DO YOU SANDRA?

All the hearts and flowers and feathery froufrou scattered in Blogland today is cheering and fun. I’ve seen everything from Victorian Valentine wallpaper to Green Hearts in a Garden to a cow with a love-spot center forehead to a rash of pink tablescapes worthy of Miss SL herself.

I LIKE Sandra Lee. She's polite and perky and always in a good mood. Her kitchen is an ever-changing fairyland of light and color. And there's a kindness to her that glows off the screen---we can all use more of that. I got to know her in a time when TIVO’ed repetitions of her cheery tossings and smearings were a bright light in the darkness I occupied before and after knowing I was harboring a pesky kidney stone.

I had sat with my “bad” knee on a pillow, thinking my limpy knee the culprit for my tired, cranky feelings, and would become immersed hypnotically in all her pastels and tablescapes and cream of mumble soups, my feet on the big ottoman which made my corner chair into a comfy chaise longue, and my thoughts soaring in waves of pink and green and mauve.

I watched as she chopped and added and snipped packets and marinated with a bottle of vinaigrette. She sips and swallows, devoting to a cocktail the care and anticipation of a diamond cutter, swirling that 'tini in the pitcher with the fervor of a star-crossed lover.

She mixes and stirs, dumping cake mix and gravy powder and taco seasoning with mad abandon, her flowing, silky sleeves draping dangerously close to stove burners and marinades alike. She stands unaproned three inches from a skillet of frying chicken, her cost-more-than-my-whole-wardrobe blouse unscathed through the fray.

I’m not watching for TIPS---I just enjoy the along-for-the-ride inanities of it after a busy day---the colors and the arrangements and all the dipsy-do that won’t be cluttering MY closets. "She” spends endless hours in crafts shops, gathering up the red plastic buckets and ostrich boas and piano-key plates necessary to complete the tablescapes; ribbon and tassels abound, with nametags written on everything from avocados to zebra-striped rocks.

If Michael and JoAnn had a mad affair in Hobby Lobby, honeymooned at Big Lots and came home by way of Sur la Table, this would be their Love Child. If I may mix Metaphor and Matrimony.

And I love the fairy-tale kitchen, magically re-arranged for each viewing according to scheme and theme---a yellow-papered greeting on a stormy Monday night when you can’t think WHAT to thaw for dinner; a bright red seaside arrangement of an entire coral bed to lift you through the malaise of the moment, and pink clouds of tulle and frosting which bespeak the little girl in all of us too-grownup women. And anyone with access to a whole palette of Kitchen-Aids and Crockpots to match the mood---she’s one to watch.

I’ve drawn considerable fallout from a couple of recipe and cooking sites, with mine as the only dissenting, uplifting voice in the masses, my comments drowned out in a sea of calumny and ridicule, some of which was heaped on ME for my plebeian (and one used the word redneck) taste.

As in “Racheldee, Racheldee---whatever ARE WE going to do with YOU?”

Nothing, thanks. I need not their jeers nor approbation. I’d LIKE to care what they think, but it’s just too much effort. And so I go my own way, thinking my own thoughts, making my own choices.

Sandra Lee doesn't really COOK---but she certainly entertains, and I like her. She BRIGHTS me.