I am probably in a minority here, but I’ve never had green bean casserole before. My mom was not into traditional Thanksgiving dishes, so this was never served in our house. For years I’ve seen photos of it in magazines, with those canned fried onions on top. I always thought it looked a little gross. But Martha has a recipe for it in November Everyday Food using homemade onions. I decided to try it out.

First, let me say, this dish was kind of a pain in the butt to make since it used a lot of pans and bowls. I cut up the shallots and dredged them in flour and fried them (1 bowl, 1 pan). This took a few batches, even though I cut the recipe in half. Next, I had to blanch the beans, which required another pot and a strainer. Then I made the mushroom cream (quite easy actually – butter, mushrooms, broth, flour and milk, although this was another pan). You could make the dish up to this point and refrigerate for a day or two I think. Next, I baked it (1 casserole dish). When it comes out of the oven, you add the onions to the top (what was left of the onions – ahem – I couldn’t stop sampling them, they were so good!).

This smelled and looked good. It tasted good too. It was a totally new experience for me. I usually steam or blanch green beans and serve with slivered almonds or just plain butter. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything else with them. It was very good. I loved the mushrooms and beans together. The fried onion topping is wicked good. This doesn’t feel like a veggie dish – it feels like a casserole. In fact, it could be a main dish for my family, served with some other veggies and a potato or rice side.

I liked it, but don’t think I would serve it for Thanksgiving. For one thing, there are so many rich things on the table that day that I prefer to serve some simple veggies to kind of cut the decadence. Since it’s not part of my family’s tradition, I don’t feel like it’s missing. I do recommend this recipe though. I’ve never had the one with the canned soup and the canned fried onions, but this has got to be a million times better! I ate the leftovers for lunch the next day and enjoyed them very much.

As you’ve already noticed, I have no photo. I took photos of this with the new camera, but somehow in trying to download them everything on the camera and memory stick got erased, so I can’t show you my results. I can tell you that it looked very much like the photos I’ve seen in magazines of this dish. The beans were a nice bright green. The sauce was creamy with slices of mushrooms. The onions on top were very thinly sliced rings that were golden brown and very crunchy.

I am probably in a minority here, but I’ve never had green bean casserole before. My mom was not into traditional Thanksgiving dishes, so this was never served in our house. For years I’ve seen photos of it in magazines, with those canned fried onions on top. I always thought it looked a little gross. … Read more →

I couldn’t help myself – I had to order a Martha Stewart turkey for Thanksgiving. If you order one this week, you can save $15 by entering the code Martha15.

I’m excited about Martha’s turkey for several reasons. The turkeys are not certified organic, but they are antibiotic and hormone free, vegetarian fed and humanely raised. Every single one of those factors is of great importance to me. The turkeys come in two sizes – 12 lb ($69.99) or 18 lb ($89.99), minus the $15 discount. You can choose your delivery date, which is a nice feature.

The turkeys are from Plainville Farms and I have had their regular turkeys in the past with great success.  I can’t wait to try it!

I couldn’t help myself – I had to order a Martha Stewart turkey for Thanksgiving. If you order one this week, you can save $15 by entering the code Martha15. I’m excited about Martha’s turkey for several reasons. The turkeys are not certified organic, but they are antibiotic and hormone free, vegetarian fed and humanely … Read more →

I couldn’t help myself – I had to order a Martha Stewart turkey for Thanksgiving. If you order one this week, you can save $15 by entering the code Martha15.

I’m excited about Martha’s turkey for several reasons. The turkeys are not certified organic, but they are antibiotic and hormone free, vegetarian fed and humanely raised. Every single one of those factors is of great importance to me. The turkeys come in two sizes – 12 lb ($69.99) or 18 lb ($89.99), minus the $15 discount. You can choose your delivery date, which is a nice feature.

The turkeys are from Plainville Farms and I have had their regular turkeys in the past with great success.  I can’t wait to try it!

I couldn’t help myself – I had to order a Martha Stewart turkey for Thanksgiving. If you order one this week, you can save $15 by entering the code Martha15. I’m excited about Martha’s turkey for several reasons. The turkeys are not certified organic, but they are antibiotic and hormone free, vegetarian fed and humanely … Read more →

Happy Martha-versary to me. The end of October marked the one year anniversary of my Martha project and my blog. We decided to have a Halloween party to celebrate – and also to give me a chance to flex my Martha muscles.

Yesterday was the big day and it was the culmination of several weeks of planning and work (that’s always the problem with parties – you plan and cook and decorate and work your buns off for weeks and it’s over in a flash).

I promised to share all the details, so this will be a long post!

Costumes

First, the costumes. I was Martha. Teen Martha blew out my curly hair to look like Martha’s – I was surprised at how well it actually turned out! I wore a pink button front shirt and khaki capris. I had a pair of blue heels I was going to wear, but when I put them on , the soles disintegrated (I haven’t worn them in over 15 years!) so I ended up with some low black heels which weren’t quite what I wanted. Mr. MarthaAndMe made a home detention ankle bracelet for me to wear. I have the greatest respect for Martha and was afraid that was a little insulting, but it helped people identify who I was. I carried a Martha bouquet – paint brush, whisk and garden trowel, tied with a measuring tape.  I pointed out “good things” all night.

Mr. MarthaAndMe was a vampire. He has years of practice with vampire costumes. His mother had the cape made for him when he a child.

Teen Martha was a Roman. I sewed the toga by hand. She made the belt and headpiece. I think she looks cute. As you can see in the background, her friends were also Romans.

Dude Martha wore his gory store bought costume.

Decor

Let’s move on the decor. We made a gourd totem, from Oct Living. Actually, Mr. MarthaAndMe handled that and he did an excellent job. I don’t think I would bother doing this again, but it was fun. We put this on the front porch, but I never got a picture.

There were lots of spider webs, caution tape, orange and black streamers and balloons around also.

I spent a lot of time on the table. I made the tablescape that is in the Halloween special issue – gauze on the table and black tissue paper cut out to go around it. I had to order the tissue paper online and I found the gauze at Joann’s, but didn’t buy enough. When I realized, they were out of it. I ended up finding something similar at Walmart. I also cut the tissue paper to go around my cake plate with the ghost cake.

You can also see my luminare hanging from the chandelier.

The Food

I made a lot of food. We have tons and tons left. I’m just going to paste in the photos with captions for this:

The Games

We had several games which the younger kids enjoyed. We started with Martha’s donut on a string game. I had a hard time finding small donuts for this – regular size seemed too big. I did finally find some and everyone liked this game. One girl ate hers in one bite!

We put “body parts” in bags and the kids had to guess what they were. The best score was 6 out of 8. We had cauliflower for brains, ramen noodles for veins, an oiled tortilla for skin, dried apricots for ears, peeled grapes for eyeballs, a carved canned cranberry sauce for heart,

and gherkins with almond slivers for fingers/toes.

We also played mummy wrap, where they had to wrap each other in

toilet paper.

We played eyeball pong – each kid got a rubber eyeball and they had to bounce it and try to get into cups. Each cup had a prize and if your ball went in, you won the prize.

We also had a monster assembly game. I kept all our recyclables for several weeks. We divided them into two boxes and divided the kids into two teams. Each team got tape and scissors. We gave them five minutes to make a monster. They actually did a really great job – but they smashed them before I could get a photo of the final results.

It was an incredible amount of work. We got most of it cleaned up last night when the kids left to go trick or treating and did the rest this morning. I’m exhausted! I’m glad I did it though – I’m pretty proud of myself and think everything turned out quite well.

Happy Martha-versary to me. The end of October marked the one year anniversary of my Martha project and my blog. We decided to have a Halloween party to celebrate – and also to give me a chance to flex my Martha muscles. Yesterday was the big day and it was the culmination of several weeks … Read more →

I signed up for the MS Cupcake Club October bonus round. The assignment was to make any cupcake you wanted for Halloween (Happy Halloween, by the way!).

I made Martha’s one-bowl chocolate cupcakes (from Martha Stewart’s Cupcake Book) and made them into Buried Alive Cupcakes, which I am serving at our Halloween party this afternoon.

I made the recipe and baked them (I actually did this in advance and froze them). I decorated with a little chocolate frosting then stuck a doll arm in each one, as if a person is trying to claw their way out. We also kind of shredded the side of each cupcake to make it look like it someone was trying to work their way out (You can’t really see this in the photo very well). Actually finding the dolls was the hardest part of this! I thought I would be able to buy bags of cheap kewpie-type dolls at the dollar store. Wrong. The cheap dolls were $1 each. I tried to find doll parts online, but with the cost of shipping, it was ridiculous. Finally I gave in and bought 9 dolls at the dollar store and that allowed me to do 18 cupcakes.

Tune in tomorrow for details on how the party went!

I signed up for the MS Cupcake Club October bonus round. The assignment was to make any cupcake you wanted for Halloween (Happy Halloween, by the way!). I made Martha’s one-bowl chocolate cupcakes (from Martha Stewart’s Cupcake Book) and made them into Buried Alive Cupcakes, which I am serving at our Halloween party this afternoon. … Read more →

I tried out another Thanksgiving side dish recipe from November Living – this time it was Roasted-Parsnip Bread Pudding. To be honest, I did not expect to like this, but I went ahead because part of my Martha project is being open to new things. Bread pudding has never been a favorite of mine.

My first stumbling block was that the recipe called for brioche. I have no idea where you buy that, since I’ve never seen it in a store (grocery or bakery) in my area. Instead, I bought some challah, which I think is close enough.

You start by roasting your parsnips. Usually my store carries those honking big parsnips, but this time they only had small ones, like carrots. It required more peeling, but I think they may have been more tender. Then you roast the parsnips in the oven. Mine got a little brown, but didn’t burn. You slice up some leeks and cook those, adding wine and thyme. You mix the leeks, parsnips, bread, cream, eggs and Parmesan cheese together. It looked pretty goopy. I added more salt and pepper to it since I was worried about blandness.

I got it in the oven and baked it for about 40 minutes (I made half the recipe) then took the lid off and left it in the oven, with the oven off until Mr. MarthaAndMe made it home from work. It worked out perfectly.  It was golden brown and kind of puffy.

And I really liked this! Surprise! I still can’t believe it. It’s really quite rich with all the cream and eggs. Mr. MarthaAndMe liked it too. I ate it for lunch the next day and it was good heated up in the microwave too. Thumbs up on this one!

I tried out another Thanksgiving side dish recipe from November Living – this time it was Roasted-Parsnip Bread Pudding. To be honest, I did not expect to like this, but I went ahead because part of my Martha project is being open to new things. Bread pudding has never been a favorite of mine. My … Read more →

We’re planning a Halloween party as the one year wrap up to my Martha project. I’ve hit a few bumps along the way and thought I would share them.

First of all, why don’t people RSVP? It makes it so hard to plan things!

My biggest gripe though has to be the things I simply cannot find that I need! Martha demonstrated how to use her Halloween stencils to decorate cupcakes on her show. I can’t find them anywhere. And at this late date, I’m worried about ordering them online in case they don’t arrive in time.

I had to order black tissue paper online for my Martha tablescape. I simply could not find it anywhere. So I ended up paying $5 for shipping for a 99 cent item.

I’m looking for cheap doll parts. I’m planning to make buried alive cupcakes – chocolate cupacakes with an arm sticking up out of them. I actually found this idea in Rachel Ray’s magazine. But I can’t find doll parts anywhere for a reasonable price. I was even hoping to find a bag of cheap little dolls at the dollar store, but they only come singly for $1 each and I need at least 20 arms, so that $10 which seems like a lot. I haven’t found any online for a good price, because the cost of shipping always makes it ridiculous.

We have some fun games planned:

– donut on a string (see who can eat it first with their hands behind their backs)

– eyeball pong (ping pong ball with an eyeball on it – you try to bounce it into cups to win a prize)

– monster assembly (we are collecting bags of stuff we would normally throw out and will give each team a box to make a monster out of)

– name the body part (we’re going to put food items inside boxes and have them guess what body part it is supposed to be)

– candy corn relay

– pitch a penny into a jack o lantern

– pumpkin bowling (we’re making ghost pins out of white cups and using a small pumpkin as a bowling ball)

I’m going to start making some food and freezing it this weekend to get a jump on things. I’m making Martha’s one bowl cupcakes for the buried alive cupcakes and the stencil cupcakes if I ever find the stencil, the marshmallow ghosts in the Halloween issue, the chocolate pumpkin tart from it also, the black bean guacamole from the Halloween issue  (which I’m going to serve in a carved gourd), punch with a frozen hand floating in it along with ice cubes with gummy worms, the puff pastry cheese pumpkins from the Halloween issue, rice krispy treat coffins, a veggie tray that I need to spook up somehow, and little bowls of pink yogurt with mouths on them made of apple slices and yogurt raisins.

For decorations, we will have the luminaria (see tomorrow’s Martha Mondays), a gourd totem (from the Halloween issue) and possibly one of the toadstools from the cover of October Living. I also bought some spider web junk and caution tape, as well as all of our regular Halloween decorations.

As for costumes, Dude Martha has a store bought costume and Teen Martha will be wearing a toga I am making for her. I’m going to be Martha. Mr. MarthaAndMe is undecided. We’ve batted around a lot of ideas, including Tim Gunn, Ryan Seacrest, and Simon Cowell. His old fallback costume is a vampire (he won a prize at a church party as a child and never deviated after that). The other option is for him to be Martha also (Drag Martha).  You’ll just have to tune in after Halloween to see what he ends up as!

We’re planning a Halloween party as the one year wrap up to my Martha project. I’ve hit a few bumps along the way and thought I would share them. First of all, why don’t people RSVP? It makes it so hard to plan things! My biggest gripe though has to be the things I simply … Read more →

Lucky Kevin Sharkey. He is Martha Stewart Living decorating editor and he’s remodeling his apartment. Each month, a piece about it will appear in the magazine (and clearly MSLO is footing the bill, sigh). In November Living, Martha redos his kitchen. Who wouldn’t want Martha redoing their kitchen? Lucky, lucky man. Many of the ideas are terrific – and are things I did when we remodeled (vertical dividers for baking sheets, under-shelf baskets, towel rod, wire basket organizer, and drawer dividers). Some I find annoying. For example, she stored all of his flower decorating items above the fridge, then put the folding ladder he needs to get to them in a drawer on the floor, under the sink cabinet. If that was my kitchen, I would not want to have to crawl on the floor to get that stool out every time I needed to get to that cupboard – however I understand there are space constraints in this project.

The part of the project that got me giddy though, is the Kitchen Must-Have Checklist. It’s almost like a quiz (and who doesn’t love a quiz?). I was so excited to get a pen out and check off everything I have. Items I own are in regular black. Items I do not own are in bold.

Cooking Basics
1 1/2 qt saucepan w/ lid
4 qt saucepan w/ lid
10 or 12 inch cast iron skillet (I know people like these, but I don’t – somehow they always seem sticky and greasy to me, not to mention so darn heavy)
medium saute pan
steamer insert
medium Dutch oven
2 qt baking dish
nonstick frying pan
stockpot
shallow stainless steel roasting pan
instant-read thermometer
pepper mill

Preparation Utensils
stainless steel mixing bowls
bowl scrapers
whisk
wooden spoons
stainless steel ladle (on my Xmas list – I have an old plastic one that needs to go)
colander
cutting boards
silicone spatulas
cookie spatula
stainless steel box grater
stainless steel tongs
vegetable peeler
fine sieve
slotted spoon
cooking spoon
long-handled fork
kitchen shears
kitchen timer
vegetable brush (I don’t get why this is necessary when I have a regular scrub brush)
can opener
vegetable slicer (mandoline) (yes, I need one, but frankly they scare me! I’m always sure I’ll shave a hunk off my finger. I do have a slicing blade for my Cuisinart.)
garlic press (I’ve never seen Martha use one – she always chops her garlic and so do I)
citrus reamer
basting brush (silicone)
salad spinner (I had one but got rid of it when we moved since it took up too much cupboard space. Now I rinse my lettuce in a colander, give it a good shake after it has sat for a while, then dump it into a towel where I pat it dry)
microplane zester
wire skimmer
potato masher (I’ve never seen a need for one of these – I mash potatoes with a mixer)

Measuring and Baking
measuring spoons
dry measuring cups
liquid measuring cups
oven thermometer
9 inch round baking pan (just one Martha? You’ve got to have 2 I think)
springform pan
baking sheets
nonstick baking mats
cooling racks
9 inch pie plates (glass and metal)
muffin tin
loaf pan
flour sifter (I never sift! And if I ever needed to, I would use my fine sieve)
parchment paper
rolling pin
kitchen scale
pastry brush
dough scraper
biscuit cutters (I use a glass to do this)

Basic Knives
3 1/2 inch paring knife
8 inch heavy chef’s knife
8 inch bread knife

Small Appliances
food processor
blender (I never use)
coffee/spice grinder
coffeemaker (we don’t drink coffee!)
stand mixer (I never use)
toaster/toaster oven
microwave

There are only 12 items I don’t have (so I have 85%). And honestly, I’m not really about to run out and buy them since I’ve never really felt a need for them. I would never buy baking pans, loaf pans, muffins pans, etc that are not silicone.  So I would change that. Items my must-have list would also include:

cookie dough scoop

ice cream scoop with antifreeze in the handle

8×12 glass baking dish

potholders!

trivet

square glass baking pan for brownies

Christmas cookie cutters

knife sharpener

offset spatula (impossible to frost a cake without one IMHO)

pizza cutter (pizza is BIG in this house)

hand mixer (I never use my stand mixer since it’s so heavy and I don’t have room to leave it out. I also find it awkward to use. It’s hard to get ingredients in and hard to scrape down the sides)

hand held stick blender (Emeril calls this a boat motor. It’s absolutely the best for sauces and soups)

large microwave-safe plastic lid (I use this when I heat things up in the microwave that spatter, like spaghetti sauce)

I also love my bread machine and my electric steamer (I use this for making rice and for steaming veggies), but I could survive without them.

How many items on Martha’s list are you missing? What would you add to the list? Please share!

Lucky Kevin Sharkey. He is Martha Stewart Living decorating editor and he’s remodeling his apartment. Each month, a piece about it will appear in the magazine (and clearly MSLO is footing the bill, sigh). In November Living, Martha redos his kitchen. Who wouldn’t want Martha redoing their kitchen? Lucky, lucky man. Many of the ideas … Read more →

If you’ve been following along with me, you might remember I inherited various items from my grandmother after she passed away. One item was an old cedar chest we found in her basement. It was in pretty bad shape, but from what little I found out about it, I thought it might have been a chest she was given when she married.  You can read about it here. I decided to have it refinished. I know Martha would do it herself, but this needed a lot of careful work. Fortunately a family member knew someone to recommend and I sent it off, with fingers crossed.

Here are the results. Pretty great, right? It’s an interesting height for a chest also – it fits perfectly underneath a window, but it too high for someone to sit on as a bench. I think it’s gorgeous. I haven’t decided where its final place will be – under a window or maybe in the dining room.

Here’s a funny thing – the company that made the chest was named Caswell Runyon and the man who refinished it has the first name Caswell. Weird, right? Anyway, he did an amazing, amazing job – even kept the old newspapers that were inside it in case I wanted them.

I loved inheriting items from her home that I knew and loved, but finding things in her basement I never knew about was exciting and intriguing. I treasure all of them.

If you’ve been following along with me, you might remember I inherited various items from my grandmother after she passed away. One item was an old cedar chest we found in her basement. It was in pretty bad shape, but from what little I found out about it, I thought it might have been a … Read more →

At the end of October, it will be the one year anniversary of my blog and Martha project. So it seemed fitting to have a party, in Martha’s honor (and mine of course). Halloween seemed like the logical choice. I bought Martha’s special Halloween issue of Living and got some ideas from there, but from the start my biggest challenge has been finding a way to take Martha’s ideas and make them work for a party that my kids’ friends will enjoy. Dude Martha is 11 and in middle school. Teen Martha is a high school senior. So, from the beginning, I’ve had to try to find ways to adjust Martha’s approach to make it work for a younger crowd.

First off, I wanted to make Martha invitations. She made one on her show that Dude Martha vetoed. No way would he give his friends an invitation that had a removable black eye mask. I turned to Martha’s site. He was intrigued by an invitation that involves making plaster casts of your finger and putting them in boxes with the invitation written on them. I vetoed that one – too much work and too gory. Finally I thought I found the perfect solution. Martha has a link to Pingg.com where you can create “free” online invitations that are printable.

Unfortunately, after we spent some time designing it, we realized you can’t actually print it out unless you want to pay them to mail it as a postcard. Sigh. Back to the drawing board. Mr. MarthaAndMe came to the rescue and whipped up an invitation himself using some Microsoft do-hickey. To be honest, it bothered me that the border on this goes around the whole paper, not just the ‘page’ you see, but I was done with this. Dude Martha handed them out. Teen Martha will issue Facebook invites to her peeps.

Once we formally invited people, I had to get to work on the party itself. I went out on a shopping expedition. I had only a few “must-haves” and of course I can’t find them anywhere! I want to make the gauze tablecloth with black tissue paper border that Martha has in the special issue. It sounds very simple. I found gauze material Joann’s, but I can’t find black tissue paper. Very disappointing. I’m going to see if I can order it online, but I’m sure the shipping will cost more than the tissue paper itself. I’m also looking for cheap doll body parts – we’re going to make “buried alive” cupcakes where a hand stick out the top of the cupcake.

From the Halloween Living special issue, I’m planning to make the white cake with marshmallow ghosts, guacamole with blue tortilla chips, pumpkin spiderweb cake, puff pastry and cheese pumpkins, and spinach and ricotta skulls. I’ve got some other food ideas I gathered from other sources as well. The food is definitely under control.

We’ve got some games/activities planned, but need more, so if you have suggestions, please share! We’re going to do the thing where you have boxes with different “body parts” in them (like peeled grapes for eyes) and kids will have to guess what they think it is. We’re going to do a mummy wrap contest – see who can wrap their friend in toilet paper first. We’ll also do Martha’s donut on a string contest (see who can eat it first with no hands). If the weather is decent, I want to hide little plastic pumpkins of candy outside. We also plan eyeball pong – a ping pong ball with an eye drawn on which kids will try to bounce into plastic cups to win prizes. I need more though, so please share any thoughts! Martha has a suggestion for a playlist, but it turns out Napster has several, so we’ll use those.

As for decorations, I plan to make Martha’s gourd totems, lit with Xmas lights. We will carve some pumpkins of course. I bought some spiderweb material to hang, and some crime scene tape. We have a friend who may be able to loan us some of his decorations to use.

I’m thinking of dressing up as Martha. I have blue eyes and blond hair about the same length (although mine is curly so Teen Martha would have to work some magic on that). What do you think would work for the outfit? Twin set and pearls? Or try to look like Martha on her show, in a cotton shirt and khakis and heels? If I could find a stuffed French bulldog I would carry that. I don’t know how anyone will know I am Martha.

So, as you can see, plans are under way here for a big party. I’ll share more as we get closer to the big day.

At the end of October, it will be the one year anniversary of my blog and Martha project. So it seemed fitting to have a party, in Martha’s honor (and mine of course). Halloween seemed like the logical choice. I bought Martha’s special Halloween issue of Living and got some ideas from there, but from … Read more →