Today I made a delicious Southern dessert, Pound Cake from page 218.

I must share something embarrassing with you, dear readers … this was the very first pound cake I’ve ever made!  I know, I know, there’s no excuse for this, but in my defense I grew up in the heart of Entenmann’s land (I usually don’t mention specific brands, but Entenmann’s is good enough to give them a plug free of charge).  Entenmann’s pound cake is moist and delicious and we used to eat a big piece of it with our coffee every Sunday after dinner at my grandmother’s house when I was growing up.  So if I was ever craving pound cake, I just went to the store and picked one up.

Well I’m afraid that I must bid adieu to my good friends at Entenmann’s because — now that I’ve tried Martha’s recipe — those lazy days of store-bought pound cake are behind me!  This cake is dense and chewy without being at all dry.  It’s just rich and buttery and perfect and also easy to make as long as you make sure that your eggs and butter are at room temperature, because Martha warned that the batter could curdle if they weren’t.

Martha’s recipe gives you several variations that you can try.  I did the traditional, but I jazzed it up with some fresh strawberries in homemade strawberry syrup and a whipped cream that I added a little bit of sour cream to so it would have a nice sweet and tart balance.  Yum!!!  Just look at that picture … don’t you wish you were eating this right now?

Today I took my culinary road trip to the Southwest with Martha’s Chicken Enchiladas Verdes from page 317.

Martha notes that this recipe is lightened up a little from traditional enchiladas.  Much of the time the word “lighter” is synonymous with “not as good as the more decadent version” but that wasn’t the case here.  I actually think that in bringing these lighter touches, such as using white meat instead of dark meat and not frying the tortilla, the results were better!  It was lighter in the best sense of the word, in that it wasn’t greasy or weighed down with too many heavy touches, it just let the delicious ingredients shine through.  The verde salsa was about the best I ever had!  And the poached chicken had so much flavor. I just added a few slices of avocado on top because they’re so good with enchiladas.

I happen to love Mexican food.  One of the things I miss most about living in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood in Jersey City Heights is the wonderful little family restaurants along Central Avenue.  One of my favorites was a humble Mexican restaurant called Los Tres Chilitos that I called for take-out from so often I had them on speed-dial.  Since I’ve been gone, I’ve longed for their enchiladas verdes, but I can’t call them up and ask them to deliver to Hudson, Florida!  Thanks to Martha, I can bring a little of the cooking from The Heights to my own kitchen and Jeff thought they were even better than the enchiladas from Los Tres Chilitos, which is a high compliment indeed!

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.

Today I took on that All-American favorite, Lasagna from page 38.

I’ll admit that I found “All-American” a strange classification for this Italian classic.  I guess that Garfield is an All-American cat and he loves lasagna!  I do get where Martha is coming from, this is an Americanized version of lasagna, which is a hard sell for someone like me who grew up on the more classic Italian version that my grandmother would make for special occasions.  I think most of us have a tendency to be protective of cuisine that reflects our cultural heritage and we romanticize its authenticity.

So with all that said you may be wondering what I thought of this lasagna recipe.  Well, to be honest I had mixed feelings.  It was certainly delicious, it’s hard to go wrong with lasagna noodles, meat sauce and rich cheeses like mozzarella and ricotta! But I have to admit that I have a preference for the lasagna I grew up with.  I guess that lasagna is one of those comfort foods that brings me back to my childhood and as open minded as I try to be with cuisine, this is one of the rare dishes where my nostalgia leaves me a bit biased. Perhaps Martha’s marinara version might be more my style.

But Jeff, being a Midwestern Ohio guy who grew up on a more American style cuisine than I did, really loved this recipe.  It’s dense and rich with wonderfully chewy and creamy textures from the meat and cheese.  Oh, and my kitten, Minnie, kept trying to jump on the table to steal some off my plate — she’s a cat after Garfield’s heart!

Tonight we broke out the grill and made Martha’s All-American Hamburgers from page 34.

Usually, when I make hamburgers, I add a lot of seasoning to the ground beef, and sometimes I’ll fry some onions and put them right into the burgers. All Martha’s recipe called for was adding a little salt and pepper before putting them on the grill.  I was concerned that they might not be flavorful enough that way — boy was I wrong!  Martha’s recipe really let’s the burger be the star, no bells and whistles, just good ground beef with some cheddar cheese and topped with onions, fresh lettuce and tomatoes.

Here’s a tip for making the perfect burger — don’t press down on your burger with your  spatula when you put it on the grill.  That only releases the juices and dries it out.  You’ve probably seen the guys behind the counter do that at diners, but that’s because it cooks them a little quicker and they’re more concerned about speed than taste.  If you just let them cook up with no pressing they’ll be much juicier and more delicious.

These burgers are perfect for outdoor summer grilling, when you don’t want anything too fancy, but you just want to enjoy some good and simple American food!

So today I completed Martha’s Guacamole Trinity with Tomatillo Guacamole from page 349.

As I’ve mentioned before, I love avocados.  I also love tomatillos.  Strangely, nobody who works in the supermarket near me knows what a tomatillo is.  I come in and buy them all the time and all I get are blank stares, even from the same cashiers who ring me up with them all the time.  Attempting to pronounce it correctly doesn’t help matters so I need to say the “illo” part as ILL-O because if I don’t they’ll start searching for something spelled “tomateeoz” and they won’t be able to find it.  Sometimes I worry that if I’m the only person in the neighborhood who actually buys tomatillos, they’ll eventually stop selling them — a fate I don’t even want to ponder!  I guess tomatillos don’t get the love and attention they deserve.  They look strange, and after you remove them from their odd little husks they resemble a tiny green tomato, but really, there’s so much more to the humble tomatillo than meets the eye.  They’re tangy and a little spicy, with notes of lime and hot peppers.  And they’re perfect for a guacamole!

This is the kind of guacamole that could go beyond the dip.  You could easily enjoy this as a substitute for relish on hot dogs and hamburgers.  It would even make a nice sandwich spread, I think it would be great on a roast pork sandwich.

This was my personal favorite guacamole, but they were all really good!  I think it would be very cool to serve all three of Martha’s guacamole recipes at my next party and see which one gets the best response.  After all, you can never have too much guacamole dip when you’re entertaining.

We all know the story of chocolate and peanut butter right?  When an unexpected collision took place between two people, one holding chocolate and the other holding peanut butter and what at first appeared to be a tragedy that nearly lead to a violent battle (“You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!”  “You got your peanut butter in my chocolate!”) turned out instead to be a beautiful symphony of two great tastes that taste great together.  That brings us to my Martha recipe of the day Buckeye Candy from the Midwest on page 279.

This is a recipe that’s easy to make, but not as easy to put together.  That’s because the yummy peanut butter candy starts to melt very, very quickly!  I had to put the peanut butter mixture in the freezer for an hour before I could roll them into little balls, and even then I had to work quickly because they start to melt and get sticky right away.  I guess that’s the peril of making candy in Florida in the summertime!  Yes, I do have air-conditioning, but that doesn’t stop the humidity from wreaking havoc in my kitchen.

But once these candies are cold and served right out of the freezer they’re terrific!  I mean, how can you go wrong with chocolate and peanut butter?  They are sweet, salty and creamy and totally satisfying!  My hands are all messy and sticky from eating them, but that’s okay, these buckeye candies are worth it!

Today my Martha road trip took me back in time to the Colonial era for some Hermit Bars from the Northeast on page 145.

In our age of fancy cakes that look like castles and elaborate cupcakes made to look like flowers, hermit bars are easy to overlook because let’s face it, they ain’t beauty queens!  Like Indian Pudding, this is another one of those old time desserts that’s plain to look at but loaded with warm, comforting spices like ginger and cinnamon. These kind of desserts go back to an era in our American history when the ability to preserve food was paramount in how we cooked because there were no modern conveniences like electricity and refrigerators.  Hermit bars stay delicious and chewy for days and they were said to be a favorite of sailors because of their heartiness and long-keeping qualities.

As you can see from the picture, my hermit bars look different than the ones in Martha’s book.  Her bars look similar to a biscotti, and mine have a chewier, more caramelized look.  I suspect that I should have used more flour because of how moist the air is where I live.  But I’m not complaining, because having never eaten these before, I had no idea what they’re really supposed to taste like, and they tasted fantastic just the way they were.  You can really taste the spices and the rich molasses, along with the plump raisins, and I decided to add some pecans just for a little extra something…they were so good!

Martha recommends that you wait a few days before eating these because they get better with time — easier said than done!  These hermit bars were just too tasty for us to keep our greedy little hands off of them!

As promised last week, I’m making my way through the Guacamole recipes from page 349 of the West.  Today I tried Martha’s Pear and Pomegranate Guacamole.

Unfortunately, pomegranates are out of season and not available.  So what I did was add about 2 tablespoons of pomegranate juice to the white onions and jalapeño.  Then I added big chunks of the avocado and pear.  I’ll be trying this again in the future because I’m sure that the pomegranate seeds add both texture and beauty to this guacamole, but this was still a very interesting flavor profile.  I also added a few fresh mint leaves straight from the garden, which provided a cooling contrast to the heat from the jalapeño.

We ate this as an accompaniment to left over Red Beans and Rice leftovers.  They tasted great together! Even though I used the pomegranate juice as a substitute for the seeds, I actually loved the way it worked together with the onion and jalapeño.  I will definitely try that again as a salad dressing, because it’s very unique.

This was a very good sweet and savory guacamole.  Jeff and I both agreed that this was the type of thing we would never have thought about trying in the past.  Martha’s American Food has introduced us to so many new and delicious recipes that we didn’t know we would love until we tried them!

Did you all know that July 14th was Bastille Day?  And can you think of a better way to celebrate all things français than to make some French Fries?  Just kidding!  French Fries are as American as mom and apple pie which is why this recipe came from Martha’s All-American section on page 37.

Martha notes that some home cooks are intimidated by making their own french fries.  For me, this is where my restaurant experience comes in handy.  While many of my young classmates were working in Michelin-starred restaurants making things like fois gras mousse with truffle shavings, I found myself working in a lot of bars with high-end comfort food.  On my very first real cooking job, I found myself working as the fry girl at a hot, newly opened beer bar in Gramercy Park, making a whole lot of french fries.  So you can say it’s something of a specialty of mine now.

The chef at this bar taught me so much about the art of frying.  I remember my first week, when I really had no idea what I was doing and I needed to blanche all the fries for that evening’s service.  Blanching is the first stage in making fries, frying them initially at a lower temperature.  Then they’re taken out and put back in with the hot oil raised to about 360° for about 2 – 3 minutes until they’re golden brown and crispy.  Well, I ended up slipping and dropping an entire tray of newly blanched fries to the ground!  In culinary school that was the kind of thing that would get you flogged if flogging were actually legal, since it’s not, it would result in a lot of screaming and cursing.  I was nearly in tears muttering “Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” over and over again.  My chef just laughed, picked up one of the ruined fries and nodded approvingly and he said “You blanched these perfectly!  Accidents happen, don’t worry about it.  I’d much rather see these fries cooked perfectly and get dropped by mistake than have you cook them badly and not drop them.”

After that, perfect french fries became something of a passion of mine.  This talented young chef passed away before his time.  I think the best way to honor him is to always cook the perfect french fry.  I arranged them in a glass, just the way we used to do at the bar for this picture.  This one’s for you, Sansev!