Beatrice Ojakangas

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Meeting Martha

`I'd love to do this thing again. It worked out well. It was a good thing!'

About a mile before the driver turned into the parking lot of the ``Martha Stewart Living'' studio in Westport, Conn., I felt a shiver. That was the first and only twinge I would have.

``So what is Martha really like?''

I'd heard all the stories. But she was indeed ``perfectly lovely,'' to quote Julia Child. Very even keel and professional.

Martha's also very busy, incredibly well-organized and has a talent for hiring just the right people for each job. The people working on the staff are young, bright, energetic and talented. There are about 80 employees who keep ``Martha Stewart Living'' television going. There are two studios in which the segments are shot. This allows one studio to set up while the other is on camera. Digital technology provides flexibility when a show is shot and ready for editing.

One of her assistants told me that Martha always says that she has seven full-time jobs. But how can anyone keep track of seven major operations?

(Checking her Web site, here is how her position is described: Chairman and CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia LLC., an international multimedia company that includes a monthly magazine, Martha Stewart Living; a quarterly magazine, Martha Stewart Weddings; a syndicated television show, Martha Stewart Living; books written by Martha Stewart and the editors of Martha Stewart Living; a syndicated newspaper column, askMartha; a national radio show, askMartha; a mail-order catalog and online merchandising business, Martha By Mail; strategic merchandising relationships with Kmart, Sherwin-Williams, Sears, Zellers and P/Kaufmann; and the marthastewart.com Web site.)

On the set, Martha did not seem to be harried, but she does not waste a minute. Business by phone happened between ``takes'' and conferences were wedged between shooting segments.

She's interested in details and her staff researches every topic. With this kind of help, it might be easy to just accept the information. But when reading on the teleprompter that there are 24 different kinds of holly (during the taping of a segment on holiday decorations), she stopped the cameras. ``I don't think that's right,'' she said. ``There are more than that.''

And off her staff went to doublecheck. I didn't hear what the final answer was.

The building itself is no-nonsense, production-oriented, well-organized and in good taste. There are no carpets or waiting lounges with cushy furniture. Every space has monitors showing what is happening in front of the cameras.

When I arrived, Martha was taping a show with Chef Alain Coumont and each screen showed four different views of the action. Everybody in the building could watch what was going on in the studio.

At a break in the filming action, Martha entered the kitchen.

``You can give her the lutefisk now,'' whispered one of the assistants. (I had been assured that Martha likes ``weird'' stuff.)

She accepted the lutefisk with delight and said that her Norwegian sister-in-law, Rita, would cook it for Christmas dinner, but she'd need cooking instructions. Rita also was interested in learning how to make lefse.

Martha learned lefse-making on camera. It took her less than a minute to learn how to roll delicate, paper-thin rounds, lift them onto the heated grill and bake them perfectly. It took one bite of hot buttered lefse to convince her that she needed to get a set of lefse-making equipment for herself.

We started taping at about 10 a.m. and finished about 2:30 p.m., with a lunch break at noon. A gourmet lunch for employees is provided daily in the commissary -- gratis from the boss.

Martha approves all of the commissary menus. The day I was there (Friday), they served open-faced sandwiches with smoked turkey and crumbled blue cheese, lettuce and mustard honey vinaigrette, plus herbal mint tea. I especially enjoyed the wild mushroom soup.

How did I haul all that stuff?

First, I froze everything. I packed butter cookie dough, spice cookie dough and unbaked Finnish puff pastry in an insulated lunch bag. I froze the cakes in their pans and wrapped them well.

When I packed the bag I was going to check, I placed the frozen baked pulla (cardamom bread) in such a way that the cake pans protected the pulla from being crushed by those gorillas that handle airline baggage. I packed the more delicate items in plastic containers, buffered by plastic wrap so they wouldn't move around, and froze them, too. In the morning I put them into my rolling carry-on bag.

Luckily everything came through the flight and car ride without breaking. We did a minimum of baking at the last minute.

Potatoes won't wait -- not even for Martha Stewart!

For lefse, it is absolutely important that the potatoes used are russets, and that they are not overcooked. For the program, I wanted to show the exact point at which the potatoes are done, which is after 22 minutes of cooking.

The set was ready, I was poised for action and the potatoes were just right. But where was Martha? In a conference.

The challenge: How to show the correct doneness of the potatoes once Martha returned (not overcooked, but not hard). It looked like the potatoes were going to be overcooked. So we drained them, saved the water and kept it boiling and kept the potatoes in a dry pot. When we started the segment, we planned to return the boiling water to the potatoes so we could show the draining step.

When Martha finally arrived, I thought we'd made it. But then she got the hiccups and couldn't say my name in the introduction. Take two.

About the Scandinavian Christmas tree

In the first segment, a beautiful Christmas tree is in the background, all decorated with traditional straw ornaments. Why do Scandinavians use straw for ornaments? Martha asked me.

Straw has always been abundantly available in the rural areas of Scandinavia, where all of these traditions developed. Especially at this time of year, when darkness closes in and it's cold outdoors, it's a perfect time for quiet crafts and they fashion all kinds of golden straw decorations. Stars and animal shapes are typical shapes.

There was a beautiful bowl of fresh eggs on the counter. They were all colors -- pale lavender, pale green, light rusty brown -- all natural colors laid by the chickens on Martha Stewart's farm. When I commented on how beautiful they were, Martha told me that there are problems in the chicken coop right now. Too many roosters. They keep pecking the hens, so to fix the problem, they hang whole cabbages on strings so that the roosters will peck the cabbages instead of the hens.

For someone who has six homes and seven full-time jobs, I marvel at Martha's ability to stay on top of it all -- even those pesky roosters.

Beatrice Ojakangas is featured on Thursday's Scandinavian Christmas episode of ``Martha Stewart Living,'' which airs at 11 a.m. daily on Duluth's Fox Channel 21.

Ojakangas is featured in four of seven segments on the Scandinavian Christmas -- the show's theme. The segments include a Scandinavian coffee table, cloudberry layer cake, lefse and glogg, a Swedish spiced wine.

For viewing outside the Duluth area, check local cable TV and satellite listings.

For more information, please visit www.marthastewart.com

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