272 replies to this topic

[rabidfangirl]

Nothing says fine dining with the family like a cocktail.

[BklynEater]

I bet my girlfriend that the giant roast that was frying away woud magically shrink when she plopped it into that munchkin sized crock pot. Bingo. Sometimes it's too easy.

[cbauer]

I'd like to figure out how you "simmer" in a crockpot. What an idiot.

And what in the hell was she doing to that poor roast when she was "cutting" it. She slaughtered the damn thing, which would be fine if she was making a pulled beef dish.

ETA - She's math impaired as well. She pulls out 6 cookies and says that she and Miss Stephanie will each get two. Must be the new math.

Edited by cbauer, Jul 23, 2005 @ 10:24 AM.

[Juliekins]

Okay, correct me if I'm wrong, but...she just said that the roast would take three hours on high or 8-9 hours on low. What? I have always been under the impression that low vs. high on a slow cooker had to do with the speed at which it heats up to its cooking temperature.

I also love how she keeps opening the crock pot to look at the food. That adds so much cooking time!

[nakedbakery]

So we're cutting up dish towels and cutting meat on a cake pedestal? Wouldn't that immediately tip over?

[amnewsboy]

I about died when the show started... horrible makeup job, plus arguably one of the ugliest outfits ever...

As for the dinner... a CELEBRATION dinner for Miss Steph? With Beef Roast with Tomato Madeira Sauce, Salad with Creamy Raspberry Vinaigrette, Parisian Artichokes, and Banana Pudding Bites for dessert? That's not a celebration dinner for a kid! I wouldn't feel very honored if I were her age and I saw that.

Plus, Brycer and his rolling pin... that whole thing has gone from cute to odd to disturbing.

So much other wrongness, but you guys can pick up on it better than I.

Edited by amnewsboy, Jul 23, 2005 @ 10:30 AM.

[BklynEater]

Mmmmm ... unripe banana on vanilla wafers. No wonder she hid her mouth after she shoved one in and then ran off screen. Who could eat that?

And the tablescape. A "children's" meal so of course it calls for pedestals. She claimed shre was using them as a "charger" for the plates? Electric dinnerware? I am mystified.

Edited by BklynEater, Jul 23, 2005 @ 10:34 AM.

[rabidfangirl]

Because it obviously wasn't her recipe, I'd probably make and eat the roast. For once in her life, she used very simple ingredients (it wasn't really semi-ho except that she used frozen sliced veggies). Her tip was slightly more coherent this time about using the slow cooker. I doubt it would have cracked, even with the frozen veggies on the bottom, but whatever. Why did she use two measuring cups for the spaghetti sauce? Use the 1/2 cup measure three times, or use the 1 cup measure twice and fill it only halfway one time.

I want to know how she managed to go through life without using a slow cooker. A woman of her age (clearly from the slow cooker era) and of her background, playing substitute mommy for her siblings, should know all about slow cooker cooking. After watching the first ep of the season and then seeing this, I have a bad feeling that nearly every ep will have a crockpot recipe.

Fried canned artichokes? Bleck! I'm sure fried artichokes are tasty as googling brings up a ton of recipes, but I wouldn't use the canned monstrosities. If you're lucky to have a good grocery store nearby, check the frozen aisle for artichoke hearts. Much better alternative to canned and an easier (cheaper too!) alternative to peeling fresh ones.

The usual cross contamination going on. Handled the meat, handled the eggs, rinsed her hands without soap.

Vinegar-ette. 'Some paper towel'. Argh.

Too many contrasting flavors going on in that salad. Super sweet melons. Italian dressing with raspberries. Bitter greens. I doubt Miss Stephanie eats anything but the fruit out of that.

Dessert was too fussy for a busy mom. Why not just make banana pudding the semi-ho way? Sliced bananas, pudding mix, nilla wafers layered in a bowl. She could have doctored it and added something terrible like fudge or some random flavoring like almond extract... Oh! I know! She could have smashed up a banana cream pie and then layered it over nilla wafers.

Stop shoving things in their entirety into your gaping maw! Take a bite like a normal person. This isn't sushi. She did it once with a dumpling and half of it came back out so she had to shove it back in. I really didn't want to see that on TV.

It was obvious that the ice cream clump never came out of the blender. I watched it spin round and round...

Why is everything pink? It's a Family Dinner, not a girly tea party. I'm sure the Wallet and Brycer will enjoy your scary girly nightmare. Family Dinner with my family involved clearing the mail and assorted crap off the dinner table and then sitting down. And while the XX to XY factor in my family is seriously offbalance (6 females to one male), there were no special plates or disgustingly pink decorations involved.

Only thing that really truly bothered me about today's show was that it wasn't very semi-ho. Hardly anything she used was packaged or processed beforehand. There was the spaghetti sauce and the italian dressing...but wasn't that it? Everything else was just packaged veggies or fruit.

EDIT: Thoughts keep occuring to me about what bugged me about this show.

Edited by rabidfangirl, Jul 23, 2005 @ 10:42 AM.

[Chryss]

Did she really add Italian dressing and raspberries together? Oh doG, the horror...the HORROR...

[Squirrely]

So I’m sitting here, completely nauseous because I have the flu, not because of her hideous tunic, and I am thinking that all of her food HAS to taste like freezer burn.

Here were my favorite doofus moments:
-We are going to literally cut the artichokes in half. Oh, literally? Not figuratively?

-When she was dredging those artichokes the fool dragged half the crust mix into the pan on those sleeves. Idiot.

-Everything is little, I’m going to pour a little dressing into this little bowl with this little ribbon to put it on my little table. With my gigantic knockers.

-When she had the roast out, she is all, this didn’t take long at all did it. Fool, it took 8 hour, this isn’t 30 Minute Meals.

-When she was digging around in her fridge she goes, “Because this day is all about Aunt Sandy….and Stephanie.” Whatever Slop, it’s always all about you

-Every time she goes for that fridge door I think she is going to knock those plates off

-Ok, sorry for the too much info, but I am pretty nauseous right now, so when she was up and down up and down with those pudding and the cookies, I wanted to kill her. The cameraman probably wanted to also. And then she disjointed her jaw like a snake to shove it all in her trap.

-Then she pours the vodka in “for us.” For us? She clearly means just for herself.

-And that cake plate is cute, but I hope Miss Stephanie is tall enough to reach all the crap she is about to be served.

Ugh.

[lmiller42]

That outfit, plus her hair made her look like a serving wench who had a really rough night at the Renaissance Festival. (Although to be fair, I don't think she could do anything to her hair that would satisfy me, other than shaving it and starting over.) I thought the pudding things looked edible, although way too fussy for anything I would ever do, and then the smoothie seemed OK, so I thought maybe this was an off episode, but then she made sure to add the vodka to the smoothie, so all was well again.

Word to all the rest of what you've already said. I don't know a kid anywhere that would dig in to that barfy looking pot roast, (what was she DOING to that thing??) especially with that assy sauce on top of it. Loved when she tried to get the sauce out with the tongs, and had to make a point of using a spoon instead. (Pot roast is a weird thing to me: I always think of it nostalgically, and get upset when the kids won't always eat it, but then I finally realized that I never liked it as a kid, I only liked it when I was an adult and it reminded me of being a kid.) The dish towel thing pissed me off - I don't have enough money to cut up brand new towels, and exactly how is my sewing-impaired self going to deal with the raw edges on the placemat and the napkin? Yeah, that's attention to f'n detail.

What was up with that weird cut with the smoothie, where it went from not blended to completely blended, and she was sort of laughing at the whole thing? Drunk already at that point?

[BklynEater]

It was obvious that the ice cream clump never came out of the blender. I watched it spin round and round...

Not only did it not get blended, a giant chunk plopped into the glass as she was pouring it. Shoot the sequence again? Not on Semi-Ho. They used to call Ed Wood "Mr One Take." He has risen from the grave to direct this show.

Plan 9 From Sandra Lee.

[kinsale]

Nice blouse. I think I've seen it before... oh yeah, on a hooker in Times Square. She is so shopping at K-mart.

I thought she was going to choke on that banana blob thing she called "dessert." Just as she shoved it in her mouth, I think she realized she should have just taken a bite. Gag.

Overall, I laughed, I cried. Good show.

ETA: I thought her mega-hairspray helmet-head looked creepy.

Edited by kinsale, Jul 23, 2005 @ 10:45 AM.

[notyomomma]

If you are short I'm sure you love having your plate brought up to chin level so you can shovel it in..NOT!! DD said the meat looked like dog food after she mangled it with the knive, so it would be appropriate to lap it off a tall plate like a dog. Gotta love that kid.

[Ashforth]

Thought it was funny that the gross salad dressing looked exactly like the smoothies.

The banana bites could be cute and I think that kids would love them, but put the pudding on the cookie first so the banana doesn't slide off. I think that's why she had to cram the whole thing in her mouth - if she bit it in half, it would fall apart. She could barely pick it up because of that.

[thingamajig]

but put the pudding on the cookie first so the banana doesn't slide off

That's exactly what I thought. Plus, was she planning to make a whole lot more of those? Because that was a hell of a lot of pudding for 6 little cookies.

[heebiejeebie]

A rump roast.
Fried artichoke heart
and a salad with a vinager'ette
and tops it off with a vanilla wafer topped with pudding and a banana.
Assume for one moment that was a real menu.
Now what the fuck is wrong with this picture?!

What a load of crap. She tries to tell us the fried artichokes are a favorite. And of hers when she was a kid. Yeah right. The same family that makes lasagna with cottage cheese and canned soup was frying up artichokes. BULL-shit [ /Jon Stewart ]

How many times does she basically "recreate" crappy fast food every time the word "child" pops up and now suddenly dinner for a ten year old (or so) turns into an attempt to cook real food (a failed one of course).

Hair and outfit:
Its like she has two shows. How not to Cook. and What Not to Wear..While Pretending to Cook. And that top was so faux-Giada it was not funny. Though Giada usually wears something like that in her little curled-in the overstuffed chair moments. Not cooking with hot oil. And Giada's taste is a bit better. And who dresses like that for family night? Except maybe Paris Hilton.

Where did that table come from she was sitting on? And then where did it go?

I love how she HAZMATs the meat into the pan ignoring the fact her hand are contaminated by taking the wrapping off the meat.

"Just take and put" Not "add" such and such. Or even "put" such and such. I could even handle "take 2 cups and put". But the whole "just take and put".

I love how you hear the meat sizzling away in the background, and yet at one point, you can see the angle of the other set of burners and the pan is definitely not there... and then it is again. And all four burners controls are set in the exact same way.

Why on earth would you take a rump roast and make a pot roast out of it. What a twit. Why on earth not use a good slow roasting cut of meat that has great body and flavor? It is not the perfect cut for something like that. Cooked right a rump can make a great inexpensive slicing roast. Not making meat confetti. There is a reason why slow roasting cuts of meat are so handily butchered into long flatter pieces. And since a rump roast shreads longways like that? Get out the dental floss. Because even if moist, it is going to be stringy. And I love how she says it will shrink about a quarter of its size. More like shrink to a quarter of the size (I know, it was a rump stunt double again, still it was funny how she categorized the shrinkage this time). Sure enough. She reduces the rump to shredded beef. Let it dry a little and you have great leather shoe strings.

She calls it a vinagar'ette by using a salad dressing already made and adds yogurt. Okay. It's not "let's re-enact the Rape of the Sabine Women with an apple pie and call the end result a Napoleon". But that has to be the stupidest way to make a "semi" homemade dressing I have ever seen, let alone misusing the term vinager'ette. Every salad dressing she makes is a vinager'ette.

Cooking is not about "cool". What a stupid thing to let her say. Is there no one involved with this show that cares about the FN's reputation at all?

And she basically serves a g-rated form of a limp biscuit! Jeebus almighty! She's serving a safe-sex limp biscuit. Yeah. it matters so fucking much how thick you cut the banana you are topping a vanilla wafer with. That's like having a segment on cheez in a can and crackers that tells you how to apply in a counter clockwise motion! A great idea. For a desserts and drinks party. Yeah. To follow up my wine and cheese party where I serve sliced vienna wieners on a Ritz and call it an amuse bouche.

Brycer just called. Anything Stephanie likes Brycer likes. He'll love all that pink I'll bet. And isn't Brycer older than Miss Stephanie? All kids should be equal but how incredibly offensive to lump an older brother with his little pretty in pink sister like that at that age. I wonder if the Malibu Dream Barbie beachhouse SLop gave Miss Stephanie also came with a note saying "Brycer can play with it too!"?

Either Miss Stephanie is a sugar junkie and SLop just indulges her with fix after fix, or someday SLop is going to be Baby Jane'd by a drunken 300 pound Miss Stephanie who resents her elderly widowed aunt she now cares for in their run down Spec-home cluttered with loads of crap.

Would it have killed her to just say you can add vodka or rum if you want too. But not add it? Of course the DT's in the middle of cooking show wouldn't go well. I wonder if she realizes that some poeple don't drink. At all. And most of us don't even drink every day.

My god. That table. A cake plate as a charger. What are they? Dogs? And jsut what to do for kids. Put their food up even higher away from them? unless Miss Stephanie has had a ginormous growth spurt all she is going to be able to do is look at that food through the bottom. And all that pink. Nevermind for a moment the extreme sexist implications of nothing but pink for a young girl. Typical Slop. But I am sure it's not just being a gay male that has me extremley put off eating at what looks like a giant abstract clitoris.

Keep it lookin' family. Looking family? WTF?! Whose family? Should I park the volvo station wagon in the kitchen while I'm at it? Use a Golden Retriever as a centerpiece? or is the Cocker now king of beasts for the soccer and ballet after school set? Or maybe just plunk a woman in labor in the corner for all to watch and cover all bases?

Edited by heebiejeebie, Jul 23, 2005 @ 10:58 AM.

[sage]

Sandy told us it's ok to put wine in the cooking sauce when serving it to kids because the alcohol will evaporate when cooking. Will the alcohol even get a chance to evaporate if it's cooking in a lidded pot such as a crockpot? It might however with her contantly opening it up to check on it - a crockpot cooking no-no.

Pre-washed lettus = unwashed lettus to most people, but not Sandy

Sandy is really pimping almonds. They are her favorite nut. Sandy is my favorite nut.

"The day is all about Aunt Sandy......................................and Miss Stephane"

While I'm glad Mr Brycer is finally getting his little rolling pin back, I hope Aunt Sandy isn't forcing him to wear pink, like his sister.

I think those cake plate chargers are going to be too high for Miss Steph & Mr Brycer to reach.

More math impairment when Sandy was informed that Mr Brycer was coming over for dinner too. She claimed she'd now have 4 guests. According to my math, Sandy, Miss Steph, & Mr B only equals 3 people.

Edited by sage, Jul 23, 2005 @ 11:25 AM.

[amnewsboy]

I think it's good that she used rump roast, because it certainly looked like ass.

(And to think I typically like ass.)

ETA: charg·er (chär jr) n. - A large shallow dish; a platter.

Edited by amnewsboy, Jul 23, 2005 @ 11:21 AM.

[Shemacty]

First off, I just joined, but you guys have been making me laugh like a crazy person all week!

Okay, I have never seen anyone take so long to slice a banana. Was she doing a Bionic Woman impression? You could almost hear her thoughts! "Pick up knife, cut fruit, pick up knife, cut fruit....oh, crap, where was I?"

And why does she insist upon calling that child "Miss Stephanie"? Makes her sound like Scarlet O'Hara! "Miss Stephanie, Miss Stephanie, I don't no nuthin' 'bout cookin' from scratch!"

[rabidfangirl]

Sandy told us it's ok to put wine in the cooking sauce when serving it to kids because the alcohol will evaporate when cooking. Will the alcohol even get a chance to evaporate if it's cooking in a lidded pot such as a crockpot?

Alcohol cooks off pretty quickly. In the time it normally takes a crockpot to cook a meal, that alcohol will be almost totally gone. Pure alcohol has a boiling point of 173 degrees F, which is lower than water. The low temp setting of a slow cooker is supposed to be somewhere between 170 and 280 degrees. So Sandy will be foiled in her attempts to get Miss Stephanie toasted.

[PornQueen]

Here's some info on plate charging ubi. It's basically a larger plate under the plate you eat off of. I guess so you can get that layered look, or perhaps, orginally maybe they were heated up to keep the plates warm? Someone else help me out here, cause that's a complete guess on my part. I own 1 charger, and I use it as a serving platter.

Chargers: Chargers or dinner plates should be placed on the table first. Chargers are decorative elements that are placed underneath plates to add color or texture to the table. Each plate should set in the center of the place setting and each place setting should be set equidistant. The rest of the components used to set a formal table will be set with the dinner plate in mind. If a charger is used, soup and melon bowls will be placed on top. The charger will generally be removed just before the main course.

Edited by PornQueen, Jul 23, 2005 @ 11:34 AM.

[Squirrely]

The charger will generally be removed just before the main course.

I am sensing that SLop does not really know how to use a charger. Or anything really found in a kitchen. Except the bottle opener.