Martha Stewart is back!
Half a century ago, the Westport housewife opened The Market Basket in a corner of The Common Market, on Main Street (near where Kerri Rosenthal is now). Featuring antiques on consignment, and the creations of local bakers and cooks, it launched the careers of several local residents. (Click here for details.)
Westporters — and viewers across America — will be reminded of (or learn about) those days this Sunday (January 28, 9 p.m.). CNN debuts the first 2 of a 4-part original series: “The Many Lives of Martha Stewart.”
The second part airs February 4.
Among the residents interviewed for the show: Sarah Kerstin Gross. She has spent 40 years as owner of Cabbages & Kings Catering, C&K Take Away and, most recently, C&K Community Kitchen.
Gross was there when Stewart launched her own career, cooking Tassajara breads, honey challahs, cookies and chocolate covered bunnies for Lawrence Olivier and others out of her parents’ Greens Farms Road kitchen — around the corner from what became Stewart’s famed Turkey Hill home.
Martha Stewart and her husband Andy, at their Turkey Hill home.
“I schlepped the food there in my parents’ station wagon,” Gross recalls.
“The shop was fabulous. It recreated her kitchen in compact form, with a stove and hanging copper pots.
“We were all cooking illegally out of our homes before there were cottage laws, and lying when confronted by the Health Department, on Martha’s behalf. She was and is defiant.”
Also interviewed about the early catering years: Westport native and event planner Louise Felix, and former Westport author Elizabeth Hawes, who collaborated with Stewart.
Former Westporter, now Fairfield and Maine-based Brooke Dojny, award winning food journalist and cookbook author, joined Stewart later, helping with catering. She reflected on her time as a recipe developer for Stewart’s first book.
Not on camera but part of the local mix then were Vicky Negrin, a Stewart catering chef who was also responsible for the handwritten text of the Gnomes books, and all hand-written copy for Hay Day’s labeling (now Balducci’s); Audrey Doniger, famous for her Market Basket lemon squares; Dale Lamberty, who created legendary Easter egg panoramas and delectable baked goods, then went on to found the Great Cakes bakery, and Ujala Shu, who made Indian specialties and later ran her own catering business.
Doniger told “06880” yesterday that Stewart had “a knack for picking out people who needed to work, and who really ‘got her.'”
Recently divorced, and with 4 young children, Doniger was one of Stewart’s early suppliers. When Doniger switched from “homemade” to a Cuisinart, in order to fulfill more orders, Stewart tasted the difference.
She handed Doniger a wad of bills, and told her to teach herself how to use a Cuisinart to make cookies that tasted as if they were homemade.
Martha Stewart (right) catering, back in the day.
“It was a very special time for her to launch her catering business, using many of us,” Gross says.
“And it was important to all of us who had our beginnings there. Prepared food like that did not exist around here. To use local talent to mix and match like that still is a brilliant idea.”
All of those women rose from the 60 people who responded to a single ad Stewart placed in the Westport News, soliciting bakers and chefs for The Market Basket.
How many will be mentioned in Sunday’s CNN story (click here for details)? We’ll have to tune in to see.
But wait! That’s not enough. Martha Stewart will be back again, after CNN!
Netflix is also working on a show on the entertaining mogul. It’s due out later this year.
06880 is “The gift that keeps on giving!!!” My attention was grabbed by the headline because my late mother’s name was Martha. She was also the inaugural school secretary at Burr Farms School which was designed and built probably in 30 days because Emerson Parker (yep the same Harder Parking Plaza guy) was running the town and Gerry Rast was running the BOE and those dudes knew how to get things done (there’s a Freudian reason why they still call it LONG Lots) I was best man at a fellow old Westporter’s wedding in ‘92 (that’s 1992 not 1892 sorry Mr. Backiel) catered by none other than the wonderful SHS classmate Sarah Gross (after she worked for the slavemistress Stewart). But most of all, it inspired what could be a new weekly featurette for Dan and 06880: “Up in Danbury; Westporters who have done hard time.” There’s a long list to draw from.
Just busting a little hump on Hump Day. Carry On Westport!!!!
Eric, If your mother worked in the Burr Farms School office when it first opened, I met her many, many, many times! Mr Metelits, or Chicken Head as we called him, was her boss.
Jack, my mother knew EVERY kid at Burr Farms, particularly the ones with disciplinary problems. Len Metelits caught a lot of flak for his name and anatomical features but fortunately he was not Mr. Ready who was the principal at Greens Farms or you might not be alive today. I am still being treated for PTSD as a result of his philosophies of child discipline.
Mr. Ready- you better drink all your milk and eat all your lunch, or you’re not going out to recess! He personally dismissed every student at lunch to leave the lunch room and go to recess! I just looked up the word “ fear “ in the dictionary and definition was “Mr. Ready, Greens Farms School.” After GFS, Mr. Koehler was waiting for you at Long Lots. It’s amazing what an impression those two made on the students. We’re still talking about them.
This is TRUE Jack. I don’t know if you knew this but when I was a kid at Greens Farms Dr. Lebhar found out that Mr. Ready was force feeding the kids and raised a big stink with the BOE and almost got him fired. I remember Dr. Lebhar saying that making the kids eat when they weren’t hungry was a sure way to turn the whole generation into obese, adults.
I didn’t know that.
As the saying goes Jack “The truth shall set you free” (even in Florida).
Eric, We’re in Maryland now, 43 miles from Virginia. This is my fifth response, so I’m all done.
Jack, go for six, see if Dan catches you. This could be the dawn of a whole new 06880 parlor game. It can also be just one more way for YOU, Jack Backiel to stick it to the man!!!
I remember that our garden club got to tour her barn and gardens in Westport. Martha came out and wandered with us, showing some of her favorite plants, etc. She was pleasant and surprisingly tall. She had an elegance and a formality, as well.
The early days with Martha. I worked with a garden designer, Mark Inabnit, who was a friend of Martha’s. We’d piggy-back orders of perennials with hers and pick them up at her place. I got the full tour of her property as gardeners love showing off their gardens to other gardeners.
Martha Stewart back!?!? Gag me with a spoon.
You don’t need a spoon to gag on Martha.
No name????
Agree with ‘a neighbor’ !
I wonder how many people she owes money to in Westport? You get the gist, right folks?
I really think there needs to be a featurette on Westporters who went to prison back in the days when greed was punished. Those days are long gone. Martha Stewart meanwhile is even now posing scantily clad on social media in her mid eighties. The chutzpah!!!! That’s why I closed my Facebook account. 06880 is more fun and Dan runs a tighter ship than Zuck. I do think expanding from 3 to 5 comments could be the beginning of the end for the Woogster and encourage him to stick to his guns with 3.