It Was A Martha Week

Martha Stewart, that is. And I am not afraid to say that I admire her. She has elevated cooking, crafting and cleaning from a housewifey thing to something to be admired and taken seriously. Her self-promotion gets on my nerves sometimes, but you have to take the little bit of bad with the good.
On Monday, Martha was doing a book signing for her new book, "Martha Stewart's Dinner At Home". It was at a Williams Sonoma Store at the King of Prussia Mall - once the largest mall in the US. You had to purchase the book from Williams Sonoma to have the privilege of getting a ticket to stand in line to see Martha. Free mini cupcakes, baked from a recipe in her book, were available to help pass the time waiting on line. The line snaked through the mall. It was so exciting and the time passed pretty quickly. As I was debating about who to have her inscribe the book to - do I give it as a gift or do I keep it for myself? - we were told that Martha was not personalizing the book. Decision made! That was easy.
As we got closer and closer, it became more and more structured. Have the leaf flap of your book here, no photographs here, only photographs there, etc.... Considering how many people were there and that we were close to the end of the line, she was delightful.
That's me in the blue. Can you see one of her bodyguards in the background?

So if that wasn't enough Martha, Wednesday a gang of us had tickets to go to the Martha Stewart show in NYC. I had to leave my house, in suburban Philadelphia at 4:30 AM. Our fearless leader, who obtained the tickets, got us to Manhattan in record time. We grabbed some breakfast and got on line at about 8 AM. Once we were allowed inside, we signed in, had our purses searched and then waited.

If you watch the show, you're familiar with Joey - a kind of goofy sometimes sidekick. Well, he was our warm-up guy. He instructed us on the finer art of hand clapping and sound effects like Mmmmmmmmm!During our wait, we could purchase items from the Martha wall. Who couldn't use a Martha hoodie? (It's a good thing.)


Then we filed into the studio.
It was huge and was laid out in a horizontal orientation. The audience was much larger than I expected. I think it was about 165 people. There was seating on the floor right in front of Martha. We found out that you had to "know somebody" to be seated there. (That's our fearless leaders next goal.)
Emeril was a guest, cooking from his new book - 20, 40 60. And YES! we got a copy of his book as a freebie. The show is live in NY, but not in Philly. The hour flew by. It was so much fun . We're all ready to go again. It IS a good thing.