Semi-Homemade Cooking: Quick, Marvelous Meals and Nothing is Made from scratch - Softcover

There are plenty of excellent quick-and-easy cookbooks out there, but this book feels like a cross between a giant advertisement and one of those free recipe books you get with mail-in proofs of purchase. Every ingredient that can possibly be branded is labeled as such. Lee's Salad Chinois is made with Swanson premium chunk chicken breast, Kikkoman soy sauce, McCormick ground ginger, Hellman's or Best Foods mayonnaise, La Choy chow mein noodles, Fresh Express prepared green salad, Chun King chow mein vegetables, and Dole mandarin orange segments. Gnocchi Dippers are whipped up with Alessi gnocchi, Bertolli olive oil, and, believe it or not, Kraft Velveeta cheese. The Malibu Rum Cake includes Malibu Rum, Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe yellow cake mix, and Jell-O vanilla instant pudding. And not only does Lee dictate brand names, she chimes in with advice on music and wine selections, as well. One can only hope that Wolfgang Puck wrote the introduction to this book without ever seeing it. --Leora Y. Bloom

She has shared her many down-to-earth secrets to decorating, gardening, and crafts, creating a lifestyle that is beautiful, affordable, and, ultimately, doable. Sandra and her many Semi-Homemade solutions have been featured in Good Housekeeping, Redbook, Country Living Gardener, Better Homes and Gardens, Woman's World, Victoria, and People. She has appeared on many television programs, such as NBC's Today, FOX's Good Day LA and Good Day New York, and several popular cable shows aired on such networks as Lifetime Television for Women, The Discovery Channel, and TNN.

Sandra now turns her friendly, realistic approach to cooking with her very first cookbook, Semi-Homemade Cooking. She is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals and studied at the acclaimed Cordon Bleu. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband Bruce and Aspen, their dog.