Courtesy of Sandra Lee Semi Homemade Magazine; r.eprinted with permission from Hoffman Media, LLC

We are excited to be partnering with Semi Homemade with Sandra Lee! We will be cooking one of Sandra’s recipes each month. Sandra Lee will provide us with a recipe and instructions. The Lazy Moms will lead you step by step through the recipe, feed our families, and report back to you, our readers.

Be sure to visit our Lazy Mom Amazon Store! We have Sandra’s cookbooks available as well as a subscription to her new magazine. Additionally, you can check out her website here.

Sandra Lee has a passion for simple solutions that create dramatic results in all areas of home life. She is editor-in-chief of Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade magazine, a popular television host and internationally-acclaimed home and food expert who has revolutionized the way people think about homemade. With her trademark 70/30 Semi-Homemade® philosophy, which combines 70% ready-made products with 30% fresh and creative touches, Sandra is recognized as the foremost advocate to over-extended people. She created the platform to continually supply savory tactics that allows anyone to take 100% of the credit for something that looks, feels and tastes as if it were completely made from scratch.

Food Network’s Sandra Lee can bring everyone to the table, every night of the week for five meals for 15 dollars. LazyMoms selected one of Sandra’s “Supper Savings” meals from her magazine Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade. Forgo your to-do list, Sandra helps plan for you with a grocery list and recipes that are ready to clip and go.

This month we are making Salisbury Steak, Parmesan Green Beans and Garlic Mashed Potatoes. All three recipes are available in printible format at the bottom of this post. This is a real meat and potatoes meal! The kind of meal June Cleaver would have had ready on the table when Ward got home from work. Lazy Mom Leslie really got in the mood. In fact, when Lazy Mom Amanda arrived at LML’s house this is what greeted her at the door.

Her very own 1950’s housewife complete with pearls and cocktail in hand! This month we decided to drink a Gimlet. What is a Gimlet you ask? It’s that drink that the ladies are always drinking on MadMen. Even though MadMen is set in the ’60’s we figured the cocktail was still pretty authentic. So we googled a recipe for a Gimlet.

Guess what? A Gimlet is bascially a vodka shot with a splash of lime juice. No wonder Betty Draper is perpetually sloshed on MadMen! She’s drinking flavored vodka! At least we made our own drinks and didn’t teach our kids how to do it for us like Mrs. Draper did! OK, enough about the cocktail, back to the cooking!

Here are all (most) of the ingredients ready to go. We are missing one thing, bread crumbs. Now some of you might remember when LML helped LMA organize her pantry. We talked about how LML made fun of LMA for having so many different kinds of salt. What we didn’t discuss is how LML also made fun of LMA for having so many different kinds of bread crumbs. Well,  who was happy that LMA hoards bread crumbs? LML that’s who! She forgot to buy the bread crumbs and LMA had to come to her rescue. That’s why the bread crumbs are not pictured here.

The first thing we did was start to work on the Salisbury Steak. We combined the ground meat, cream of onion soup, chopped onion, bread crumbs, steak sauce, egg, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Here it all is in the bowl before LML got her hands all slimy mixing it all together. LMA just watched at this point sipping her cocktail. She wasn’t ready to be up to her elbows (OK wrists) in ground meat. But hey, sometimes you gotta get a little slimy while cooking!

Once all the ingredients were well mixed we formed the mixture into five patties and put them in the pan.

The recipe says to cook these over medium-high heat for 12-15 minutes. We had to cook them a little longer than that. So, you might not want to make your patties as thick as ours were. But if you aren’t in a rush go ahead and mix up another Gimlet to sip on while your meat is cooking. If you can down two of those Gimlets and still care what your dinner is going to be the Lazy Moms think your tolerance is way too high and there might be an intervention in order. But that’s a topic for another day!

Here is LML working those patties. She has traded out her high heels at this point for slippers. If she is going to stay true to form and in character for the 1950’s housewife she is going to have to get rid of those slippers before Lazy Dad Philip gets home!

And no comments please on the beach towel on the floor in the background. LML has a big dog and we had a monsoon here in the Houston area two days ago. The dog is still tracking in mud and dirt! Since LML is too Lazy to mop her floor each day, an old beach towel by the back door does the trick!

While our patties were browning, we made the potatoes. Our Gimlets had kicked in at this point and we forgot to take a picture of the potato cooking process. However, we can confirm that the Ore-Ida Frozen Steam n’ Mash Potatoes ROCK! We are never going to peel and boil potatoes again! Ore-Ida are you listening? We love this product! Thanks Sandra for encouraging us to try it!

We do have a clarification here. Ore-Ida directions call for you to add some milk, while Sandra’s directions call for you to add some water. You DO NOT want to add both. Follow Sandra’s lead here and add the water instead of the milk. You’ll see what we mean when you make these for yourself. And really Lazy Moms? You do need to make this entire meal for yourself!

While the potatoes were cooking we started on the sauce for the Salisbury Steak. The first two ingredients are chopped onions and mushrooms. Before we discuss that, LML needs to pause for an ode to Sandra Lee. On her show on Food Network Sandra talks about using frozen chopped onions from the freezer section of your local grocery. YES, you read that right! You never have to chop onions again! Go back up to the top of this post and look at the picture of the ingredients. Do you see the white bag of frozen chopped onions on the left? That bag only cost $1! The Lazy Moms keep those stocked in our freezers. Your grocery store will also have have frozen chopped green bell peppers, and celery and mixtures of these veggies. It’s a great thing and we are happy that Sandra shared it with us so we can share it with you!

Here is LMA working on the sauce. She was not into the theme like LML. Really? No 1950’s housedress and pearls?  Is it possible that she was too lazy? Notice that she is not too lazy to hold that drink and sip on it all afternoon!

The last side item was the green beans. Again, no picture. Stupid Gimlets! Just kidding! Actually the green beans were so easy that we totally forgot that pictures might be in order. That’s OK though. When you read the recipe (available in printalbe format at the bottom of this post) you’ll understand how we finished making them before we remembered to take the picture.

Here is the completed meal. Aren’t you hungry? Aren’t you ready to make this for your own family?

Here are Grace and Quenten, LML’s kids, eating thier dinner. Yes, that’s LML’s laundry on the floor in the background. What is it with LML and stuff on her floors? Don’t you hate it when people actually LIVE in their houses?

Here is what LML’s family had to say about the meal:

Grace: These green beans are good! (she does NOT like green beans!)

Philip: Wow! Pearls, heels, potatoes and beef?

Quenten: This is like a country meal. Can I have more potatoes and beans?

We think a country meal translates into a meat and potatoes meal. In summary. Yummy! We loved the meal and so did LML’s family! You can visit our Lazy Mom Store for all of Sandra Lee’s books as well as a subscription to her magazine.

Since we were all geared up to cook we decided to set LML’s table as well. If you are going to pretend to be a 1950’s housewife, you might as well go all the way! We have linked back to Tablescape Thursday at Between Naps on the Porch.

Here is LML’s table all ready to receive Sandra’s delicious meal!

Here is a close up of the plates. They are Red Willow. Is that even a correct term for plates? Red Willow? You ladies know what we mean. They are the Blue Willow pattern, but they are red. LML got them at Tuesday Morning years ago. Don’t you just love Tuesday Morning? Remember when Lauren Bacall was the spokesperson for Tuesday Morning? Right! I can just see Ms. Bacall toodling around our local Tuesday Morning.  We bet she wouldn’t get the cart with the wonky wheel!

The placemats were also purchased years ago. These came from Pier One. We like them because they are square which makes the table appear to be larger. Your placemats aren’t fighting for space like rectangular ones normally do. And finally, a closeup of the centerpiece.

It is nothing fancy, just grocery store flowers. But they make all the difference! You will also notice that the vase, juice glasses and water glasses are from Southern Living at Home. The red wine glasses are from Garden Ridge Pottery. There were very inexpensive. LML doesn’t pay too much for anything!

Now we all know that Sandra Lee is the queen of tablescapes. Especially those with a theme! The Lazy Moms figured we better master the cocktail and actual cooking of the meal before we tried to get too fancy with the table. We think simple worked in our favor this time! Thanks for visiting today everyone! Check out Sandra’s recipes made available below!

Sandra Lee Salisbury Steak

Sandra Lee Parmesan Green Beans

Sandra Lee Garlic Mashed Potatoes