Sandra Lee (chef)

Sandra Lee Christiansen (née Waldroop; born July 3, 1966), known professionally as Sandra Lee, is an American television chef and author. She is known for her "Semi-Homemade" cooking concept, which Lee describes as using 70 percent pre-packaged products and 30 percent fresh items. She received the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lifestyle/Culinary Show Host in 2012 for her work and her show. As the partner of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, she served as New York's "de facto" First Lady from 2011 to 2019, when the couple ended their relationship. 
Early life.
Lee was born in Santa Monica, California, in 1966, the daughter of Vicky Svitak and Wayne Waldroop, who had been high-school sweethearts. When Sandra was two, her mother sent her, along with her younger sister, Cindy, to live with their paternal grandmother, Lorraine Waldroop. In 1972, after divorcing Wayne, Lee's mother moved with her girls to Sumner, Washington, where they acquired a new stepfather, whose last name (Christiansen) Lee took. Vicky had three additional children in the 1970s: Kimmy, Richie, and Johnny.
Lee graduated from Onalaska High School, in Onalaska, Wisconsin, and attended the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. She was initially raised as a Seventh-day Adventist, but her family later became Jehovah's Witness.
In December of her junior year, she left college to live near family in Malibu, California. She later attended a two-week recreational course at Le Cordon Bleu in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, which she did not finish.
Career.
In the early 1990s, Lee created a product called "Sandra Lee Kraft Kurtains," a home-decorating kit designed to turn a wire rack and sheets, or other spare fabric, into decorative drapery. It was sold via infomercials and cable shopping networks. Home-shopping network QVC hired her as on-air talent. In her first 18 months, Lee sold $20 million worth of merchandise.
"Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee" premiered on the Food Network in 2003. Each episode contains an arts and crafts element, in which Lee decorates the table setting in accordance with the theme of the meal that she just prepared. She refers to these as "tablescapes". Lee's second Food Network series, "Sandra's Money Saving Meals", began airing on May 10, 2009.
She has released 25 books, including Sandra Lee "Semi-Homemade: Cool Kids Cooking" (October 2006) and a memoir, "Made From Scratch", which was released in November 2007. A magazine based on her show, "Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade", was released in 2009.
In 2012, Lee won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lifestyle/Culinary Host for Semi-Homemade Cooking.
Also in 2012, she started a new monthly lifestyle magazine in partnership with TV Guide. She is also starring in two new shows: "Sandra's Restaurant Remakes" and "Sandra Lee's Taverns, Lounges & Clubs."
Critical response.
Hsiao-Ching Chou of the "Seattle Post-Intelligencer" wrote a review of Lee's cookbook "Semi-Homemade Cooking" that criticized both her recipes and her "semi-homemade" concept. She then wrote a follow-up column, noting that the review received a response "that was more impassioned than I anticipated". Chou wrote that, though most readers agreed with her, a number of readers took Lee's side, including one who wrote, "Lots of people who don't want to take the time to shred a cup of carrots want to cook a good meal."
Kurt Soller, writing for "Newsweek", compared Lee's impact upon television cooking with that of Julia Child, noting that although Lee's show "is the furthest from Child's methods", both women "filled a niche that hasn't yet been explored".
Amanda Hesser, in a 2003 review of "Semi-Homemade Cooking" in the "The New York Times", wrote that Lee's recipes, in their use of prepackaged ingredients, can end up costing more, having harder-to-find ingredients, taking longer to make, and tasting worse then equivalent recipes made from scratch. Hesser also wrote that, in her cookbooks, Lee "encourages a dislike for cooking, and gives people an excuse for feeding themselves and their families mediocre food filled with preservatives."
Kwanzaa cake.
Much of the criticism of Lee has coalesced around a recipe for "Kwanzaa Cake" that she demonstrated on a 2003 episode of "Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee". The recipe consisted of angel food cake topped with icing, cinnamon, apple pie filling, pumpkin seeds and corn nuts (which she referred to as "acorns"), all of which were store-bought, with seven Kwanzaa candles then inserted into the cake.
Food writer Anthony Bourdain, who was harshly critical of Lee in general, described the video clip of this segment of the show as "eye searing" and "a war crime". The cake was called "scary" by the "Houston Chronicle", and "the most ghastly-sounding dish in Lee's culinary repertoire" by "Tulsa World". "Salon.com" wrote that the video "takes pride of place in the pantheon of hilarious culinary disaster videos".
Cookbook author Denise Vivaldo, who claims to have ghostwritten recipes for many celebrity chefs, wrote a humorous post in "The Huffington Post" in December 2010 stating that she was responsible for the recipe (though she said that the candles were Lee's idea), and apologizing for it. She also wrote that Lee "has incredibly bad food taste". A week later, the post was removed after Lee's lawyer threatened legal action. Lee has said this recipe is the only one of hers whose criticism she has taken to heart, and that the recipe was partly due to the Food Network dictating the show's content at the time.
Personal life.
From 2001 to 2005, she was married to KB Home CEO and philanthropist Bruce Karatz for whom she converted to Judaism. In the fall of 2005, Lee entered into a relationship with Andrew Cuomo, who became Governor of New York in 2011. The two shared homes in Chappaqua and Poughkeepsie. On September 25, 2019, the couple announced that they had ended their relationship.
Cancer.
Lee announced on May 12, 2015, that she had been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer. By then she had undergone a lumpectomy, and was scheduled to have a double mastectomy later in the week. Governor Cuomo was to take some personal time to be with her during and after the surgery. On October 12, 2015, she was rushed to a hospital because of fluid buildup, believed to be a complication of her recovery, and was monitored closely in the next few days. Cuomo had been attending a Billy Joel concert at Nassau Coliseum, but left and went to the hospital. Lee has been cancer free since mid-2016.