DATE: Wednesday, November 5, 1997           TAG: 9711050051

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Larry Bonko 

                                            LENGTH:  106 lines

BEHIND THE SCENES WITH EMPIRE BUILDER MARTHA STEWART

LOOK AT ME. I'm in the kitchen with Martha Stewart.

She is teaching your humble columnist - and about 150 other TV writers - how to transform an ordinary cookie into a SUNFLOWER COOKIE, as in Martha Stewart's Cookie of the Week Sunflower Cookie.

The cookies served at lunch came with a warning: ``Don't eat me until I'm decorated.'' The Martha Stewart creed: An undecorated cookie is an unfinished cookie.

``I cannot leave a cookie unfinished,'' says America's expert on everything in home and garden - TV's Terrific Tipster in bib overalls, the professor who teaches Tomato Sauce 101.

She inspires you to get up out of your chair and go organize your linen closet. Now!

Wouldn't you love to be Martha Stewart? She sometimes taste-tests six cakes in a day.

In her schmooze with the TV press, Stewart handled the pastry bag, stuffed with sunflower-yellow frosting, as deftly as Xena handles a sword.

Me? I'm a putz. Me, a cookie decorator? Forget it.

It was time to stop decorating and start talking to the woman who is a conglomerate unto herself. She has a new syndicated TV series (seen Monday through Friday at 9 a.m. on WTKR), a recently launched radio show for Westwood One, a World Wide Web site (marthastewart.com), a weekly spot on ``CBS This Morning,'' a newspaper column, a mail-order company, 18 books, her own line of paints, a consulting deal with K-mart and the magazine (Martha Stewart Living) from which all else springs.

A few years ago, who knew Martha Stewart? Today, she's known in almost every U.S. household, steamrolling into our daily lives like a Mack truck full of daisies, to quote Time.

The name of her company is Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. That's omni as in omnipotent. ``Martha Stewart Living'' is the hottest new show in syndication, with 3 million viewers.

What's the Martha Stewart tool of the week? Hampton Roads knows. It's the .

``People accuse me of being an over-achiever,'' said Stewart.

I wonder why?

A conversation with Martha:

Do you ever plunk yourself down on a sofa and rest?

``I never sit around. Ever. I love being busy.''

What's your idea of fun?

``My favorite thing to do is go into a strange kitchen, even if it's a galley on a boat or in somebody's home in Egypt, and be able to cook one of my recipes with what I find in that kitchen.''

What's an example of how you improvise?

``If you don't have a rolling pin, you can roll out pastry dough using a wine bottle.''

Why are you so successful?

``Because with the TV show, the magazine and other parts of the company, we teach people good things - we show them how to complete projects. On TV, you get it for free. You don't have to leave your home at night and go to an adult education class. You can learn in your own home.''

Your favorite phrase is, ``This is so easy to make.'' But many of your projects - I'm thinking vegetable ragout, for one - are a challenge. Why not do TV for the recipe-challenged?

``If I oversimplified things, that would be boring to the viewer. I don't do things that are not interesting. I care about giving people the inspiration to go out and tackle a project that may take only a few minutes to do or something like a gingerbread mansion that might take a week.

``I will say that in some of the recipes in the magazine we have too many ingredients. In my new book, I'm going back to my original premise that a really good four-course meal should be made in an hour or less in an ordinary kitchen.''

If you were writing a story about Martha Stewart, what would your angle be?

``That a homemaker like me who has had a rather ordinary life can build a multimillion-dollar company. People are sort of astonished at that. We have about 150 employees. We keep growing. In the next five years, I expect we'll be a rather large and important company.''

What was your big break?

``It was my first book, `Entertaining,' which I wrote about 14 years ago. It was and still is a best-seller, and it made people see me as an expert on cooking, entertaining and keeping house. The book started it all.''

Would you describe your home life?

``I live with three dogs, six cats and a hundred or so chickens in Connecticut, and spend weekends in East Hampton because that's where my daughter lives. She's become engaged recently, and I'm very excited about that.''

How old were you when you started hanging out in the kitchen?

``It was about the age of three. I learned from one grandmother who lived in Buffalo, and another who lived in New Jersey. I'd learn all they knew and went home to continue the education with my mother.'' (She forgot to mention that her father taught her gardening and that in that ``ordinary'' life of hers, she worked her way through college as a model).

What do you think about being spoofed on TV?

``I heard about `Saturday Night Live' doing something about a topless Martha Stewart, but I haven't seen the skit. It was probably hilarious. I'm a fan of the man (Lorne Michaels) who produces the show.''

What do you watch on TV?

``I have so much to do during the day that I'm usually watching in the middle of the night. I watch movies, programs about nature, the Discovery channel. I watch to see how others are using TV to provide information.''

Is your goal to eventually take over the world and pave it with chocolate icing?

``I don't have goals. Just ideas. And my ideas have so far proven worthwhile for the viewers and readers, and for us as a company.''

Be honest, Martha. Does my cookie look like a sunflower? A hamburger with mustard? ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by William Abranowicz

Martha Stewart...

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