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 this 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? I will show you a good 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.
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