This morning I woke up to my first genuinely nasty comment on facebook for my Me n’ Martha Project Day 59 dish, Lasagna.
Somebody named Leslie Ann Ellis, who I’ve never met before in my life commented on my post on Martha Stewart Living’s wall “I thought it was roadkill.”
So this bothered me, even though I know the saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones but internet trolls can never hurt me.” I also know that as we as a nation mourn the death of innocents in Colorado who had their lives cut short at the hands of an evil man, the hurt feelings of one little food blogger don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
But it also raised an interesting issue that comes up when I’m doing this project. Sometimes the food doesn’t come out just right. There are times that I attempt to follow the recipe exactly but something just goes awry. The other day when I did Buckeye Candy, the humidity in my kitchen made it impossible to roll the peanut butter balls correctly. My lasagna tasted pretty darn good, even if it wasn’t my preferred style of making lasagna, but it also fell apart the moment I tried to remove it from the pan, taking much of the melted mozzarella off the top in the process. Then of course there was the time my johnnycakes turned to mush. The question that gets raised in this is why the heck do I share the results, along with the pictures, when they’re less than stellar? The question becomes especially relevant when you’re working with a cookbook from Martha Stewart, who is not only known as a chef, but also as a lifestyle guru who has been beautifying America for over 20 years with advice from everything from how to grow the perfect garden to how to set the perfect tablescape. How do I impress my idol when in so many ways I’m the anti-Martha, plodding along and sometimes making a mess and never really caring if my napkins are a nice match for my plates?
Food blogs, as most of you know, are a dime a dozen. Now I don’t say that dismissively, because there are so many talented people out there with a lot to offer if you take the time to read their blogs. But because we live in a food obsessed culture, there’s a lot of demand for blogs about food. There’s also a lot of food television. From old school cooking shows to endless competitions where cooks race around like crazy people trying to whip up a masterpiece on a 20 minute deadline! And to the home cook, this can be pretty intimidating. The finished product almost always looks perfect and the master can make it look like it’s easy to achieve. But here’s the thing — it isn’t easy! Never is. Most bloggers will toss their less than perfect results and start anew until they have something gorgeous to photograph. A television cook has a team of producers, assistants and prep cooks that play a vital role in why the finished product comes out looking great. I give Martha a lot of credit for making her prep staff visible to her audience and giving them the respect they deserve. Most chefs don’t do that, but Martha is truly a class act. My point is that a lot of hard work goes into making cooking look so easy and what I want to offer any readers I might have is the struggle, that I’m not perfect, and even with culinary school training behind me, I make mistakes and sometimes “things happen.” That’s cooking in the real world, and I hope that in giving that, I can help people who want to cook pick themselves up after a kitchen disaster and dust off their pride and keep on cooking ’cause that’s what it’s all about.
As for not being as “perfect” as Martha, well, I think that reputation has given her a bad rap that she doesn’t deserve. Martha has worked very hard and earned every bit of her success. I never claimed to be a crafter, which is why the Me n’ Martha Project doesn’t center around doing a different crafting project every day. Although I do have hobbies like gardening and tie-dying, I’m a cook first and foremost. This project has given me the opportunity to learn from one of the great chefs in the business and if now and then someone wants to call my efforts “roadkill” so be it. I pick myself up and dust off my pride and keep on cooking, ’cause that’s what it’s all about.
