Thank You Martha Stewart

I invented 'It's a good thing' before you were even born.

~Martha Stewart

I want to give a big ‘thank you’ to Martha Stewart.  Not the real Martha, not exactly.  The version of Martha who lives in my head.  You know how in the movie 'Julie and Julia’ (based on the book Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously) the Julie Powell character takes inspiration and occasional guidance from an imaginary, idealized version of Julia Child?  And this image that she has in her head of Julia Child helps motivate her to not only cook her way through a gigantic cookbook, but also to change her life in other positive ways and essentially grow up?  Well picture that same thing in my head, only its Martha Stewart and not Julia Child.  But while Julia Child’s influence in Julie Powell’s life was gentle and lovely (and likely full of wine) the interactions I have with Martha in my head are more of the ‘F-you’ variety.

I first began my antagonistic mental relationship with Martha Stewart two Decembers ago.  I was off work the week between Christmas and New Years and had no plans.  Feeling domestic, I decided to try my hand at baking bread.  I used the recipe from Entertaining by Martha Stewart because I happened to have it checked out from the library.  I saw that it said it would make a lot of bread dough, but it didn’t occur to me the sort of havoc it would bring down on me in my tiny, non KitchenAid stand mixer having kitchen.  The shear amount of dough this produced was so large and unwieldy that I felt a bit like Martha was trying to break me.  My life wasn’t going so great at this particular point in time.  My (now ex) boyfriend had just cancelled a much anticipated vacation with me (which turned out to be symptomatic of greater troubles in our relationship) and I was feeling a bit adrift and lonely. Suddenly this dough had become the one thing in my life that I had to conquer and I started getting mad.  All my suppressed disappointment and aggression centered itself on this poor defenseless bread dough.

Then, out of nowhere I started trash talking Martha Stewart.  “Oh yeah Martha?” I thought.  “I bet you think I can’t do this.  I bet you think I can’t bake these effing baguettes.  Well screw you Martha.  Look at me…kneading dough.  Bet you didn’t think I could knead all this stupid dough by hand, did you Martha?”  Weirdly, this seemed to help.  I continued my imaginary conversation beyond kneading the dough, through shaping the loaves and even misting them with water while they were baking to help form a better crust.  “What Martha?  You didn’t think my bread would have a good crust?  Oh I will show you a crust…”  Before I knew it, I had 6 perfect baguettes cooling on a rack and I was feeling a lot more in control of my life.

The baguettes, by the way, were delicious.

I just want to point out here that I actually have no particular animosity towards the real Martha Stewart.  Yes, some of her recipes and crafts are a little out there and at times she seems absurdly out of touch with the kinds of things that ‘real’ people are willing to do in the name of domesticity.  But overall, I feel like she has done a lot of good and inspired a lot of people to take pride in making a nice home for themselves.  And I do buy her magazine every month.  However, all of this does not stop me from pulling out my imaginary ‘mean’ Martha to help me conquer tough recipes or crafts.  In the past couple years , she’s seen me through pie crusts and candied nuts.  Handmade Halloween décor and dyed Easter eggs.  This summer I’m planning to attempt jam making for the first time and I’m sure Martha will be there for me telling me that I can’t possibly handle boiling all those jars and I’m sure to get salmonella.  I’m looking forward to it.

So thank you Martha Stewart for helping me to challenge myself and prove that I am a creative and capable person.  It’s a good thing.