I hope you all enjoyed your July 4th festivities!  I know I did, maybe a little too much which is why I was too exhausted to post yesterday.  But you didn’t think I’d let a fun holiday like the 4th of July pass without spicing up the party with some Martha-style entertaining, did you?  Of course not!  That’s why we took to the grill and did up some North Carolina Style Pulled Pork Sandwiches from page 181.

This is a pretty complicated recipe, especially if you’re a relative novice to grilling like Jeff and I are.  We weren’t able to get the pork exactly right, because we had too much heat on the grill, and that made it cook too quickly — but it sure was mighty tender!  This recipe also has a lot of components.  In addition to the low and slow smoky pulled pork you need to make an Apple Cider Barbecue Sauce, bake up some homemade Cornmeal Rolls and make a side dish of Green Tomatoes Au Gratin.

Jeff did the spicy apple cider barbecue sauce perfectly.  Ever since I’ve started the Martha Project, he’s been dying to get in on the action, and you know how men love all things barbecue-related, so this was the perfect recipe for him.  I made the cornmeal rolls — and they were by far the best homemade yeast rolls I’ve ever done, working on this project is really upgrading my baking skills!  Big and soft and eaten fresh out of the oven — so much better than your average store bought rolls and totally worth the extra work!  I also did the green tomatoes au gratin, which is very easy to make and the perfect tangy-sweet side to the spicy-sweet pulled pork sandwiches.  These sandwiches were a big hit and a lot of fun for a holiday meal!

After trying something new with a Spoon Bread yesterday, today I did one of my personal favorite comfort foods, Buffalo Chicken Wings from page 92 of the Northeast section.

Buffalo wings are one of those treats that truly depend of where you’re getting them.  Bad wings can be soggy, limp and mild, which is a real bummer when you’re mouth is watering for the real thing!  But good wings are truly sublime — crispy, tender with a hot and spicy sauce that you need to balance with some cool blue cheese dipping sauce and crunchy celery sticks.  Martha’s recipe were good wings, in fact, they were so good that Jeff said they were the best he’s ever had!

I used to work in a restaurant where the chef did his version of buffalo wings, opting for a sweet and tangy barbecue sauce instead of the traditional hot sauce.  He taught me a little secret of how to do perfectly crispy wings — let the wings sit out on a sheet pan for at least an hour, so that they’re dry when they hit the hot oil, this makes the skin ideal for frying to a perfect crisp.  Personally, I’m a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to Buffalo wings and I prefer to use Frank’s Hot Sauce on mine as Martha’s recipe calls for.  I also like to use the whole wing, ’cause some say less is more but when it comes to eating my Buffalo wings, I think more is more!  I really loved trying Martha’s homemade dipping sauce.  Even with the best brands like Marie’s, store bought blue cheese dressings skimp on the blue cheese.  When you make your own you can crumble as much as you want and I want lots of blue cheese in my dipping sauce!

This has been a tough week and it’s only Tuesday.  Yesterday I found out my cat was very ill and today my main computer shut down due to a hard drive failure.  I’m kind of wondering what’s in store for me next on this hot 4th of July week? Identity theft?  Maybe a third degree cooking burn?  I don’t know, but as they say, when it rains it pours.  I do know that it’s a good week for some serious comfort food and these delicious Buffalo wings sure did the trick!

Yesterday I tried a new recipe that I had never heard of, Spoon Bread from the South on page 198.

One of my favorite things in doing the Martha Project is trying out recipes like this.  Because it’s always good to broaden your horizen and embark on the adventure of making  interesting new recipes.  I also like the way Martha’s American Food takes dishes that have been lost to the past in a sea of haute cuisine and encourages us to bring these forgotten treasures back to our dining rooms.

Spoon bread is very interesting.  It has a light and airy texture that tasted like a hybrid of quiche and cornbread.  Since I didn’t have any chorizo, I used the left over kielbasa from the night before.  I think chorizo would have been better, its sharp spiciness would have been a nice contrast to the mild taste of the spoon bread.

I’d like to try this one again not just because I want to use the suggested chorizo, but because it was hard for me to truly enjoy eating last night.  I didn’t write about my Martha adventures last night because I had just recieved very sad news about my elderly cat, Trixie.  She’s been with me my entire adult life and while I’m grateful for our 20 years together, I’m also shaken by her illness.  Yesterday, I was devasted by her cancer diagnosis, and that made it hard to taste food in the way it’s meant to be tasted.  My experience was somewhat clinical; giving thought to how the food tasted and the contrasting flavors and textures.  Eating should be something we experience emotionally — I want to feel the sensation of eating a delicious meal with my heart, not think about it with my brain.

I know if Trixie could talk she’d probably say “Snap out of it and keep blogging!” because that’s the kind of cat she is — strong and tough!  And this spoon bread is a truly unique recipe, so I intend to not only make it again, but also blog about it again as well, so that I can truly do justice to this old fashioned treasure.

Today I kept it simple with a Midwestern favorite, Grilled Kielbasa Ring With Sauerkraut from page 242.

Like much of Martha’s American Food, this meal is a reflection of our vast melting pot.  The hearty kielbasa (which is the Polish word for sausage) came to this nation by way of early European immigrants and has since become a much loved American staple.  Martha Stewart comes from a Polish-American background, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this dish is as nostalgic for her as lasagna is for me.

This was as easy to make as it was delicious, and I’ll admit that I didn’t make my own sauerkraut.  I’ll try to make my own one of these days, but the store bought also tastes great.  I didn’t hollow out the bread, because I love a good, thick crusty bread.  The kielbasa sandwich was spicy, smoky and satisfying! We topped it off with trip to a neighborhood ice cream parlor where I got a Creamsicle ice cream soda, which is orange soda mixed with vanilla ice cream and topped with a huge scoop of vanilla on top.  So good and so filling, I feel like I never need to eat again…until tomorrow when I get hungry!

Overall, this was a fun and tasty way to start celebrating the 4th of July.

Yesterday my culinary road trip with Martha was interrupted by an actual road trip down to St. Petersburg to visit my mom at her new condo.  Today, I was once again able to hit the road in the comfort of my own kitchen and make a Vermont Maple Bundt Cake from page 138.

As a small child I used to spend my summers in Vermont with my parents’ best friends and their two daughters.  I remember how much I used to love little maple sugar candies shaped like tiny bears!  Real Vermont maple syrup always makes me nostalgic for those days and Martha’s dessert is a unique way to bring the comforting flavor of maple syrup in a moist, delicious bundt cake.

I followed this recipe exactly — when you’re making a cake, especially one you’re not familiar with, it’s important to be true to the recipe because the ratio of dry ingredients to moist ones will determine the texture.  Too much flour wouldn’t create such a tender and delicate cake.  This recipe uses only brown sugar and maple syrup to sweeten it, which gives it a rich, warm flavor you can’t quite achieve with white sugar.  Fresh whipped cream drizzled with maple syrup on top completed the experience and because it’s a bundt cake, you know it has to be beautiful to look at as well!

This is a wonderful cake to serve at a party because your guests will love it and they’ll definitely want you to share the recipe with them!

My menu today is two great tastes that go great together — Corn Dogs and Vichyssoise!

Perhaps this requires an explanation.  Okay, here’s the story — tomorrow I’ll be out of the house from early in the morning until late at night; not an ideal situation for serious cooking.  So I had a sneaky idea to make two of Martha’s recipes today, Corn Dogs from the Southwest, page 298, and Vichyssoise from the Northeast, page 95, with separate photos and stories that I would post both tonight and tomorrow night. Jeff and I would eat this as one satisfying, if somewhat strange menu, and nobody would ever need to know. It was a plan so cunning you could slap a tail on it and call it a weasel!

But then I realized that a meal consisting of a Texas County Fair favorite, and an upscale New York cold potato and leek soup was simply too audacious not to write about!  Besides, it also personifies what I love about Martha’s American Food — it has plenty of high-brow and low-brow options depending on your tastes and mood and isn’t that what American cooking is all about?

So how was it as a meal?  Actually, it was incredibly good!  The corn dogs were exactly what a good, old-fashioned corn dog should be – chewy and meaty and delicious.  And the Vichyssoise was refreshing and creamy, with the perfect velvety texture that goes down so smooth.  And as I face my first summer in Florida, good cold soup recipes are a must-have!

I highly suggest everyone try making a main dish and a side that appear on the face of it to be a ridiculous combination, because you just might be surprised by how delectable the results can be!  This still leaves me in a bind about what I’m going to do tomorrow, I can only say it will be something that’s very easy to prepare.

The weather is finally clearing up and I was able to make it to the store where I picked up a beautiful baguette that I used to make Martha’s Louisiana Bread Pudding from page 215.

This is a rich and decadent treat that traces back to Louisiana’s French roots and is a very popular dessert in New Orleans French Quarter.  Made with drunken raisins and drenched in a creamy bourbon sauce, it fits in perfectly with the high spirited New Orleans tradition.

I always love a good baguette, but ideally, it should have been a bit more stale because the harder the bread the better it absorbs the custard.  But it worked very nicely and tasted like the most indulgent french toast ever!  The only change I made to Martha’s recipe was to cook off some of the alcohol from the bourbon before adding it to the creamy sauce.  I prefer to burn off some of the harsh edge of the alcohol leaving only the complex flavors of the bourbon with its hints of sweetness, vanilla, warm spices and toasted pecans.

As I mentioned in my introduction to The Me n’ Martha Project, I don’t want to give away these recipes because they’re not my own and I want to encourage you to buy Martha’s American Food.  But this recipe happens to be on MarthaStewart.com, and here’s the link if you want to try it for yourself — so if you love extravagant New Orleans style good eats and high spirits turn on some jazz and start cooking!

This week I experienced my first tropical storm!  Debby came to town last Sunday, and although it’s getting better out there, the roads are still flooded and the winds are still going strong.  Once again I find myself trying to figure out what recipes I can do based on my  dwindling food supply and today I found a good one – Deviled Eggs from the South on page 163.

Deviled eggs are one our nation’s most popular appetizers.  I actually found blogs devoted to nothing but deviled eggs and discovered that November 2nd is National Deviled Eggs Day!  There’s been a trend toward making the deviled egg more upscale by adding everything from caviar to lobster to it.  I liked the way Martha’s recipe kept it simple and basic but still delicious.  Part of the beauty of Martha’s American Food is that it keeps its focus on good, wholesome cooking the way it was intended to be, without all the bells and whistles associated with the modern foodie movement.  Sometimes the best food involves just a handful of ingredients that you can make into something special.  I’ve made a lot of fancy-shmancy deviled eggs over the years, but while they were different than this recipe I wouldn’t say they were better.  This was the perfect, old fashioned bite sized appetizer!

This is a great appetizer for any kind of party.  Almost everyone will enjoy them, except perhaps a woman I knew who became highly upset when I attempted to give her a slice of devil food cake claiming that she would not eat food of the Devil!  I imagine she’d probably have the same reaction to deviled eggs — but then again, I don’t invite her to my parties because she scares me!

Today I stayed in the Northeast and tried Martha’s Sticky Buns recipe from page 127.

Sticky buns are a popular dessert that can be found in food courts all around the country.  My first encounter with a popular chain was back in 1997 when I was working on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  Every day as I ascended from the subway escalator, I would be greeted with the enchanting scent of fresh cinnamon buns straight out of the oven.  I tried to resist the temptation but eventually I surrendered to the intoxicating aroma and entered the store — it was love at first bite!  At least once a week I would bring some buns back home to enjoy after dinner.  Years later, this chain became very popular, and I started smelling those delicious buns everywhere, but something had changed.  It wasn’t that they weren’t good, because of course they were!  But they were a bit of a letdown from the buns I remembered.  They were one of those foods that just smelled a little better than they tasted.  I was always determined to try making a similar dessert by scratch, but I never got around to it — until today.

Making a dough with yeast is always a bit difficult.  Although I’ve mastered pizza dough, I haven’t worked enough with yeast rolls to be totally confident in what I’m doing.  I think that the dough came out a little thicker than it should have, and it was like a hybrid of a bun and a scone.  It was very good, much better than store brought, but I’d like to keep working this type of dough until I’ve truly mastered it.  These sticky buns did give my whole kitchen a heavenly aroma of sugary cinnamon and they tasted almost as good as they smelled!  From the gooey pecan topping to the brown sugar and cinnamon filling with a touch of tangy sour cream, it was a real treat.

If you love those sticky buns you find in malls and airports, I’d highly recommend that you give Martha’s recipe a try and make them by scratch.  It’s loving ode to the Pennsylvania Dutch Country’s rich culinary history.

Retro desserts are all the rage these days.  With the rise of old time favorites like cupcakes, red velvet cake and lemon meringue pie, it seems the demand for desserts that bring us back to a simpler time is higher than ever.  But when we think of retro what comes to mind are the 1950s, 60s and 70s — today I did a retro dessert that goes all the way back to the earliest American colonial settlers, an Indian Pudding from the Northeast section on page 128.

I had never heard of Indian pudding until I saw it in Martha’s book and I was intrigued.  It’s the kind of dessert that looks plain when compared to today’s fancy cupcakes and elaborate pastries, but once you taste it I bet you’ll be hooked — I know I am!

Indian pudding is a sweet corn and molasses spoon bread that’s easy to make and cooks low and slow.  It needs just a handful of ingredients that can be found in almost every home bakers pantry.  The result is sweet, but not cloyingly so, with the warm, rustic spices of ginger and cinnamon.  I think this would be perfect for a Thanksgiving dinner, as it would fit perfectly side by side with a homemade pumpkin pie.  It can be topped with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream or just eaten plain – it’s that delicious!  I used whipped cream and topped it with just a sprinkling of freshly grated nutmeg.

I hope that the retro craze finds room for Americans to re-embrace Indian pudding, because even if it doesn’t take us back to our own childhoods, it brings us back to our early American roots in both a soothing and delectable way!