Michael "Dog3" wrote:
> "Janet Bostwick" > dropped this
> : in rec.food.cooking
>
>
>> I wish I was stupid like she is. . .her drive and ambition have made
>> her mega bucks.
>
> IMO she is just plain lazy and has no culinary talent (not that I do
> either). IMO she also got where she is by marrying into bucks so she
> could finance her desire to be in the spotlight. I don't consider that
> drive and ambition. Martha Stewart has drive and ambition. Rachel Ray
> (gag) has drive and ambition. IMO SL has nothing. I have to as myself if
> the wallet hadn't been around, where would she have been?
>
I thought all that too until I saw her biography on FoodTV. She really
did come up from nothing, from a broken family and left basically
raising her younger siblings and working to put herself through college.
She did have influence from two grandmothers though. The room mates and
friends from that time that the show interviewed recall that money was
tight yet for them all yet apparently her dorm room or apartment during
those years was light years ahead of the others. She could sew and bake
as those were the skills she'd used to provide some resemblance of
"family life" for her siblings. Either she, or the friends interviewed,
said something about the use of package spices or mixtures as a way to
extend her limited budget when she couldn't afford or maintain a pantry
of ingredients. A lightbulb went off in my head that she was creative to
figure out how to do more with less. Now, having said that, I do think a
LOT of what she shows now is rediculous, perhaps she's exhausted the few
creative uses of package goods and yet the show demands more?
I dunno...after watching the bio my impression of her changed greatly.


> I don't know what Kurtan Kraft was. I can't recall ever hearing about it.

It was a homegrown device to make simple panels of fabric "fake" the
appearance of professionally made draperies, particularly those puffy
ones. Again, that biography I saw showed her as a college aged student
working her ass off to take this curtain appliance to state fairs to
sell it and finally using her hardgained savings fortune to buy time
slot on one of those shopping network channels where she struck gold.
There was no rich man "wallet" involved in her early fortune. It was all
her own hard work.
I don't know if a "wallet" since that time gave her more exposure, but
it was obviously her own hard work that kicked her off.