Food Network host Sandra Lee’s infamous “two shots of vodka” moment, which was captured during a 2008 episode of her series “Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee,” quickly transcended its origins to become a viral staple of internet culture. The clip, in which Lee casually pours what appears to be half a bottle of vodka into a cocktail shaker after calling for “two shots,” first gained traction on Vine and YouTube, before eventually finding a new audience on TikTok amid the pandemic as a collective desire for escapism and the advent of Zoom cocktail hours collided.
But in a recent Instagram post for Delish, Lee revealed some interesting industry backstory behind the moment. “First of all, I was the first one that did cocktails on national television, and especially on cable,” Lee said. “And that was a huge argument when we were negotiating the show, which, by the way, I never wanted to do ‘Semi-Homemade’ as a TV show and no one knows that.”
Lee said she and network executives negotiated for nine months because they believed “nobody [was] going to enjoy cocktail time” on the show.
“And I go, ‘You don’t know Colleen Schmidt from Fredonia, Wisconsin,’” Lee said. “‘It’s Sunday. She’s watching the Packers. She’s having a Bloody Mary. We gotta make some cocktails.’”
You can read more about Lee’s return to food television with Netflix’s “Blue Ribbon Baking Championship” in her new interview with Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams.