Martha's Atonement

Jesus died for someone's sins but not mine. -Patti Smith

Fourth of July my husband brought in a load of loganberries from the yard. Being in some sort of summer heat thrall, I figured a fruit cobbler with peaches and berries would be a nice finishing touch to our holiday dinner. Unfortunately I couldn't put my hands on a recipe in my favorite cookbooks and ended up perusing a book that I had long ago resolved to throw out: Martha Stewart's Cookbook, a seemingly exhaustive collection that has never failed to frustrate me with the sheer disaster of anything I had attempted. Unfortunately my memory failed me that day, and this cobbler seemed simple enough. In fact not even a food processor was called for, rather she encouraged the crumbling of the butter, flour and brown sugar with your fingers. What a romantic idea.

Halfway through the crumbling I remembered everything I ever hated about Martha. The idea of her is much better than the reality. First of all hand crumbling takes decidedly longer than the food processor even if you include the washing time. Second of all, no matter how cold the butter started out, a minute in your grubby hands makes for a crumbly top more like a syrupy goo. Her cobbler was runny and the topping was way too stingy. Fortunately the fruit was still delicious, if the execution was lacking. Who tries out these recipes anyway? Would Martha listen to them if she was told what crap they were?

I first started hating the media proclaimed "domestic goddess" after I tried the idea my sister-in-law proclaimed to me as proof of Martha Stewart's genius. I had to agree, it sounded so cool. Freeze your vodka bottle in an empty half gallon milk carton, re-filled with water and flowers or herb sprigs stuck down the sides.

The presentation looked pretty enough, although the ice around my bottle was much cloudier than the picture from the magazine, obscuring the pansy sprigs. Two problems emerged that prevented me from ever doing such a stupid thing again. One it was almost impossible to pick up the vodka bottle. One had to use the neck to hold it. And the damn thing started dripping like a leaky faucet within fifteen minutes. Trying to keep the ice structure in place meant returning the bottle to the freezer, which is what I did before I tried to become some kind of Martha-wannabe. The dripping water of course adhered to the freezer shelf. By the time the bottle was half empty we were attacking the Martha straitjacket with knives to free it.

So when it came out recently that Martha felt in some kind of straitjacket wearing her house arrest ankle bracelet, I thought: Good.

I wonder if any of the women who spend inordinate amounts of time and money trying to ape the Martha-complex style of household perfection find it instructive that the woman cannot stand to be stuck in her perfect, multi-million dollar home. A prison of her own making eh. Life has never afforded such a fitting lesson.

She may have done her atonement for lying to federal investigators, but when will Martha atone for the sins she has wrought on the American woman. She has always come off as such a know-it-all perfection freak. I don't know how many lives she has ruined by espousing this sort of domestic expression. Fortunately not mine anymore. The Martha Stewart Cookbook is in the garbage. I considered freezing it first, but fortunately I realized the idea of that was much more romantic than the reality.