Perhaps the most valuable lesson she taught was to her second child (and oldest daughter), Stewart.
To this day, Stewart applies some of the recipes she learned from her mother to her own cooking.
But Stewart credited Big Martha for teaching her far more than just cooking.
In 2015, Stewart wrote (viaPage Six): “My mom taught me everything cooking and sewing.
She sewed my clothes.
She edged napkins and tablecloths.
I did her pierogi recipe on TV.
Excellent in penmanship, my mother wrote letters longhand.
She swam at the YMCA pool.”
Unlike Stewart, Big Martha was very private about her physical health.
“I tried to keep track of what she was doing,” Stewart told theWall Street Journal.
“But as people age, they get a little annoyed when there’s an intrusion.
It was just [an effort] to keep track: Did she go to this?
Did she get this kind of medication?”
Stewart also noted that she handed Big Martha carefully selected vitamins to help her stay healthy.
“And I made all these nice little packages of nutritional supplements, herbs and things.
And they were still in the drawer when she died,” she added.
This was very different fromStewart’s relationship with her daughter, Alexis Stewart.
“She was very private.
You don’t talk about it,” she added.
But even in death, Big Martha was still inspiring Martha to take new risks.
So we are working on a book, the caregiver’s guide.
That will take a while," she said.
