Jagged Little Wontons

We realize we have been gone a while, which saddens me. As stated before, Liz and I went on vacation right before our 3L year began, which affected our cocktail times. And, normally when we start school there are about 2 weeks to coast and get accustomed to learning again...this time however, we were instantly as hectic as Aunt Sandy's minions attempting to find the perfect matching kitchenaid. We will not be able to post as often as we did before (unless we fail out) but we will try to keep this going, because it has been a lot of fun (despite the indigestion and barely-edible food). Also, this could be the time where you guys come in and create your own cocktail time!

Back to Semi-Edible! For today's amazing adventure we dive yet again into the sodium packed condensed soup world with a super simple, super disgusting Vegetables with Broccoli Lemon Sauce. First you place 12 quartered red potatoes into a saucepan, cover them with water and cook them for 10 minutes. Then you add bell peppers cut into rings and broccoli florets for 5 minutes or until they are tender (which would never take 5 minutes). While the vegetables are cooking you "prepare" the abominable sauce by heating up: one can of 98% fat free cream of broccoli soup (which we couldn't find) with 1/2 cup low-fat mayonnaise (ick!), 4 finely chopped green onions, 1 Tbsp. lemon juice and 1/4 tsp. dried thyme leaves. First, why this is called Broccoli Lemon Sauce and not Broccoli Mayonnaise Sauce is beyond me. Why did she choose to emphasize the lemon when it's the ingredient least used?!? You can't even taste the lemon through the suffocating thyme-mayonnaise-flavored sodium. Second, this russipe is from her "Low Fat" episode. What would have been low fat would be to not use the 1/2 cup of mayonnaise! Yes, she states to use low fat, but still- it is completely uncalled for. So anyway, once the broccoli and peppers are tender, you strain them, put them into a serving dish and pour the sauce over the whole thing like so. See how gross ours looks? Blech.

Before making this I checked out the reviews (as I usually do) and found that most people complained about the potatoes not being done. This is completely accurate. At first, Liz and I were eating the potatoes and they didn't seem so bad. But then I bit into a raw potato and my opinion of the dish was ruined. 15 minutes to cook quartered red potatoes and 5 minutes to cook bell peppers is ridiculous. The red peppers were mushy and the potatoes were crunchy. Perhaps this is the only way Aunt Sandy knows how to create textures. Also, why are the bell peppers cut into rings? This is completely nonsensical.

After many bites (and dare I confess- a second helping) both Liz and I thought the sauce, when most of it was wiped off the vegetable before consumption, was not horrible and in fact was decently edible with the broccoli and potatoes...but not the peppers. Also, sometimes we got bites that tasted purely of mayonnaise which was gross, but overall it was indeed a semi-edible dish (but not something we would ever make again, nor recommend for you to make).

For dessert we made Wonton Napoleons which are really easy, look harmless, and yet are deceivingly violent. You fry up wanton wrappers and then dust them with cinnamon. Then you layer the cool wontons in between 2 Tbsp. whipped topping, sliced strawberries and raspberries. That's at least 5 Tbsp. whipped topping per napoleon. As you can see in the photos, they look pretty tasty. And they were good (if you like whipped topping, which we kinda do), except that they were impossible to eat, super messy and shards of wonton kept jabbing into our gums. I think one drew blood at one point, but the mouthful of whipped topping acted as gauze and quickly absorbed the blood (ewe). Also, they are way too large and should be scaled down to 1/4 their size to make them easier to eat. After eating half, Liz and I took the whole thing apart and picked out the berries.

This was a fairly uneventful cocktail time, perhaps because we didn't have the cocktail to soften the blow of the semi-edible food. Next time, we will make cocktails... we were foolish to ignore the essential element to any cocktail time. So until next time: keep it salty, keep it condensed, keep it "low fat" and always use too much whipped topping!

New Cocktail Time

Yes, it's been over a week since our last cocktail time, but do not fear- one is on the way! Liz and I just returned from a week long trip to Buffalo, Syracuse and everything in between. We devoured Duff's buffalo wings, delighted in Dinosaur Bar-B-Q and lapped up the culture, sights and gorgeous weather, but we are back and ready to torture ourselves with more of Aunt Sandy's super simple, flavorful russsipies. And...there is a condensed soup in our near future.

In other news our friend Joey requested to host a Mexican-themed Cocktail Time Semi-Edible party! And since we all know that Aunt Sandy's favorite cuisine is Mexican this should be exciting (and potentially dangerous to our stomachs). He plans to recreate the South of the Border episode featuring not only "mouthwatering Mexican dishes" such as Mexican Pizza and Lime Cheesecakes (not even near Mexican), but also Boracho Beans, Margarita Chicken and Cosmoritas (so we can be really drunk too!). So look forward to a great review of this party.

I have an added note to the Carrot Coconut Muffins made at the last cocktail time: as it turns out the batch of 12 muffins was not a total waste. After baking them, I left them on my kitchen counter and went out for the evening. The next day I returned home to find a couple of the muffins had mysteriously vanished. As it turns out my roommate's boyfriend came home from the bars and needed a quick snack...and he found these muffins deeeelishous (which I am guessing was because he was drunk)! Perhaps this is the way to eat all of Aunt Sandy's horrible treats, because I do imagine this is exactly the way Sandy herself would taste them. You have to be so drunk and so starving that anything would taste good on an alcohol-soaked palate. Thank you Josh for this revelation!

In the meantime, enjoy this Halloween clip of Aunt Sandy dressed as Cher. I really hope when she returns to FoodNetwork this fall that she also brings back the costumes. They were priceless:

2- 4oz. jars baby food?!

Welcome to Semi-Edible! Today, we are very hesitant to continue on with this project, due to the disgustingly disgusting crab fest from last cocktail time. So, we attempted to pick seemingly decent russipes from Aunt Sandy’s decorative and festive recipe box.

First up was the Spinach Salad with Mangos, Dried Cranberries and Chocolate Vinegar-ette.It seemed harmless enough: a bag of baby spinach, diced mangos, cranberries and chopped walnuts are tossed in a dressed up Newman’s Own balsamic vinegar-ette(this entails mixing the already delicious dressing with 1Tbs. cocoa powder and 1tsp. sugar). With these creative touches, no one is going to know that you didn't make this from scratch. Sound simple and possibly delicious right? Wrong. With this russipe, people are going to think you suck at cooking (and possibly life). First off, the proportions are completely off. We halved the russipe so we wouldn’t waste anything and can I just tell you? ¼ cup vinegar-ette for 4 cups spinach is way way way too much vinegar-ette. And you can’t take it out, because the directions say to mix the dressing in the bottom of the bowl in which you then add all the salad ingredients. It was awful because the dressing just sat there in a disgusting shallow pool and sogg-ified the mangos, walnuts and cranberries. Not only was there too much dressing, but the addition of cocoa powder is not good. I used really good dutch cocoa powder and it made the dressing taste choc-y chalky. To fix this, I recommend using the same ingredients and ditching the vinegar-ette. Fail.

Next we tried baby food! Well, not just baby food, but a whole slue of ingredients mixed into apple cinnamon muffin mix to make the semi-edible Carrot Coconut Muffins with Honey Butter. A pre-made box mix is combined with 2(maybe 4) jars pureed carrot baby food, 1/4c. apple juice, 1tsp. cinnamon, 1/2tsp. ginger and 1c. toasted coconut. This makes 12 muffins and looked like vomit when mixed (mmmmm, delishhhous). There is some contention on this recipe's review board as to the amount of baby food required. On the show she added 2 jars, but the recipe says 4. Numerous people who used 4 complained that the muffins never cooked all the way through....so we used 2 jars. The muffins were super gummy and stuck to our teeth. Liz, being the texture freak that she is, only took 2 bites. The flavor wasn't anything special either. All we could taste was cinnamon, carrot and sometimes a hint of coconut. The apple from the original muffin mix was completely lost, although perhaps that is the point since Sandy's russipe title has no mention of apple. This was served for her Garden Brunch episode; I woudn't even serve these to babies let alone brunchers. In all honesty I would gladly eat straight up baby food before making these again.

For Cocktail time we made the Big Sur Cocktail: a highball glass filed with 1 part amaretto, 1/2 part blue Curacao (is there really any other color?) and 1 part white cran juice. Harmless enough right? While it wasn't bad, it wasn't good either. And I definitely don't want a highball glass full of this ridiculously sweet concoction. It was too sweet and would work as a shot, but not a drink. Don't make this unless you like super sweet drinks. Also, please note the color difference between our drink and Aunt Sandy's. I don't know where Sandy buys her Amaretto, but mine is tinted brown, which means her drink is a fraud! Although to be honest, mine looks more like Big Sur than hers- hah.

So this cocktail time was fairly unmemorable, but at least it helped to talk us off the ledge (seriously, that crab crap was the worst experience ever. I may never eat crab again. Thanks a lot Aunt Sandy). Well, we are all out of time today so remember to keep it sweet, keep it over dressed, keep it fraudulent and always keep is Semi-Edible.

Semi-Homemakers Wanted

Many people have expressed an interest in hosting their own Cocktail Time and posting it on this blog. Liz and I thought about it for a bit and as much as we love inflicting such pain on ourselves (and how much we hate others to suffer) we decided this was a great idea! If anyone wants to make a Semi-edible russipe(s), we say- go for it!

If and when you choose to actually do this, we only ask that you follow the russipe to a T and preferably take a few photos documenting your hopefully tolerable experience. If you could make a meat dish that would be wonderful, since Liz is a veg-head which limits our range (I also have a sneaking suspicion that the meat russipes will be tastier).

Then, E-mail it all to us at semihomemakers@gmail.com and we will post it as soon as we can!

We look forward to hearing from your experiences! Also, we too welcome transvestites:

We've got crabs!

Yeah, that's right. On this week's soul crushing edition of Semi-edible with Sandra Lee, it's all about crab. We've got three god-awful dishes all featuring crab! That's right, we said crab. What in the world possesed us to make three crab dishes, I don't recall. But the end result was both a tragedy and a cause for concern.

First up was Hot Crab Rangoon Dip with Won Ton Chips. At first glance, this super simple russipe doesn't seem too bad, until you see that a key ingredient in this slop is condensed shrimp bisque. To quote the eloquent genius Liz Lemon, "What the what!?" Condensed shrimp bisque? That's not real. Can't be. And, it turns out that if it does exist, it's pretty difficult to find. So we used the most reasonable substitute, cream of shrimp soup (thanks Cambpell's, for bringing this can of pure salted evil into existence). But anyway, you throw in some lump crabmeat, shrimp soup, a brick of cream cheese, worcestershire and soy sauce with some scallions and bake it till bubbly and 'delicious'. Well, let's just say, that the dip does in fact bubble after 10 minutes under the broiler, but no amount of time spent in the oven could make this slop approach delicious. And, after smelling this concoction before it went in the oven, we knew that this wasn't likely to be good, let alone delicious. After a little cooling time, it looks

like skin with second degree burns....seriously. Mmmm, skin. And, we were correct. The crab was pungent, to say the least. But it tasted... honestly, I'm sort of at a loss for words to describe the taste. The best I can come up with is: hot, rancid, salted fish drowned in cream cream cheese and sadness. The one good thing I can say about this dip is the won ton chip fried in peanut oil. I longed for a time machine so we could go back in time and make better choices. Even Jillian said this was the worst thing we have made so far and couldn't take more than two bites. With Kwanzaa Cake being a not-so-distant memory, I disagreed. But we still had 2 more crabtastic dishes to taste. Why did we think this was a good idea?

Next up was Aunt Sandy's famous Crab Cakes with Sassy Tartar! These crab cakes were action packed with flavor! Too bad the flavor was once again salt. Thanks to the cajun seasoning (mixed with tarter sauce, hot sauce, and scallion) and Old Bay, mayonnaise, egg and crabmeat breaded with saltines(not a typo) this crabcake was pure salty goodn... I was going to say goodness, but that would be a lie. Notice how the FN website's picture has visible lumps of crab and looks tasty by comparison.

It's a lie. The crab itself was the least awful thing about the crab cakes; however, the rangoon dip had already made us kind of hate crab and ourselves, and with so many other senseless ingredients in there, it was too much.

Last but not least was the interesting and unfortunate Crab Salad with Mango Salsa. First off, how the hell she gets off calling this mango salsa is beyond me. Wanna know where the mango comes from?! Tropical fruit cups! Fruit cups!!!!! Like in a 5 year old's lunch bag! You mix the fruit cup, I mean mango(?) with cilantro, lime, ribbed, seeded, and minced jalapeno peppe

rs, and scallions. Then you layer a red wine glass with shredded lettuce, then the "salsa," then the

plain, unembelished, flavorless crab meat. You top this all off with a large dollop of sour cream. A lime wedge garnishes the top. In this episode she describes the wine glass presentation as, "Just like you would get in a gourmet restaurant!" Um...not. No self respecting restaurant would serve this crap, least of all any restaurant that claims to be "gourmet." I thought it was the least awful thing we had during this round of culinary disasters, however, it still wasn't good and I could only take two bites. The salsa was so sweet, I assume from the fruit cup juice. It's amazing that food can taste like so much and so little at the same time. Because the crab had no seasoning and the sour cream didn't taste like much of anything, and the extra sweetness of the fruit cup mixed with the cilantro, really it should have been called cilantro salad, and some filler. Also, we had no idea how Sandy wanted us to eat this. Were we to mix it up or take a little bit of each layer? I wasn't going to find out.

Finally, everyone's favorite part of the day, Cocktail Time! This week we sampled the Beach Paradise. This drink combines 1 part dark rum, 1 part guava juice, orange juice, sugar, and genadine into a completely forgettable drink. Honestly, it didn't taste bad, but I think our spirits were so broken from the nastiness that we were just greatful that it washed some of the rancid fish taste our of our mouthes and tummies.

Well as always here at Semi edible we want to remind our readers to keep it simple, keep it sweet, and always drink responsibly.