Rustic…esque?

In October, Martha visits a “rustic, yet refined” barn in upstate New York, which is a multi-million dollar house chock full of leather, wood and animal skulls. Martha uses the word ‘rustic’ only slightly less than my mother when she travels to the mountains.

Of particular interest was this guy’s 12-foot Victorian dining table, which was festooned with pumpkins, gourds and antlers.

Does he have to move all those pumpkins when he has a dinner party?

I could never see this centerpiece concept working in our house, with its custom molding, columns, french pocket doors and formal dining room with crystal chandelier.

But I’ve been wanting to be more rustic!  I tried not vacuuming for two weeks, but that just made everything more covered in cat hair. We got a cast iron bike sculpture from my in-laws and placed it on the hearth, but it drove me crazy. I bought a rug for the sun-room with a southwestern design, but people saw right through that.

Aforementioned bike and rug in the same photo!

One day I discovered a bunch of deer antlers in my boss’s car. I learned long ago not to question whatever I find there, but I couldn’t resist. It seems that the education department at our museum no longer needed these antlers and were going to throw them away. They sat in a box in my office for 6 weeks while I debated whether or not this whole thing was ethical. I mean, I have funeral services for house plants, for pete’s sakes.

(I also hoped that the antlers menacing location next to my door would deter my coworkers from entering. No dice.)

So I finally brought the damn antlers home and created a centerpiece thing that I think bridges the gap between rustic and elegant. Inside a simple, $20 bowl from Ben Franklin, I put the antlers, 4 or 5 squash, some mini pumpkins and some fake pine cones.

Rustic-Ish

It’s more contained than the spread in Martha’s article, but my table is not 12-feet long and I have to keep a table cloth on it to deter kitten scratches.

Also, this is easily whisked away to the sideboard or out of sight lest I’m paid a visit by PETA or if I need to make squash soup.

Happy Fall!

This Has Nothing to Do with the Current Issue

…but I nevertheless wanted to share my new favorite flower arrangement, what I like to call “Kate’s Ball” because my colleague Kate made these for a work event. Carnations, oasis, candlesticks and a little glue are all you need.  

Not usually my go-to flower, carnations arranged this way are elevated to a new level of elegance. For carnations anyway. Plus, they are inexpensive and last a long time. I plan on making a slew of smaller ones in fall colors to go all around the house…as soon as I finish this movie.

Please don’t clue Martha in, it’s better this way

Breaking news! Martha has new kittens! Well, she adopted them, she didn’t birth them herself, or that WOULD be breaking news.

The thing is, though, that one of them, Empress Tang, has an unfortunate name. We will be referring to her ass Empress T*** from now on in order to stick with our PG promise.

BTW we are making a PG promise.

JK JK JK.

[by Susan]

Toadstoolz!

Martha traditionally gets hammered and goes nuts with her October issue. It’s usually Halloween central, with glittery jack’o'lanterns and a complicated life-sized witch craft for your front lawn that is actually made out of a little old lady and Martha leering on the cover in zombie make-up.

NOT THIS YEAR, FOLKS!

THIS YEAR WE HAVE TOADSTOOLS!

Let’s see them again! Adorable, roly-poly TOADSTOOLS!

Oh god, I can’t stop laughing at them. Partly because they fill me with glee and partly because if Martha were Tori Amos,* this would mean something completely different. [by Susan]

*An unnerving thought, at best!

Another Calendar Item Complete! (sort of)

On Martha’s calendar this month appears the item “Touch up indoor paint while humidity is low and the windows can be opened.” Well, blam! Check out that tape job. Eat your heart out, Martha! (I will neglect to mention that these four windows and the minimal amount of trim in our sunroom took two of us a full 7 hours to touch up, with no lunch break. Touching up all of the places in our house that need it would take months. Or, as the case has been, years.)

Painting windows sure is a PANE!

My suggestion that James “service the leaf blower” and have our heating system “checked” was met with skepticism, however. [by Lesley]

September 2009 What’s for Dinner – Trust Martha, but Trust Thy Own Bacon

If last month’s What’s for Dinner (aka “Strange Pizza”) spotlit the grill as the kitchen thing of choice, this month we put the oven through its paces. With three of the four meal elements (entree, side, and dessert) requiring the oven for a minimum of 25 minutes, we were faced with a spatial relations GRE problem that was a little too similar to what I do all day at my job.

Of course, for those famous domestic goddesses whose kitchens no doubt sport at least seventeen ovens, this wouldn’t be a problem. One rarely has to remember what timer is timing what dish in these kitchens, I’m sure, as each one happily chirps “The bacon with citrus glaze! It is finished!” or some such specific, helpful reminder.

My timers just beep, and my brain ignores them, apparently, because this is the sad result of our bacon with citrus glaze.

Not to worry! We discovered that the sky wouldn’t collapse if we just fried up the rest of the bacon as we would any old time. As a bonus, this technique did not use the oven.

In addition to the bacon, we had Egg-in-the-Hole Toasts with Ricotta, and the combination could only be called breakfast for dinner. Or could it? The salad, such as it was, consisted of sliced celery and cucumber mixed with parsley and mint. Although it was pretty refreshing (and thankfully beyond simple), we weren’t super convinced that it fit with the meal.

The toasts were, however, phenomenal. Everyone agreed that it would be a nice, easy to prepare, brunch item for a small crowd. On paper, we were concerned that it wouldn’t offer enough heft for a Saturday night entree, but it ended up feeling just right. Throw some bread in an oven (after ripping out the middle), take it out, spread ricotta on it, drop an egg in the middle, and put it back in the oven!

Then came, gloriously and triumphantly, dessert. Plum Tartes Tatin might be my new favorite thing. I’m crazy about plums in general (turns out this is a strange thing, according to Lesley and Cam — James and celebrity guest Hannah were too polite to say so, which is why they will get invited back) (well, they also brought a lot of wine). I might add a little more sugar next time to balance out the tartness, and, as Hannah said, it could use about six times more pastry. Pastry is good. Plums are good. Sour cream (!!!) on top of it all is phenomenal.

The official verdict: this dinner is Marthable. It might take you two hours, and your bacon might not be worth the effort, but it is Marthable.

The unofficial verdict: Hannah is like some sort of storytelling wizard. [by Susan]

Martha’s Crazy Calendar

Four days into September, Martha has already done – according to her calendar – more than I will most likely do in the next six weeks. So far, she has 1.) Taken a morning walk with her dogs, with a camera 2.) Washed outdoor light fixtures and replaced bulbs (if needed) 3.) Gotten a haircut, which she presumably does every year on Sept. 1st? 4.) Cut and arranged sunflowers 5.) Oven-dried tomatoes and packed them in olive oil.

Today alone she evidently has prepared her greenhouse for overwintering potted plants, refilled her bird feeders, and uploaded recent photos to her blog.

Tomorrow she heads to East Hampton.

Since September 1st I have worked roughly 35 hours at my day job, painted my toenails, gotten an eyebrow wax, scooped the litter box, put away some dishes, cut some greens from my garden and changed the toilet paper roll in the powder room.

This weekend I will go to the pool and do some laundry.

Horns Aplenty

I fell asleep reading the September 2009 issue of Living (Special Decorating Issue!) last night, which is not to say that I was bored by it. How could I be when every time I glimpsed the cover I was shocked anew that Martha isn’t wearing pants? (In reality, she is, but check out that cover. Does it not, for one second, look like Martha is robotically watering her plants whilst commando?) Sometime after the Collecting feature (“Horn Revival”), I sank into slumber and proceeded to have the most pathetic dream ever about visiting Martha’s house, meeting Francesca and Starkey (I’m disgusted that my subconscious knows the names of the Stewart pugs), and realizing that she may be rich and extremely organized but is in fact a little sad. It was like a hastily-written episode of Will & Grace, only without any jokes, and I woke up feeling weird.

I do like that watering can.

Weird, yet inspired to go buy some stuff made out of horn! I have this vision of a silver-topped horn tumbler filled with something icy perched atop an agate coaster (acquired) on a phenomenal side table (not yet acquired) as my handsome husband (acquired, yet skeptical) reads the paper. So I tried to search eBay. A few years ago, I was silkily persuaded by a Collecting article about antique fountain pens to look up one of two specific kinds on eBay and purchase for not a penny over the Martha-recommended price. It’s now in a box somewhere in my house, looking beautiful. This issue’s article explained why horn’s popularity ebbed and flowed, but didn’t really guide me in any specific directions. Instead, I looked through pages and pages of powderhorns, musical instruments, and horn-shaped drinking glasses, and only found a couple of household objects actually made of horn.

Image from Making the Modern World (click for link)

In despair, I emailed my future brother-in-law, the antiquing enthusiast, to ask if he’d ever seen one while out and about. He assured me that he’d seen them before, but look, the longer this takes me (and I tried for at least six or seven minutes), the less interested I am. Maybe I’ll just go find that fountain pen and stick it on the kitchen counter and call it a day.

Noteworthy in this issue so far:

Fashion or Style or whatever they’d decided to call it appears to be gone. This is certainly an improvement. After all, not sure I want to take fashion advice from someone who can’t be bothered to wear pants. Just KIDDING, Martha, just KIDDING.

Faux-bois is still hanging in there as the Martha trend that won’t die.

If I had a dining nook, I would loop pillows to pegs in a second (Good Things).

Apothecary explains patiently to me what a paddle brush is. “I’m OK with you not having boar bristles,” I whispered tenderly to my own brush, purchased for $4.99 at CVS.

It is comforting to know that on September 1, Martha took Francesca and Sharkey (dammit! I did it again!) for a walk and took her camera (Martha’s calendar).

Now that I have a house, the decorating issue is more interesting to me, so we’ll see what we see when I peruse the rest of the issue. What are the odds that “doing things on a budget” is a high priority? [by Susan]

It’s Independence Day in August, and I Am Apparently Really Stoked!

The following thoughts are two days late, since it is now September and I haven’t even begun to look at the new Living.

I guess this Celebrate America issue (August 09) is going to be an annual thing, unless it’s always been an annual thing and this loser over here never noticed. I could get up and leaf through my back issues to check, but I’m watching 10 Things I Hate About You, a movie I missed in the ’90s for some reason. Anyway, if you’re keeping track, which Lesley wasn’t, the America issue is also the issue that brought Marthable bloody and screaming into the world last year.

America through the eyes of Martha Stewart is, dare I say it, better than the real thing???

Notable in this issue is the DIY wooden bead jewelry, which you might be in danger of comparing to Target jewelry circa 2005, but I’m fairly certain it’s cooler. I thought briefly today about finding a craft store and buying some beads and dye but…like I said. I got this movie, I got my new puppy on my lap, it’s hard to get motivated. But that’s what Living is for, right? I mean, if we’re being honest. It’s for me to kick back with my puppy, who doesn’t judge me when I eat Doritos (in fact, the impression that I get is that she thinks I make the best decisions in the world and that Doritos are just the ticket to a perfect afternoon), and read about how awesome it is that other people do things like wonder how to get their shaker pegs to be a little sturdier.

This image and these beads belong to Martha Stewart Omnimedia, who hopefully won't mind, since I'm practically begging you to buy a subscription.

Maybe I’ll get off the couch sometime in December and try my hand at wooden jewelry for the Unsuspecting Pals. [by Susan]

James Says This is The Best One Yet (and He Should Know)

The menu was very green and white, much like our dining room.

What’s for Dinner is back!  Our celebrity guest this time was Kate (Hi Kate!), who has sat at many a Howson dinner table and most likely expected to come away disappointed and still hungry. NOT THIS TIME. At least she didn’t say as much, although we all agreed that the pizza crust was sub-par (more on that later), and James remarked that the bean salad was bland. But James drinks Four Alarm Fire Hot Sauce directly from the bottle, for BREAKFAST.  Plus, he said this was the “best one yet,” meaning of the meals we’ve made from Martha Stewart Living, so I am once again confused by him (more on that later too. maybe.)

These things we know for certain:  a.) Kate got enough to eat. Finally!, b.)  Grilling pizza crust is just logistically odd and near impossible if using gluten-free pizza dough, and c.)  I still am not a huge fan of grilled vegetables, but I do like watching Susan drop them into the open flame.

The Menu:

• Butter Beans with Mint
• Grilled Pizza with Fontina and Arugula
• Grilled Radicchio, Summer Squashes, and Scallions
• Gelato Affogato

Susan grills!

The most notable things about preparing this meal was the hunt for store bought, frozen pizza dough and the fact that Susan had never used a grill before. For the former, we had no luck at Kroger, didn’t check Ukrop’s and wound up with dairy, wheat and gluten-free dough from Ellwood Thompson’s (on sale. a first!). Trader Joe’s is rumored to have good frozen dough, but I was so flustered and addled by my Short Pump mall experience the day prior, I completely forgot to stop at TJ’s afterward. A return trip was, of course, out of the question.

Season add-on: Hanover tomatoes!

As noted earlier, the absence of gluten in the dough would later prove pivotal during the preparation process (we had to bake it rather than grill it), and it came out sort of spongy and dry all at the same time. We added tomatoes to the pizza topping, which previously just called for Arugula, because the entire meal was very green and white. The fontina would have been better with a flakier, lighter crust. Fontina is a salty cheese and needs quality starch.

The bean salad – which called for lemon zest, hot pepper, mint, onions and oil – was served over prosciutto and was my favorite part of this meal.

Susan continues to grill! (Note makeshift tinfoil grill "basket." Patent-pending.)

Considering that our collective grill experience consists of lighting sticks on fire during the 45 minutes it took our dad to light charcoal (our family did not believe in lighter fluid, nor in preventing 7-year-olds from lighting sticks on fire), we did pretty well. Lost a few squash, but I mean, how close together are the tines(?) on Martha’s grill? Here again we added tomatoes and put them on a special tinfoil rig courtesy of James. They are way too watery to be placed directly on the grill. In short, this part was a success, although labor intensive as the veggies are only on the grill for 4 minutes, and you have to flip them after 2 minutes,  AFTER brushing them with olive oil.

Finished product!

(Aside: The chefs were drinking James’s Special Limeade and Barbara’s Special Iced Tea w/ Orange Juice during the making of this meal.)

Gelato Affogato basically means ice cream drowned in coffee (no, literally, “affogato” means “drowned” in Italian) and in this case stood for high quality chocolate ice cream topped with whipped heavy cream and a drizzle of decaf (It was Sunday night, ok?), garnished with two coffee beans in glass coffee mugs and one official U.S. Senate high ball glass. Martha calls for espresso but we gave our machine to the UPS guy years ago.

Changes we made:

• Added tomatoes to both pizza and grilled vegetables because it’s August, and there’s no excuse not to use them (recommended based on time of year).
• Used gluten-free, wheat-free and dairy-free storebought, frozen pizza crust (not recommended).
• Baked rather than grilled pizza because consistency of dough made it impossible to transfer from baking sheet to grill.
• Used coffee rather than espresso (a personal choice, but the coffee worked just fine). Could have also added biscotti.

Verdict: a Marthable meal, with lots of room for modifications, but no room for gluten-free pizza crust.

[by Lesley]