Sandra Lee Ditches “Semi-Homemade” Brand For More Upscale Pastures

6:00 pm, March 28th | by Sarah Devlin

Sandra Lee is reportedly shuttering her Semi-Homemade magazine in order to give her food empire a more upscale rebranding, the kind of rebranding one can only achieve by selling one’s wares at…KMart? The Daily Mail reports:

She has closed her Semi-Homemade magazine and is moving forward with a home line to be introduced at both Kmart and Sears called Sandra by Sandra Lee…After appearances in both U.S. Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, Ms Lee has also been working to charm the fashion set. Pursuing editors like Vogue’s Anna Wintour and Glamour’s Cindi Leive, the cook is now being dressed for high profile events by the eveningwear designer Reem Acra, who has also dressed Madonna, and Beyoncé. Speculation has been rife that her partner of six years, Governor Cuomo, will be a potential presidential candidate in 2016, leaving Ms Lee’s critics to wonder if this is the reason she is gravitating to greater and, to many, more dignified heights.

Aha! Perhaps what The Daily Mail and The New York Post (who reported that Lee is “stepping away from the brand name that made her fortune but drew scorn from other chefs”) really mean is that Lee is hoping her new image will be more Martha Stewart and less “glassy-eyed Kwanzaa cake inventor”?

It makes sense to upgrade her image if Cuomo has higher political aspirations, and home lines are certainly lucrative. But I, for one, will be mourning the un-self-consciously weird Lee and her recipes, in all their wacky glory. In her honor, here are a few of her best-named concoctions. Read this and then pour out some of your Spiked Orange Smoothie in honor of the Old Sandra Lee.

Hot Legs With Spicy-Ranch Sauce

Butterflied Jerk Chicken

Chicken Caesar Salad Pizza

Italian-Style Macaroni and Cheese (?)

Mexican-Style Macaroni and Cheese (???)

Beer Salmon

And, obviously, the infamous Kwanzaa cake.

R.I.P. old Sandra Lee!

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