Martha! Martha! Martha!

Oh, Martha!

Once upon a time, you lured me in with your crafty crafts and your culinary delights.

I subscribed to your magazine and tore out every project and recipe I wanted to tackle. I watched your television show and vowed to emulate your highfalutin' ways.

I would be the epitome of domestic fabulousness.

Of course, this never happened.

The closest I came was when I copied this cake:

I crushed up the chocolate wafers to make the dirt, I made pastillage and cut out the picket fence. I dyed and sculpted marzipan into tiny vegetables. I baked a layer of carrot and a layer of zucchini cake and made cream cheese frosting.

Amazingly, I was so successful with this I ended up making it twice. Once for a baby shower and once for a birthday.

Obviously, this was before I had a child.

It was hard enough to follow Martha's multi-step directions for everything when I had no one hanging on me or trying to follow me into the bathroom. Now it was damn near impossible.

I let my magazine subscriptions go, and I let my cookbooks gather dust on the shelf. Ain't nobody got time for Martha.

Until now.
I HAVE to do it.

So, without further ado, I give you

After paging through this and seeing nothing that I wanted to make, I was tempted to do replicate the Salted Edamame recipe.

My darling husband pointed out that steaming some edamame and throwing some salt on it did not really constitute a recipe.

So, I rolled my eyes and chose the least offensive thing in the book:

Butternut Squash with Roasted Garlic

• 1 large butternut squash, halved and seeded 
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 
• 4 sprigs of fresh thyme 
• 4 large cloves of roasted garlic
• 1 cup warm chicken stock, or low-sodium canned

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Season the squash with salt and pepper and tuck 2 sprigs of thyme into each cavity. Place, cut side down, on the baking sheet and roast until fork-tender, about 40 minutes.

When the squash is cool enough to handle, discard the thyme; peel the squash and coarsely chop. Combine the squash, garlic and 1/2 cup chicken stock in a food processor and puree until smooth.

Add the remaining stock gradually until the mixture forms a very loose puree. Season the soup with salt and pepper.

Seems pretty basic, right? 

Here's my roasted squash:

And my beautiful roasted garlic:

And the gorgeous finished product:

Beautiful, right?

Yeah.

It tasted like baby food.

That perfectly roasted butternut squash and head of garlic, thyme and broth blended together tasted like a whole lot of NOTHING.

Martha?  Your recipe sucks.

I salted and peppered the hell out of it and it was still ridiculously boring.

Then I grabbed some curry powder. Minimally better.

Added some cayenne. 

Getting there.

A dash of cinnamon.

We may have something tolerable?

And then? I gave up.

Fortunately the husband (who wouldn't let me just make the damn edamame) ate it.

As for cookbook #18 of 99?

Buh-bye, Martha. Your recipe may have been healthy, but it was also tasteless. Something I'm sure you aren't used to hearing about yourself.

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