Guess Who's Coming To Dinner!

The reigning domestic diva arrives, and she's one gracious guest

"Martha Stewart and her boyfriend are flying in for dinner on Saturday night," read the e-mail from my friend, Dan Hinkley. "Would there be any chance of you coming to whisk your magic in the kitchen and then you and your wife join us for dinner?"

Hinkley and his partner, Robert Jones, run Heronswood Nursery in Kingston, and the kitchen at their nearby home is incredibly well-appointed. There's a black-enameled Aga range on one side and doors overlooking their garden and Puget Sound on the other. I had cooked there before, and I would have jumped at a chance to cook there again without the reigning diva of domesticity. But cooking for the Martha was certainly an added attraction.

Stewart is such an American icon that I wonder if it is possible for anyone to encounter her unencumbered by a bucket load of preconceptions.

When she arrived, I made a conscious effort to approach her with what the Buddhists call a "Beginner's Mind" — that is, unprejudiced by anything I had heard or seen or read. In a way, I was successful. After meeting her, I see Martha in ways I never did before.

But I have to admit that when she shook my hand and said, "It's nice to see you," I felt as if I had known her for some time.

Martha is taller than some might imagine, and she presents a striking figure. Maybe her modeling career gave her the skills to hold herself in a way that commands attention, or maybe that inherent ability gave her an edge when she worked as a model. In any case, I think I might have been staring a bit when I said quite honestly that I was thrilled to meet her.

Was I nervous about cooking for her? You bet. From the moment I received that invitation, I fretted endlessly over what to cook and how to serve it. But standing beside me in the kitchen, slurping ice-cold local virginica oysters almost as fast as I could shuck them, Martha put me immediately at ease.

"I'm easy to please," she assured me. "I love everything. These oysters are fantastic. And the sausages!" Sizzling lengths of Uli's Famous Sausages from the Pike Place Market were being passed on trays.

"Sure you are," I said facetiously, but I believed her. And as she stooped over the Aga to inspect the braised short ribs and even helped me skim the fat off the top of the reducing cooking liquid, I felt as comfortable with her in the kitchen as I do with anyone. I always want desperately for food to be as good as it can be, and I realized that I didn't want it any more or less because it was Martha Stewart.

In the days that followed our meeting, as I contemplated why I admire this controversial woman so much, it occurred to me that while other American tycoons have made their fortunes off resource extraction, Martha built her empire on information. What's more, the information was something that no one else had properly valued, at least not for a long time.

If Oprah Winfrey has convinced American viewers that we can be our best selves, Martha Stewart has persuaded us to do our best work, even if we are simply making the bed or feeding the chickens, and that's a good thing.

Greg Atkinson is author of "Entertaining in the Northwest Style." He can be reached at greg@northwestessentials.com. Susan Jouflas is The Seattle Times assistant art director, newsfeatures.