Vote here: Least useful, most idiotic Martha Stewart homemaking tip...

In My Humble Opinion
21

My husband used to torture himself by watching her show in the morning before he went to work. One day he yelled “You have to come see this…she’s MAKING TEA!” So I go in and sure enough, she’s putting tea in a teapot, adding hot water, then pouring it through a strainer into a teacup. Then with an absolute straight face, she looks into the camera and says in her sing-song, whispery voice: “If you’d like it sweeter…try some sugar!”

No shit?!?! For years I’ve been wondering what I could put in my food to sweeten it! Thank you, Martha!

We howl with laughter about that to this day.

22

lifted from Martha Stewart’s page

OKAY! Mittens cannot possibly be rhat expensive! why not give the sweater to charity, ya cheap bitch!! [sub]but that would be too easy!![/sub]How many of us lose their mittens,
How many of us have heard a kid say just before you walk out the door “mommy, my mittens are gone.”
Is there nobody who just goes out and buys 3 pairs of cheap mittens, because you know you’ll just lose them?

23

lifted from Martha Stewart’s page

OKAY! Mittens cannot possibly be rhat expensive! why not give the sweater to charity, ya cheap bitch!! [sub]but that would be too easy!![/sub]How many of us lose their mittens,
How many of us have heard a kid say just before you walk out the door “mommy, my mittens are gone.”
Is there nobody who just goes out and buys 3 pairs of cheap mittens, because you know you’ll just lose them?

24

Not a long ride?

Fun to see that old thread dragged back. I like how the post count reflects ones current number even though the thread is months old.

Pro-Martha. Hmmm. I recently renewed to her magazine, love the magazine. I don’t watch her show or read her Sunday column but the magazine has a few great ideas tucked around, some nice photography (after MS came out all of a sudden every single print ad had tightly focused subject/blurred background), and all the workers are credited.

Haven’t gotten around to reading the juicy biographies (very suspect sources: exes and competition),but I do picture her doing the show topless :slight_smile:

25

My personal favourite was when Martha showed us all how to make onion sandwiches. You see, her Dad used to eat them when she was growing up.

Take a piece of white bread, butter it, add some thinly sliced onions, (here’s the tricky bit) top it with another piece of buttered white bread, slice and enjoy.

It’s a good thing.

26

You know what? Misty exudes tons of hair when I comb her. Since she’s a Turkish Angora-DAMN, does that cat have tons of hair. I always joke about knitting it into a sweater.

Well, I guess if you think about it, you could get angora bunnies and comb them. That would be better than killing them for their pelt.
Mmmm…onion sandwhiches…

27

Dog sweater?? Eeeew! I adore my dog, but he has disgusting personal habits. I try to keep him clean, but I know him too well to want to wear his fur. Once he’s done with it, I’m done with it.

Once I watched Martha do this thing with potatoes.

She sliced 'em, really thin, lengthwise. Then she placed a perfect piece of Italian flat-leaf parsley between two slices, and somehow cooked them - baked or fried, I don’t remember. What you got was a translucent oval of potato with the parsley leaf showing through, like a picture. “Put one on each plate,” she suggested.

Okay, so it was kind of pretty. But these are potatoes, here. They’re for eating. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t rather have garlic mashed potatoes, or mabye nice flaky hot bakers, or potatoes cut up and roasted so they’re crusty on the outside, or … well, prepared almost any way other than what she did.

28

Sounds like Potatoes Anna. One of my favorites-potatoes sliced into chip like slices, and then layered in a dish with butter and onion and oven fried. REALLY really good.

Mmmmmmm…I could look for the recipe my mom has.

But frankly, I HATE parsley! Ick.

29

LOL, everybody! :smiley: Especially Guin–geez, I have to say, those button napkin rings sound exactly like a Brownie Girl Scout craft project, a Mother’s Day gift to be tactfully “disappeared” on Monday. And who has “extra buttons that are a nuisance 'cause they’re just hanging around”? Button are just “there”, in the bottom of the sewing drawer–until you need one. Then you can’t find them.

But see, that’s exactly what I mean, that’s her schtick–she manufactures a problem (“What to do with extra buttons…”) and then solves it.

But actually, Guin, it was the scissor handle wraps that attracted attention from upstairs. “Mom, what are you doing down there?” “Nothing, just talking about Martha Stewart on the boards…”

“Oh.” They know how I feel about Martha.

And the twig coasters make the button napkin rings look sophisticated. I mean, geez, talk about your basic Kindergarten Craft Activity. “Let’s tie all these twigs together into little raft shapes!” :rolleyes:

[hijack into knitting dog hair]
I once had a book on this out of the library. Truly sorry that I can’t remember the title. The author rather breathlessly recounted how well a hat that she made out of dog hair insulated her head in a snowstorm once. She said, “It kept my head so warm that not a single snowflake remained on my hat for the duration of the hike!” Or words to that effect.

Um, doesn’t this mean that the hat insulated so poorly that the snowflakes were all melting as they hit her warm head (and hat), that she was losing heat steadily through her essentially uninsulated dog-hair-covered head? If the hat really were insulating her head, the snowflakes would have remained unmelted. I may not be from Minnesota (“Nine months of winter–and three months of bad sledding”) but even I know that.

The dog hair that you can spin into yarn is the outside guard hairs, which don’t really have that much insulating value. The cold-weather breeds have an inner coat that’s the real insulation.
[/hijack]

30

So if your dog hair sweater gets wet, do you have to shake and wag to get the water off? And does it still have that nice wet dog smell?

My favorite Martha was a pet care segment where she and her helper were washing puppies and kittens in the sink. Lather rinse repeat. How hard is it? And they were taking about 30 seconds a pet, like they were washing up the glassware after dinner. And maybe my un-washed feral barn cats are an exception, but do people normally bathe their kittens?

The dogs and cats were followed by some other animal, like a chinchilla or guinea pig, giving itself a dust bath. Whatever it was, it didn’t need Martha’s instruction.

31

Perhaps a flea bath?

A chinchilla? Don’t they have extremely fragile bones?

32

I was under the impression you weren’t supposed to bathe cats because it washes away the oils on their skin. Without this oil you have a dry skinned cat constantly twitching and scratching great chunks of hair off. Obviously if your cat falls into a sewer pipe or something, it’s a different situation!

33

My daughter’s second grade class has a chinchilla. Every week one of the students gets to give it a dust bath. The way I understand it, this involves a pan of dust and setting the chinchilla in it.

The only cat I ever bathed was my current one when he got out of the house and got into some fleas. Even then, I had him clipped first so he would have short hair. I didn’t want to have to bathe him any more than was necessary.

Bathing a puppy is no big deal. Much easier than a new born baby. Now, I’d love to see Marth bathe my labrador/rottweiler/malamute. He hates to get wet.

34

I saw the parsley-potato chip window thing!

I just envisioned five of my friends showing up after I had slaved for hours to poke parsley attarctively into potato windows.

Me: sigh hi guys, I’m ready for a night, I’ve been working hard.
Friends: COOL! Potato chips wolf, scarf, munch! you make these? inhale, chomp Wow…they’re gone, you make any more?
Me: grrr…go buy Ruffles.

[pet bathing hijack]
I bathe my cats every couple of months or so. Its a bonding experiance. I started the habit when we first found the dirty little fuzzballs…they were really little and I don’t think they were ever ‘taught’ how to clean themselves really well. They’ve gotten better, but they sucked at it for the first couple years. They’d clean paws, tummy, and behind one ear and call it good. A few months of that and they’d smell bad.

Another example of me being bigger and meaner than they are and throwing my weight around. They have claws though. Like I said, bonding.

35

Ok, I actually like Martha Stewart - I get her magazine, I have some of her cookbooks, I even have a log-in name at her website.

Even I have to draw the line at this, though: I was looking for a good recipe the other day for a dinner party I’m having. I saw one in her cookbook for some sort of dessert (I can’t remember what it was) that called for vanilla extract. Actually, it called for a vanilla bean so that you make your own vanilla extract! Right, I’m in a panic trying to get ready for 8 people to come over and I’m going to take 2 hours to get a teaspoon worth of flavoring, when I could just use the huge bottle of the stuff I have in the pantry.