Last night, Justin put Julie & Julia on, and I was plunged into a fit of nostalgia. Years ago, when I started this stupid project, I conducted research by reading Julie Powell’s original blog from the beginning. (It still existed online, back then, even though the project was finished and her book was already published. You can see the first post here thanks to the Wayback Machine.) Sitting in my shitty Portland cubicle in a job that was making me insane, I obsessively followed Julie’s troubles with finding ingredients (I had never heard of Dean & DeLuca until reading her blog), maneuvering around a miserably tiny New York kitchen, and trying to muster the energy to cook after a 12-hour workday. I never imagined that would become my life. And yet, here we are.
We must talk about the latest news: Gwyneth’s FOURTH cookbook, The Clean Plate. The email announcing it, I’m sure you can imagine, has ruined me. Gwyneth explains the theme of this book, which sounds exactly like the other ones:
When I sat down to write The Clean Plate, the first rule was that everything had to taste really good. The second was that every recipe had to comply with the fundamentals of clean eating. I wanted the recipes to work on days when you’re craving a healthy, filling lunch or planning a dinner for a friend with a food sensitivity. And because I love to cook and I love to eat, I wanted it all to feel fun. I hope it does for you, too. The Clean Plate hits bookshelves January 8, right in time for my own annual detox—you can preorder it now.
The nightmare continues.
My friend Annie — from my Portland days, speaking of! — recently moved down the street from us, so when she invited us to her Thanksgiving dinner, we happily accepted, excited to only have to travel a few blocks on the coldest Thanksgiving in a century or whatever the record was. I volunteered to make my first-ever pumpkin pie, and decided to try out a recipe from my new cookbook Rose’s Baking Basics. The recipe called for a homemade pie crust that incorporates cream cheese, somehow? Which turned into this:
Thanks for nothing, ROSE
Store-bought crust it would have to be! The rest of the pie turned out fine. Pumpkin pie isn’t that hard, apparently. Since the non-crust portion was so easy, I decided to throw in another recipe: Gwyneth’s Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Spices. Continue reading
Obviously, the main point of Easter is brunch. Right? That’s what the big deal about Easter is? And what better way to celebrate the day Jesus drove all the rabbits out of Scotland than to cook some Gwyneth Paltrow brunch recipes!
I have returned from Wisconsin, dog in tow, and I could not be happier to have this whole moving process finally, finally completed. But anyway, we can talk about that later. Let’s talk about Thanksgiving!
Oh, boy. We have a lot to cover. My family was here for the past week, for a whirlwind tour of Portland, Seattle (although I wasn’t present for that portion), and a five-day stay on the San Juan Islands, all the way up in practically Canada. Somewhere in there, I found time to cook two Gwyneth recipes for these unsuspecting fools, and it wasn’t totally awful! Even after the grease fire.
Well, that was a birthday weekend. And somewhere in there, I actually found the time to complete two recipes! They both barely count as recipes, but so does about 50% of this book, so let’s take what we can get.
Looking into various options for duck yesterday had me nervously eyeing my bank account, so I wanted to cook something cheap and easy for dinner. Paging through the cookbook, I realized Gwyneth’s Macaroni & Cheese recipe included mascarpone, which I had a tub of sitting in the fridge from my ravioli disaster. I have no idea what else to do with mascarpone, so this seemed like kismet.
As I sit here, waiting for my dough to rise and my sauce to simmer (you’ll have to wait to see what I’m making!), I thought I’d say a few words about my mom, seeing as it’s Mother’s Day. Sorry for the divergence, but I’m sure Gwyneth would approve. Also, my mom emailed me to say that she’s waiting for a new blog post from me, and then yelled at me again when I called to wish her a happy Mother’s Day. So, this should shut her up.
The Danny/Gwyneth Project 