definitely. You cut off the root end and cut the top back to get rid of the dried ends. Dip in salt and eat! One of the joys of spring. You do have to like raw onions to do this.

ETA: no, the green parts of the onion are not tough, MichelleAK.

Ah, okay, thanks. I don't eat raw onions at all, just cooked (really, really cooked), and I've always used either yellow or white "regular" onions for that.

So, that's two weeks in a row where an item mentioned in the title was nowhere to be found in the show. You'd think whoever was naming these things would at least watch the show before naming it (although, I can't blame them if they don't want to).

It's TEM-PUR-AH therefore it must be Japanese.

Negamaki, which I think is where she was going with the beef rolls, is made with scallions, but we all know they're way too oniony to eat, unless you stick to the green......uh, white part!

I am seriously bothered by her measuring stuff in caps then putting the cap on without wiping it clean. It's messy. And why does she do it sometimes but not all the time?



Xantar - you missed nothing, I was going to make the same point. The banana fritters are not a bad idea, done right, even with box tempura mix, they wouldn't be Japanese but they'd be tasty. But they should be crispy with a dipping sauce on the side.



Dunno, but the shrimp went in frozen. They have instant dashi in the groshery store (which is salty but not bad), why didn't she use that for her soup base?

The proper way to eat Japanese noodle soups is with chopsticks and a spoon, you eat the broth with the spoon and the noodles up with a spoon/chopstick combo. I wish we could all go over to Sandy's tablescape and slurp all over it. (Of course I mean with our own soup, not the mess she made.) I barely have enough time to do all the crap I have to do in a day, who has time to spray paint birdcages? How does that save you time?

And that drink was ass. Really.

I am going to invite my friend Tanakawa-san over and get her views on this episode. To mix cultures, she'll probably plotz.

This was a ridiculous episode. I certainly am not an expert in Japanese food, but cheese on rice, Sandy, that was bad. The part that literally brought me to tears was the "Pumpkin Pie spice, now this is a GREAT spice resource for you." WTF is a spice resource? All it brought to mind was endless quotes from Dune. "The Spice Exends Life, The Spice Expands Consciousness." Now I have to find a worm to get my pumpkin pie to use as a great spice resource.

After the Driftwood of Childhood story, my husband had to ask, "How old is she? They shouldn't have had glue guns when she was young." He doesn't believe she is 39 or whatever other nonsense she is claiming.

So did the veggies, I think, but she said, "Here are some frozen peas that I've thawed," and she's thawed frozen veggies before dumping them into whatever glop she's making before.

Frozen cooked shrimp aren't very good - they're very soggy.

Heh, MrBee made the same remark about the glue gun. I don't remember them before the 80s. Even if they were available when she was a kid, wasn't she too poor to be buying fake birds and other crap to "embellish" driftwood?

And she kept saying edama-ME. Isn't it edama-MAY?

Mostly, they're rubbery after having been cooked twice.

She did say that, but she seemed to only pour a few drops into the pot. She measured two capfuls (teaspoons?) of the soy sauce, drizzled a little sesame oil in, then poured a whole bunch of the other sauce in, though she I thought the amounts were meant to be the same.

When she was measuring the tampoora powder, she used similar measuring skillz; the quarter cup measure was visibly heaping, containing at least half a cup.

I've used some delightful watermelon and cucumber scented bath products; never thought of drinking them before today.

Here is my thickrichdelishus Japanese-inspired Semi-Hoku:

Hey! It's Passion Pagoda, guys!
SLop cooks Krap-an-ese!!
Just watch her
Trash another culture...

OK, so it's four lines, not 5-7-5, basically breaks all the haiku rules (it's not even haiku, even) and rightfully belongs in the Creativity thread. Way I figure, if Snad can butcher Japanese cuisine and decorating so bad, Imunna do the same to their poetry. How ya like it? :D

Trash another culture...
Stomp it INto the ground.
Cultural INsensitivity.
Corn NUTS.
My Buddha. She is FAUX.
As is my fauxmily.
Gramma Dicey, Lorraine. Dead Mama on Sofa.
That is all.

OK, enough of haiku. On topic? Glue gun. What young lad is gonna be hot glueing crap ONto driftwood?

We had a Chinese restaurant called the Siam Room when I was growing up. One of their menu items was fried bananas, I think drizzled with honey. They were amazing I thought.

Oh my, we have a Thai Restaurant here that makes fried bananas. They're delishush. And there's no apple pie spice involved. And no soggy-soaking in nasty kokonut krap. They have a dip with honey, vinegar, cucumber bits, peanuts, and hot pepper flakes. I've recreated it at home and it's wonderful.

Alas, in anyone else's hands they would be. But Silly Sandy manages to mangle yet another food.

Yum. Think of how good it would be with pumpkin pie spice!

Oh, this one was fun.

First we have Szechuan sauce and fortune cookies. Way to keep with the theme, Sandra.

Then there's the dessert. I have a beloved Japanese auntie who makes wonderful tempura for us every time she visits, so the Semi-Ho version practically made me cry. Plus she says to fold the water into the mix (which I'm not sure is physically possible), then follows that up with the admonishment to get all the lumps out, but not to stir too much or else it will get clumpy. What language is she speaking? I understand the individual words, but the way she strings them together is just nonsensical.

And there is only one word for that cocktail: abomination.

But, for me, the highlight of the show was the comment about slicing the bananas. "You can cut them a couple different ways. You can do them either just straight down or at a diagonal and make them very fancy. Like a plantain!" What on earth is she talking about? Does she understand that plantains exist in forms other than the diagonally-cut chip? And that the way they're cut is not, in fact, what makes them plantains?

(And I totally agree with the sentiment that it's distressing to see your own name on one of her place cards. I'm not one of your imaginary friends! Leave me alone!)

OMG anne, why didn't I think of that. And just HOW f'ntastik would it be to add 2 tablespoons of toasted sesame oil and a carton of kokonut SOR-BAY?
Gosh, I feel so stoopid. Why can't I go with SLop''s vision? I just feel so lacking.

Hey, Szeshuan, Hunan, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Mongolian, Indonesian, Polynesian, Indian, Tibetan, Moroccan; it's all the same in SLop's world. Pagodas, birdcages; cherry blossoms, ivy; it's all the same.

Do not feel bad, grasshopper. Be thankful that we have Sensei Sandy to guide us.



I believe this qualifies as one of SLop's useless factoids that she gives us each and every episode.



I doubt she does. But that won't stop her from pretending. Or taking credit for the revolutionary idea of how to slice a banana.