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A Monday afternoon FaceTime with Sandra Lee quickly turns into a shopping intervention. Anybody who wants to lower their grocery bill, says the Semi-Homemade Cooking host, needs a Costco membership and an affinity for Trader Joe’s. When I counter that the crowds at the latter are a real turn-off, she’s having none of it. “You just have to get up early and go when they open,” she instructs. “Same with Costco.”

We are speaking on the occasion of her new series, Roku’s Dinner Budget Showdown (out May 3). It’s her first fully fledged TV show since Sandra’s Money Saving Meals ended in 2012 when Lee turned her attention to working alongside then-partner and then-Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo. But this return for Lee, long an evangelist of stretching a dollar in the kitchen, seemed inevitable. Recent headlines about skyrocketing grocery costs are like the Bat-Signal for Lee.