TVSquad

I think your "more likely to make and eat something by Sandra Lee" argument breaks down right around the "kwanzaa cake" incident.

Unless popcorn, corn nuts and angle food cake are your thing.

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I think you're just not getting it. Bourdain rips on just about all the food network stars. Its his thing. Its his little way of getting back at him for causing his old show on the network, "A Cooks Tour", to get canceled. It was essentially the same as No Reservation just with a lot more network interference causing the show to lose the charm that NR has. Making fun of food network star is all part of his act. Although he is open that he is good friends with Mario Batali.

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Ol' Tony is just trying to get into her pants!

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I don't need some saccharine ninny to teach me how to make horrible tasting garbage from pre-packaged foods. I can manage that just fine myself thank you very much. Shows like hers and Rachel Ray's do not belong on Food Network.

If you want a show for inexperienced cooks, shows like How to Boil Water and Food 911 were much better examples of how to do that right without encouraging people to put 90% corn syrup down their gullets.

Of course the very best show for beginning cooks is Good Eats. Alton brown is fantastic at explaining not just how to cook, but why certain ingredients go together and behave the way they do when cooked or prepared in certain ways. This allows people to come up with their own original dishes on the fly without relying on canned and pre-made crap.

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Sandra Lee is not really my cup of tea, although I have used a couple of her recipes, but Bourdain is a horse's behind (and happy to be one). I've never liked watching him.

If you don't like Lee then don't watch her. Fact of the matter is, the woman has been HUGELY successful with he semi-homemade approach, so it doesn't really matter what Bourdain or any of us think.

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Anthony Bourdain is a true chef in all sensible and practical terms. When he gives a presentation or seminar on French cuisine (which I've seen), he speaks from experience and first-hand knowledge. Other chefs look to him as how guitarists look to Eric Clapton: a man who plays and sings from life experiences better than any other.

He also gives Mario Batali the greatest credit that another chef could: "He can motherf*cking cook." And yes, I'm slightly paraphrasing... but not by much.

Who on the Food Network can compare to Bourdain? Someone here answer that please.

Then tell me why anyone on this planet would give someone like Sandra Lee any recognition as to be compared to a master chef like Bourdain.

People. Get your f*cking priorities in place here. Show respect to the master chefs and give credit to the one's who've earned their titles. The Food Network has the same amount of credibility as the Fox Reality Channel.

And Bourdain is a master of French cuisine. What exactly, has Sandra Lee obtained in the culinary arts?

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My family loves the food network, each one of them. They like every host (even the dude with that gross hair), except for Sandra Lee. And they haven't even sat and watched the show, they look to see what it is...then change the channel. Maybe there's just something about her that's unlikable.

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I hated Sandra and her "pour a can of choco-sauce over an angelfood cake until I watched her biography. You would have to be dead inside not to walk away form the "chefography" without sing her as a human who gad a rought life growing up. She is kitsch for sure but harmless and she wrote an entire full length best selling cook book for "God's love we deliver/Project Angel food" for with every penny went to the charity.

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This whole snotty commentary about ppl. on The Food Network was OK by Bourdain at first.
But now it's just getting real old and I think it's time to move along.
For cripes sake, I have had worse treatment from my ex partner's than anything I could imagine. That is my personal hades. Holding a grudge over a cheesy f*ck stupid food network? Give me a break.
Bourdain's shows are getting REAL OLD FAST. Like trashing Rachel Ray for leaving a "ten percent tip". HELLO TONY SOME OF US CAN'T AFFORD TO LEAVE ANY TIPS SO WE JUST DON'T GO OUT EXCEPT TO MCBURGER WHATEVER.
He needs to get over himself. The way he was slurping down artsy fartsy foodie crap in the Chicago episode made me want to punch him in the face and say "HELLO I CAN'T AFFORD ART ON A PLATE FUCK UP!"
God what a moron.

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I used to watch Bourdain and read a book he "wrote" where he sent a guide to find him drugs. Then, if I remember correctly, he was was really "not himself" during the taping of the meal. I thought that was about as rude as it gets to the family who hosted him. I did not care for him after that. I did not like Sandra Lee at first. She was too "skinny" to be a real cook but she has won me over and I enjoy a beautiful table which she shows how to do a tablescape on her show. What a sweet lady.

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And YES I am a Midwesterner which made it even MORE damning. I felt like I had been spit on by Bourdain, regardless of his amazing trip to the Fish Market by the Calumet River.
I have had to take the train from Chicago to Indiana because the $%#@ rent in Chicago is so high that living in Indiana is NECESSARY.

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Bourdain's point on Lee has gotten lost over time, and now it is sad that it's just Bourdain vs Lee.

The idea that you can take things from the shelves that are pre made and whip them into a healthy and fabulous meal is dead wrong.

My mom used to cook us meals from scratch all the time. There's not just an art to it, but a love to it as well.

She might have tried to find a shortcut or two that would make things easier for herself, but that's not exactly what Lee is talking about. Lee is talking about cutting all the corners to where there's no satisfaction at the end.

In today's society where everyone is so into instant gratification, we could very easily lose the idea of hard work will get you anything you want. If you want good tasting food, you have to work at it.

You don't have to spend thousands of dollars to eat well, in fact, quite the opposite. If you go to farmers markets, and buy local, like Bourdain tries to show with his traveling to see places like Vancouver where he dines with the local chef's at their house, then it can be relatively inexpensive. It takes time to make a good meal, and rather than people taking that time, they look to Sandra Lee for their inspiration, which is second rate.

We used to look to Julia Child for that, and she was professionally trained, and yet knew how to teach techniques that you won't get on "semi-homemade."

I completely understand Bourdain's point, even if it is over the top, because that's how he is, over the top on everything. One thing about him, he cares, and cares deeply for food, and how it should be made, and that's something to appreciate, not condemn.

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Bourdain's reasons for disliking Lee are exactly the same as mine. Sure, I'm not a master chef, and I probably couldn't cook in many restaurants at all. But I know food, and I enjoy food, and I love food. Sandra Lee takes the *idea* of food and tries to replicate it using prepackaged "foods" that are mostly fake. Her program, therefore, may belong on some kind of Cooking Network, or maybe a Dinner Network, but it has no place on the Food Network.

And, to whoever compared Rachel Ray to Sandra Lee above, as much as Ray might irritate me, I think you're wrong. Her show is not about saving money by cutting as many corners as possible, as Lee's is, but rather about making what may very well be a delicious meal (out of actual food, nonetheless) quickly.

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Who fricken cares....It's called THE FOOD NETWORK...not the EXPERIENCED CHEFS NETWORK......it's about FOOD, not about how it's prepared or who prepares it..... you know how many people get home from work late and open a package of this or microwave a package of that??? Who has time to cook a gourmet meal everyday?? Some people do not even like to cook... Sandra Lee has never tried to claim she was a chef she is making a f'n good living doing what she loves, give her a f'n break.... who the hell is Bourdain anyway? what kind of MAN does this, LOSER...

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"People who dislike Lee dislike her because of things beyond the food she makes."

Um, no. Actually, I dislike her specifically because of the food she makes. I'm sure she's an average person in most other respects, but I'm not going to sit here and defend someone who thinks the first ingredient in macaroni and cheese is "1 package of macaroni and cheese mix" and calls it cooking.

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I don't like what she does. I don't like the "cute", I don't like the "tablescapes", I think it's a waste of effort to buy something pre-made just to disassemble it into something else, like when she turned pie into tarts. As mentioned in the first post, the Kwanzaa cake is legendarily bad.

However, I'll also cop to not liking her as a person. There's something about her I find extremely offputting. She comes across as pretentious to me, something that Peg Bracken (who I still greatly admire) never did. I tried her show a couple times, but she's now on my list of people I actively don't watch on FN.

I'm curious as to why you're so convinced that people dislike her for who she is, not what she does. As I said above, I dislike her for both. However, there are plenty of people who think what she does is a travesty, without any thought or consideration of her as a person. And no, they're not all nose in the air chefs either. (And neither is Anthony Bourdain, who spends a lot of time eating the "just plain food" of the cultures he visits.)

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"As a cook myself I can honestly say that I'm much more likely to make and eat something that Sandra Lee has had on her show than something that Bourdain makes or has eaten on No Reservations."

Glad I'm not dining at your house, Bob.

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I love Anthony Bourdain. I admire him for his culinary talents, I find his shows to be very enjoyable, and I love his books. I like Sandra Lee, too. I don't search out her show, but I find it enjoyable when I happen across it. i like her even more now after having seen her story on Chefography.

However, there is no point in trying to compare these two. It's like trying to compare a romantic comedy and a thriller at the movies, or a biography and a mystery in book form -- yes, they are in the same format, but they are entirely different in tone, and if I am in the mood for one, the other may not satisfy.

I think that Sandra Lee's show must be a blessing for people working sixty hour workweeks, raising kids, and tending a home. They may love making a fine meal on Saturday nights, but for nights when there is just no time to run to the store and make a lovely meal before doing homework and getting the kids to bed, Semi-Homemade meals may be just the thing.

And besides, as another poster mentioned, Food Network is not Chef TV or the Gourmet Channel. They offer something for many different people in different circumstances.

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