Miss Millie | Monkey Maker

Then there was the day I met Martha Stewart

In my youth, I was quite the consumer of Rolling Stone magazine. I remember reading many articles where the writer had been given the opportunity to interview some musical god or other only to leave the interview intensely disappointed that their expectations of the person or band had not been met. "Never met your idol" was not an uncommon conclusion.

It's no secret that my living hero is one Martha Stewart and by amazing good fortune Martha was doing a book signing in Beverley Hills on my most recent trip to the US this month. I arrived early and lined up with a host of fancy, surgically enhanced Californian housewives. Waiting patiently in line, Martha's assistants informed us that there would be no posing with Martha, no requests for dedications in the book signing and by absolutely no means shall we have a flash turned on our camera.

I get it. Martha is a busy lady and no lady young or old looks good under a daytime flash. But no dedications? No posing? Oh Martha. I still love you despite your high maintenance behaviour. You're just lucky I wasn't writing for Rolling Stone.

Here I am, in brief conversation with Martha about roses gardens and Russel Crowe.

Millie x

The Perfect Egg

I love cooking classes. No matter how complex or how basic they are, I always learn something new. Gagganeau (a German appliance brand) have sponsored a series of 2-hour cooking classes on a Sunday morning at the City Markets. They've secured a host of Wellington's star chefs and restaurant owners and packaged it up to look like a cooking class while really being a thinly veiled advertisement for their appliances. The approach has worked well for them to date though today's class was more a testament to the lesser known complexities of their product than it's virtues but that's really a whole different story.

The classes to date have been excellent and I've learned how to cure and smoke my own bacon, how to make sushi and today; several ways with eggs.

The instructor, Zelda Haines from Nikau Cafe - which is a bit of a Wellington breakfast institution - taught us her famed sage fried eggs, scrambled eggs (the M.F.K. Fisher way) and proper egg custard. All delightful.

Did you know that eggs cook way before boiling point? The different proteins in an egg cook at between 62 - 78 degrees so no more cracking my eggs into a boiling pan of water or pouring scrambled mixture into a heated pool of butter!

Millie x