(I should also point out the elephant in the room: We’ve passed the 9-month deadline I set for myself. WHOOPS. Looks like I failed. If that bothers you, you’re free to find another blog where they’re cooking all of Gwyneth Paltrow’s recipes for no reason. BEST OF LUCK TO YOU. Missed deadline aside, I won’t stop cooking, because I will not be satisfied until I’ve completed all these recipes or we’re all dead. Whichever comes first, although I think the latter might actually be preferable. My move to New York has obviously derailed things, but I’ll keep trucking along, for the two of you who are still reading and aren’t my parents. Anyway, let’s DO THIS.)

This lemon spaghetti is so stupidly easy. Boil water. Cook pasta. (I didn’t have any spaghetti, but I have somehow acquired many, many boxes of other kinds of pasta, so I just used one of those boxes instead. I think I used fusilli? I don’t know. Something goofy-looking. To trick myself into thinking I was enjoying this.) Meanwhile, zest a lemon, slice it in half, and squeeze the lemon juice into the same bowl as the lemon zest. Then grate a shitload of Parmesan cheese. Add some salt, pepper, and olive oil, until you have a “wet paste,” which is a disgusting way to talk about something you’re going to eat.

This is what it looks like when you put lemon juice and basil in pasta.

Throw in a couple tablespoons of pasta water, and add the cooked noodles to your bowl. Mix the stuff until each noodle is coated with the cheesy, lemony mixture, and roughly tear in some fresh basil leaves. Eat with some sort of a salad and wine, and go to bed starving and half-drunk off of only one glass of wine. If this is what it takes to look like Gwyneth Paltrow, it sounds like an absolute fucking nightmare.

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

At the Grammys, Gwyneth Paltrow was so starving she thought Adele was a leg of lamb in a dress.

It’s laughable how easy it was. I should have known. It shouldn’t have surprised me that duck bacon in Brooklyn is literally sold on the sidewalk. But, there it was, in the heart of the paltriest, most pitiable farmer’s market I’ve ever seen. Six tents, crammed on the length of one sidewalk, offering very little in produce (no duh, it’s January in New York, but STILL. Very depressing). I walked up and down the block twice, looking for the duck salesman the internet had said might be there, before I finally saw why I hadn’t seen him the first two times: he was just some dude, youngish with a hipster beard, sitting atop a cooler, behind a hand-painted sign that simply said, “DUCKS.”

“I need some duck bacon?” I ventured. “You’ve come to the right place,” he replied. It was a very mundane conversation, considering the months and effort that had gone into my first forays in duck-bacon-purchasing. How could it be this easy? “How much do you need?” he asked. “How much do you got?” I shot back, feeling like a rebel. And, just like that, three plastic-wrapped packs of duck bacon were dropped on a table in front of me. I handed him some cash, he handed me the bacon, and I strolled off. Easy as that. I giggled nervously to myself, clutching the plastic bag to my chest and anxiously eyeing a trendy hipster couple pushing their kid in a stroller, lest they think they could make a grab and run.

Flushed with confidence, I ventured down the block to a butcher shop, one of those old-timey ones with sawdust on the floor and meat hanging from the windows. I asked the girl behind the counter if they had any duck, and she strolled into the back of the building, where she spent the next ten minutes. I had never purchased a whole bird before — not even so much as a whole chicken — so I was extremely nervous. Why was it taking so long? Was she chasing it around the backyard and chopping its head off? Would I have to chop its head off?! (Most of my knowledge of how whole duck is served comes from the Chinese dinner scene in A Christmas Story.)

Finally, she returned with what looked just like a thinner, longer chicken (thankfully headless) in a bag. Pleased, I paid for it and moved on to the next store: an extremely crunchy, organic market down the street. By this point, I was lugging around over $40 in duck, so I felt both an extreme sense of self-satisfaction, and also sore arms. Sure, I could have returned home, dropped off the duck, and gotten the same ingredients at my shitty corner C-Town grocery store for half the price, but A) you’re always told to “respect the ingredient” and if I was going to be serving $40 worth of duck, I was going to get the best, most organic ingredients, sore arms and long lines be damned, and B) I really, really, really hate everyone and everything about C-Town. It’s unspeakably horrendous, and I hope they go out of business tomorrow, if not sooner.

Dead duck. Only slightly terrifying.

But I managed to lug home all my ingredients on the subway, which was no small feat considering the hefty duck in my arms. Before moving to New York, I was nervous about looking like a fool as I carted exotic meats and seafood on the subway for this project. Now, after a few months here, I know everyone is too busy pretending not to notice the homeless guy screaming at the advertisement to even care about the kid carrying some chicken or whatever. I’m still not quite used to the idea that the more crowded a city is, the more invisible you become.

I knew this recipe would take at least five hours, so I got to work immediately upon returning home. For dinner I would be serving Gwyneth’s famous Duck Ragu, as well as a Classic Chopped Salad, which I chose because A) it’s easy and B) it has duck bacon in it, and I wanted a whole feast of duck to celebrate my triumph, damnit!

Sorry to get all Gwyneth on you, but this really is the best stuff ever.

The ragu, you should know, begins with a story about the time Gwyneth was given a cooking lesson from Jamie Oliver for her birthday. Of course. Even Jamie Oliver is nothing but a paid servant to Gwyneth Paltrow. She regales us with a description of the wonderful duck ragu he prepared with her, and then tells us that this recipe is her version of it. NOOOOOO. We want Jamie’s version! No one ever gives ME a cooking lesson from Jamie Oliver.

Step one is to roast a whole duck. So I preheated the oven, and nervously removed the dead bird from its bag. I opened the “cavity” and removed the little bag of innards and immediately discarded them because, come on, guys, that’s disgusting. I then rubbed the outside of the bird with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then rubbed down the INSIDE, which was horrifying, just stroking the inner ribs of a dead animal. Oh god, it was the worst and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

I inserted the dead thing in the oven, where it would sit for two hours as I rotated it every half-hour. It pretty much immediately started to smell like the greatest thing ever. Also smelling like the greatest thing ever (gooooood segue): the diced duck bacon I was sauteeing in a pot on the stove. Once it had crisped up, I dumped in a whole pile of diced carrots, celery, garlic, and onions, and sprinkled some spices all over the mess but I don’t remember what spices those were so SORRY. It smelled ridiculous, though, and only kept getting better. Those simmered for about 20 minutes, before everything was nice and tender, and then I dumped in two big cans of whole peeled tomatoes, a little bit of water, and some Italian red wine. Gwyneth DEMANDS Italian wine, and my parents had given me a bottle of Italian red for Christmas, so I uncorked that baby and poured a little into the mix. And oh my god did it smell perfect after that point.

Pretty, pretty, pretty good.

Sadly, it wasn’t even 4 pm, and we had a long way to go before dinner. But I also had this freshly opened bottle of wine on the counter, so why not taste a little of it? Next thing I know, I’ve watched nearly two hours of the first season of the Real World while the sauce was simmering on the stove, I had finished practically an entire bottle of wine by myself, and found myself afternoon-drunk, with a whole roast duck that still needed carving. I’d imagine this is exactly how it goes for Gwyneth at home when she makes this recipe.

Uhhhhh, now what?

I stared at the dead, juicy bird, and turned it over three times, trying to figure out where to start. I grabbed what I thought was our sharpest knife, flipped the duck over once more, and ran the knife along the center. The knife scraped horribly against bone, and nothing happened. So I grabbed a fork in my left hand and rethought my strategy, choosing instead to just shred the thing to pieces wherever I could find soft meat (Gwyneth does tell me to shred it, anyway). This took nearly half an hour of painstaking labor, but by the end I felt reasonably confident that all the usable meat had been extracted from the bird and added to the simmering pot of sauce on the stove. Well, probably half the usable meat; the other half went directly into my mouth without ever touching the ragu. Feeling drunk and confident, I also strained the rendered fat from the bottom of the pan into a Tupperware container and stored it in the freezer to use in a later recipe, JUST LIKE THE NATIVE AMERICANS PROBABLY DID. I’m basically a James Beard award-winning chef at this point.

Blecccccch.

Once the duck has been added to the ragu, you simply turn the heat extra low and let it simmer for anywhere from one to four hours. But I still had to make the salad, so I chopped two heads of Boston lettuce and threw it in a bowl, followed by a diced avocado, a diced tomato, crumbled Gorgonzola cheese, and, of course, a heaping pile of fried duck bacon. The dressing (a separate recipe! Yes!) was pretty standard stuff: Dijon, maple syrup, red wine vinegar, canola oil, olive oil, salt and pepper.

This is what a picture of a salad looks like.

My wonderful guests arrived, bearing bottles of wine, having no idea that I was already secretly drunk (and I don’t think they did know until right now, so let’s all pat ourselves on the back for keeping that a secret). I boiled a pot of water and dumped in a huge bag of fancy, dried pappardelle, and then realized that I forgot to make the gremolata topping Gwyneth insists takes the duck ragu to “another level.” Thankfully, it’s pretty easy. Not thankfully, I was drunk, and fucked it up.

You’re supposed to just mix bread crumbs, salt, fresh parsley, and two lemons’ zest together. But I mixed it with two lemons’ JUICE. As I mixed the sludgy, mushy paste created from lemon juice and bread crumbs with my hands, I thought, “This is disgusting. She wants me to pour this crap on my beautiful ragu?” I’m just happy I double-checked the recipe, because that could have been a disaster. I tossed out the lemony paste, zested the lemons, and made the real gremolata topping.

And then it was dinner time! The ragu was pretty delicious, if I may say so, although I was slightly disappointed that it wasn’t more delicious. I did cook for several hours, I spent a lot of money on various forms of duck, and the recipe began with her name-dropping a real, successful chef. It should have been mind-blowing. Instead, it was good. Sorry, everyone.

Duck ragu, as Jamie Oliver Gwyneth Paltrow intends.

The salad, on the other hand, was goddamned delicious. I mean, the dressing is a classic, and one of my favorite combinations (Dijon, sugar, red wine vinegar, and olive oil), and then a salad with buttery Boston lettuce, avocado, Gorgonzola, and then DUCK BACON to top it off? That’s just gold right there.

I do want to say that even though the duck ragu was underwhelming (but still good!) it was definitely one of the more enjoyable cooking experiences I’ve had on this project. I mean, I butchered a duck for the first time (I’m using “butcher” here less in the sense of what actual, professional butchers do, and more in the sense of what Jack the Ripper did), and I spent an enjoyable lazy Sunday afternoon cooking and drinking and spending time with friends over a good meal.

We finished the night by watching Gus Van Sant’s new movie Restless, which, while horrible, comes with a funny story I’ll quickly relate because why not: When we first moved to Portland, the two friends I moved with, Ali and Nora, responded to a Craigslist ad requesting extras for a film shoot. They were asked to come in their Halloween costumes, and when they arrived they learned they would be extras in the new Gus Van Sant movie. They spent the day hilariously pretending they were drunk, with Nora in the background in a stupid cat mask and Ali wearing a witch’s hat standing directly behind the leads, Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper (Dennis Hopper’s son, who apparently wants to act now). The film languished in post-production forever, the title changed multiple times, and we more or less stopped following its ever-changing release date over the past couple years. And then Nora and I walked into a movie store in Chelsea and saw the DVD sitting upon the counter.

So we watched the movie, nervously anticipating the Halloween scene. Finally, Mia darted out of a hospital in one scene, shouting to her sister, “I’ll be home late; it’s Halloween!” and we jumped out of our seats with excitement. The two leads then approached a party, and lo and behold, for practically a minute of solid screentime directly behind the stars of the movie, there was our good friend Ali:

Hi, Ali!

It was perfect. We rewound multiple times, laughed hysterically, and then fast-forwarded to find out what happened at the end of the film, because it was just a horrible, terrible movie. Don’t rent it. Restless: Terrible. Duck bacon: Fantastic. The end.

One recent weekend, I woke up and decided that pancakes were NECESSARY. Thankfully, Gwyneth provides me with two pancake recipes! One of them, however, requires you to make the batter the night before (naturally), so instead I went with the very literally named Morning Pancakes. Unfortunately, my camera battery wasn’t charged, so I don’t have any pictures. You know what pancakes look like, though, right? That’s what these looked like. I don’t think any of us are missing out on anything here.

To make the batter, I mixed an egg (organic), almond milk, vegetable oil, and some flour. Gwyneth specifies “any kind of flour will work,” but you can just FEEL the Jewish (or semi-Jewish, or whatever she is) guilt washing over you if you dare to use anything but spelt flour. I risk the wrath of Gwyneth and use all-purpose flour. I’m a pancake rebel. Oh, you also throw some baking powder in there. She also includes an optional seed mix, which is a whole other recipe in itself, but I wasn’t about to go wandering about Brooklyn in my pajamas on a freezing cold Sunday in search of goddamned goji berries for some stupid pancakes. So I left them out. We’ll make the seed mix some other day, and I’m sure it’ll be just wonderful.

Oh, and there’s one other thing in the mix: yogurt. WTFFFFFF???? Is she INSANE? She clarifies in the introduction that the yogurt gives the pancakes a buttermilk flavor, since buttermilk can be hard to find (especially in London), which I just find hilarious. For someone who lives her life bathing in a never-ending supply of DUCK BACON, I doubt buttermilk is that hard to procure. But whatever, I stirred some yogurt into my pancakes, feeling like an escaped mental patient.

Then you fry them up like pancakes. Exciting! She tells you to fry them in a little bit of vegetable oil, which seems very unlike Gwyneth. Whither the safflower oil? I take a page out of Paula Deen’s book (diabetes be damned!) and fry them in butter instead, because DUH. It quickly becomes apparent that these pancakes are some soggy little bastards. I mean, they are just DRIPPING with liquid. With later batches, I removed most of the butter from the frying pan, which helped a bit. But, really, batter filled with yogurt does not seem to make for sturdy pancakes. Lesson learned!

That said, they were actually pretty good. The yogurt taste was slightly disconcerting, and lacking a lot of the richness of buttermilk, but they were definitely more interesting and better-tasting than pancakes you make from a box. SO. Not too shabby, I guess.

Moving right along, I also recently cooked Homemade Veggie Burgers. And I have pictures for this one! They were supposed to only take 25 minutes, but, in true Gwyneth fashion, one of the ingredients is “cooked brown rice,” just casually slipped in there, which adds another 30-45 minutes. So dinner was at practically 10:30. Fun! Working mothers would LOVE that!

Anyway, I cooked the stupid rice. Once it was almost done, I then sauteed some finely diced onions and garlic with a bit of cumin. After letting the onions sweat for a while, I added the rice, a can of drained and rinsed black beans (organic, of course, and also transported cross-country from Portland; I always insist my canned beans be driven 3,000 miles before I eat them), and some salt and pepper. I stirred it all together and then proceeded to mash it all with a potato masher. Excepppppt we don’t have a potato masher. But shitty improvisation is a hallmark of the Danny/Gwyneth Project, so I grabbed a slotted spoon and went to town on the mixture. And it actually worked quite well, if I may say so.

Pre-mush.

Mid-mush.

I let the mashed mixture cool for a while, and then shaped it into four patties. It quickly became apparent that these were not going to stay together very well, but Gwyneth suggests you put the patties in the fridge for a few hours, so I did that for as long as I could stand the hunger (about half an hour). I then removed the patties from the fridge and checked on their consistency: slightly drier than before, and not any more cohesive. Ah, well, whatever. I dusted the patties with flour and placed them in a skillet with olive oil, struggling painfully to prevent the patties from crumbling into some sort of a mashed rice and beans saute.

This is what a Gwyneth veggie patty looks like, before it falls to pieces.

And flipping these burgers? Ohhhh boy. Not fun. You need to guide the patty back onto the skillet with your free hand and gently lower it, even though the hot oils may be burning the skin from your fingers. Just ignore the pain! This pain is much less than the hell you’ll pay if Apple has to eat a store-bought veggie burger!

Three hours later, I managed to flip the patties with minimal crumbling. I then sliced some cheddar and placed it on top of the patties, mostly to ensure these were veggie burgers and not vegan burgers, out of spite. Once the patties had browned slightly, I scooped them onto whole wheat buns (of course), at which point they all basically collapsed and turned into the consistency of sloppy Joes. WHATEVER. I got it on the buns, that’s all that matters. (That’s what she said.)

When it’s 11 pm and you’ve been making veggie burgers for 3 hours, you just kind of pile stuff on top of it.

Gwyneth gracefully allows us to top with our favorite toppings, so I simply went with lettuce, tomato, and the non-brown parts of an avocado from our shitty, shitty corner store. (I can’t overemphasize how truly awful the store is; a friend recently asked, “Would you rather spend a month in your grocery store, or in a public restroom?” I chose the restroom.) Also some ketchup and mustard, OBVIOUSLY. And, you know what, these weren’t that bad! They were hard as hell to eat, but not any more difficult than a typical juicy, meaty burger. The patties probably need more flavoring than some cumin and garlic, however. And there definitely has to be a way to make the patties more patty-like. But, all things aside, not too shabby.

AND WE’RE BACK.

We start by sauteeing garlic in olive oil. A pretty standard beginning to making pasta sauce; nothing to complain about here. This also happens to be one of the best smells on the planet. After a few minutes of gentle sauteeing, I pour in a huge can of whole, peeled tomatoes, sprinkle in some salt and pepper, and bring the whole mixture to a boil. I then turn the temperature down to medium-low, and let simmer for an hour.

AND WE’RE BASICALLY DONE HERE, PEOPLE.

The final steps are to cook spaghetti noodles, adding arugula to the boiling water about a minute before the pasta has finished cooking. Then you mix it all together, grate some Parmesan cheese over, and this is what you have:

Are you kidding me with this? I paid 30 dollars for this cookbook, and this recipe takes up a whole page? Is the addition of arugula to the pasta supposed to be groundbreaking? Is that really supposed to make up for what is literally the most basic version of pasta sauce you could ever conceive? This is, honestly, insane. We’re however-many months into this project, and finally – finally! – I am reaching my breaking point with the cookbook in general. I suppose that’s what happens when you purposely try to make all the tasty-looking recipes first, as you’re then left with all of the shitty ones last (although we still have some duck ahead, which I’m actually looking forward to, because it’s finally winter, and who doesn’t love duck in the winter?). But, still. Come on. Did anyone even TRY with this cookbook? Is there some sort of law that says every cookbook must have 150 recipes in it? If so, fine, I get it, she’s padding her numbers, and that’s acceptable. But if there isn’t a mandatory-recipe law (and, I don’t know about you, but that seems like something I just made up two seconds ago), this recipe has no business being in a cookbook in 2011. An award-winning cookbook, no less! Shameful, shameful business, this.

Happy Hanukkah, Gwyneth, you terrible con artist.

Way back in November, faithful readers may remember I was still living on my friends’ couch, still hopelessly searching for an apartment, aided by nothing but my own determination, and a box full of cunt balls. Nora and Mandy, my two gracious hosts, were finally throwing a housewarming party a mere three months since moving in, and I wanted to contribute. A seasonal crumble seemed perfect, even though I was kicking myself for not making this during the summer, when I could have used peaches and blackberries. Instead I would be stuck with apple, which is fine, but not nearly as exciting. Alas, the plight of a lazy blogger.

But stuck with apple I was, so after a trip to Trader Joe’s (and oh my god am I happy not to live near a Trader Joe’s in Brooklyn because those places in the city are insane), we returned to the apartment to set up for the party. Nora made her famous dip and tried to mix an alcoholic cider while the rest of us criticized her hesitation at adding too much alcohol, Mandy made her famous red velvet cake balls, and I got to work on the crumble.

Much like the rest of this cookbook, the actual recipe was far too easy. Dice up your fruit, put it in a baking dish. I sliced up my apples and tossed them in, and then added my secret ingredient (blackberries, which I had purchased on a whim, even though they were out of season, because I wanted some more flavor in my crumble, SORRY FOR BREAKING THE RULES). On top of that I dumped some flour. I don’t remember how much; this happened a month ago.

To make the crumble topping, I mixed some softened butter, whole rolled oats, and brown sugar in a bowl with my hands, which is turning into one of my favorite things Gwyneth makes me do. I don’t know what it says about my fetishes, but I LOVE kneading softened butter with my fingers. I’m sure there’s a whole section on the NYC Craigslist where I could make money off of doing only that, but we’ll save that for when I get a little bit more desperate for money.

Anyway, I put the crumble on top of the fruit and baked it for however long Gwyneth told me to bake it for. And then I took it out and forced people to eat it with the ice cream, and everyone at the party commented on how wonderful the store-bought ice cream was. So that should tell you all you need to know about the crumble.

Where we last left off, I had just moved into my beautiful new apartment, and forgive me for bragging, but it’s so beautiful!!! I completely lucked out with this place. It’s perfect for the owner of a massive, massive, idiotic dog. The downside is that it’s in what is more or less a total subway dead zone in Brooklyn, so no one will ever visit me because you have to pack food and water on the subway to keep your energy up for the long journey. ANYWAY. I moved into this place. It’s great.

Wait, can I derail things to update you guys on my job? It’s fun! I like it! Even though I was still doing work from home at 9:30 last night, like some sort of ADULT or something. BOOOOOO. (Full disclosure: While I was working, I was also watching cartoons.) Anyway, the reason I’m talking about this is to say I actually have a full-on FRIEND through work now, which is great, and we now have a lunchtime bet going, which is relevant to this blog post. See? We’re not totally off-topic. But bear with me as I explain.

You see, New York is expensive. You’re welcome for explaining that to you, because I’m sure you had no idea. Anyway, it’s super expensive, and us lowly peons can’t afford to eat out every day like some people, which is where this bet came from. Essentially, the first one of us to not bring a lunch from home has to buy the other guy lunch. That simple bet, designed to save us money, spiraled into a whole series of rules. We wondered, “What if you work out in the morning and therefore get hungry for a mid-morning snack? Or what if you have plans after work and need something in the afternoon to hold you over? Does that count?” So we set up a cap of $3.99 (pre-tax) per day to be used for either breakfast or a mid-afternoon snack, but NOT during the lunch hour. However, that’s still $20 a week, which is too much, so we stipulated that you can only spend $3.99 a day for three days out of the week, meaning you have to choose your days wisely or go hungry.

This is what New York has turned me into, after only a little over a month.

There are all sorts of other rules regarding store-bought lunches and all that stuff, but I won’t bore you with it. Feel free to ask me about specifics if you’re thinking of implementing a similar strategy at your workplace. It’s a great money-saver! Although it may result in you eating a PB&J sandwich and an apple 4 days a week.

Anyway, I decided to make one of Gwyneth’s soups, which could easily last me for a few days’ lunches, giving me a leg up on the competition. So I made broccoli and cheddar soup.

Wait, let me be obnoxious: This is my new kitchen!

And here’s the living room! Oh wait, what’s that behind it?…

SECOND LIVING ROOM. (Sorry. In my defense, these pictures were mostly for my mom.)

Aaaaand the soup was really easy. Onions, garlic, broccoli, chopped up and sauteed in some olive oil. After a few minutes, pour some chicken stock in. Cook for a while, then blend.

Wait, blend?

I frantically searched our kitchen for a blender, hoping a roommate had one. Nope. Not even a Magic Bullet in sight. My first recipe in the new place, and it’s already falling apart.

This is pretty much the entire recipe.

My roommate came to the rescue and informed me his old roommate had moved to a new apartment in the building, and she had taken her blender with. So I ventured down to her apartment, introduced myself, and awkwardly asked to borrow a blender. (I should note that I felt VERY New York doing this. Knocking on neighbors doors in your apartment building to borrow kitchen supplies? What is this, Friends?) She very nicely didn’t give me any odd looks and handed the blender over, cautioning me that it was her roommate’s and may not work. (Which was clever, seeing as I knew she had a blender of her own, yet she chose to give the stranger her roommate’s blender. Very crafty.) I brought the blender upstairs, plugged it in, and started it. The machine whirred, but the blade didn’t spin. A quick inspection revealed the blender top and bottom were different; I was literally trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

So once again I returned downstairs, blender in tow, and asked if she had the correct parts to the blender. We dug through her still-unpacked kitchen supplies, managing to drum up a THIRD blender, which did not have a top anymore. Deeming this the best of the three options, I took it upstairs and resolved to find some way to protect myself from soup splatter. “Where’s the party?” a neighbor asked me in the elevator, eying the blender in my hands. “I’m blending broccoli soup,” I told him. We rode the rest of the way in silence.

Here is how I solved the problem of the missing lid:

This was actually my Plan B, after Saran wrap. I think this was smarter.

And, you know what? It worked perfectly! Sealed tight as can be. I was quite proud of my ingenuity.

Finally blended, I merely added shredded cheddar (Tillamook cheddar, in honor of Oregon), and that was that. The soup was okay, if a little unexciting. It was also much more of a broccoli soup than a broccoli and cheddar, which, being from Wisconsin, is the opposite of what I expect. But that probably made it much, much healthier.

Pleased with my results, I went to pour the rest of the soup in some Tupperware for work, only to find my roommates don’t own a single piece of Tupperware. (Additionally, we have about 10 spoons, 10 knives, and only two forks. I repeat: TWO FORKS. In a house with four people! Insanity.)

Bolstered with confidence after my blender problem-solving, here is what I did: poured my soup into a Ziploc bag. And that, my friends, is what I toted to work for the next three days of lunch. A Ziploc bag full of green soup, which I would then pour into a bowl and microwave. My first day with the soup bag, a woman walked into the kitchen as I was pouring my vomit-bag into a bowl. “DON’T LOOK AT ME!” I shouted, as ashamed as if I had just been walked in on the toilet.

While seeing me sitting down to a lunch of a Ziploc bag of soup and two apples, my coworker remarked, “Dude, that’s like a serial killer’s lunch.” I couldn’t argue with him.

It goes without saying that, when in the middle of a year-long cooking project, the one day you absolute MUST cook on is Thanksgiving. I feel like that’s in the Constitution somewhere. So before I left New York, I picked out a couple Gwyneth side dishes to contribute to our enormous family meal, relishing the idea of force-feeding my health-food-phobic family Brussels sprouts. If you recall, the last time I cooked for my family, I made cheesy stuffed burgers. This time, I wasn’t going to take it so easy on them.

The original plan was to cook three side dishes, but it quickly became apparent that the kitchen was going to be occupied most of the day, with the oven out of commission for at least six hours due to our roasting turkey. So I settled on just two recipes: Caramelized Brussels Sprouts and Maple-Dijon Roasted Vegetables. The latter had my family intrigued; the former left most of them grimacing.

My sister Sara did a grocery run (meaning, in this family, to basically get more lard and beer), so I tacked my groceries onto the list. Not having to pay for the ingredients OR even go out and get them? I could get used to that. She returned with a bag full of produce and I immediately scolded her for bringing me real New York maple syrup, as opposed to real Vermont maple syrup, which Gwyneth insists on. Some people just don’t get it.

Most of the day was spent drinking and watching football while the turkey slowly roasted away in our oven. About an hour and a half before dinner was to be served, I finally got to work. I steamed the Brussels sprouts until they were tender, while various family members meandered over to poke and prod and sniff the sprouts like the chimps in 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Love you guys, by the way!) However, my cousin’s girlfriend Jamie is a vegetarian who often has difficulty at our meat-laden family gatherings finding enough to eat, so she was thrilled at the idea of Brussels sprouts and roasted vegetables. To some, Gwyneth is a true hero.

These strike fear into the heart of people like my mother.

I then got to work on the roasted vegetables, slicing sweet potatoes, parsnips and carrots into French fry-sized pieces with the help of my sister Sara and my uncle Kurt. But, here’s the thing: My parents have a beautiful house and an awesome kitchen, and yet not a single decent knife to be found. It took far, far too long to slice these vegetables, and my sister and I found ourselves sweating as we hacked and sawed with blunted blades at the vegetables. We may as well have been using Stone Age tools. Fix this before Christmas, please, Mom and Dad.

Sara, trying not to chop her fingers off.

But eventually we finished the slicing, and the vegetables were arranged on a giant baking sheet. I then made the sauce, which was simply Dijon mustard, maple syrup, and salt and pepper. As I measured out the New York maple syrup (ugh), my dad realized a friend had given him fresh, real local Wisconsin maple syrup from their land, and he offered me the bottle. This, I knew immediately, was a development Gwyneth would have been EXTREMELY excited by. In fact, I wondered if she had even been offered local homemade maple syrup while preparing one of these recipes. Is it possible I just one-upped the quality of Gwyneth’s very own ingredients? Finally, I had something to be thankful for.

Suck it, Gwen.

Anyway, I poured the sauce over all the vegetables, and all that was left to do was roast them. Meanwhile I returned to the Brussels sprouts, which had been cooling on a cutting board. I sliced each sprout in half, heated some olive oil in a skillet, and proceeded to saute the Brussels sprout halves. As each side lightly browned, I flipped the sprouts over, giving a nice sear to each half. When they were finished I plated them and sprinkled lightly with lemon juice and salt. EASY. DONE. WONDERFUL.

Meanwhile, the turkey was still in the oven, and my vegetables still needed to be roasted. We put them in the warming pan below the oven to at least start the process, which caused the vegetables to get slightly warm, and that’s about it. The family was slowly starving to death as the internal temperature of the turkey didn’t seem to increase at all over the course of an hour, and then things got weird. Maybe it was impatience, or a sense of joy at being with family, or possibly just the result of drinking all day while waiting for dinner to cook, but an inexplicable dance party broke out in the kitchen. And I mean a full dance party, Black Eyed Peas soundtrack and all. Have you ever had an impromptu dance party in your kitchen with 20 relatives, including your grandfather, jumping up and down to “Let’s Get it Started”? Because I have, and it is bizarre.

Also my sister’s friend brought her new puppy over and LOOK AT HIM.

The dance party lasted about half an hour, and finally, through the magic of dance, the turkey was done. The oven immediately was re-filled with rolls, two casseroles, and my vegetables, and slowly our Thanksgiving dinner was pieced together. A Hogwarts-sized table was assembled and set, and all 1,000 of us finally, finally sat down to eat and be thankful and merry and make inappropriate jokes in a formal setting, at which we seem to excel.

Overall, I was disappointed with the roasted vegetables. The sweet potatoes were the best, because they absorbed the most amount of the sauce, so you really got a nice maple-Dijon taste with them. The parsnips were second-best, and the carrots were just the worst, tasting mostly like plain, roasted carrots. You could barely taste the maple-Dijon. If I made this again, I’d probably prepare twice the amount of maple-Dijon sauce, so I could pour some over the finished vegetables so they weren’t so bland.

Nikki helpfully illustrates my thoughts on the roasted vegetables.

The Brussels sprouts, on the other hand, I loved. They tasted fairly bland after the initial sauteing, which made me nervous, but the simple addition of salt and lemon juice really made them delicious. And, wouldn’t you know it, every last Brussels sprout was eaten! Who would have thought such a thing was possible in this family? And it goes without saying that Jamie was very, very happy to have more than the usual amount of vegetables, although now I’m worried she’s going to expect this from me every year.

THESE. Yes. Great.

So overall the dishes were okay, at the very least providing some variety to our usual turkey/stuffing/gravy fare. Plus, I’d never before contributed my own dish to the family meal, and it felt good to have two things out there that were all mine (and Gwyneth’s, I suppose). Thanksgiving as a whole was what I’ve come to expect from this family: insane, dramatic, hilarious, stressful, and one of the most fun weekends of the year. I can’t wait to do it all again in a month. Who knows what organic vegetable monstrosities I’ll force upon my family for Christmas.

My assembled plate. Oh my god yes.

What we did to that poor bird.

The results of feeding a family of 300.

Anyway: Challah French Toast. Still needing to make up for my guilt at taking over Nora’s living room, I told her to pick out a breakfast recipe from the book. She chose challah French toast, of which I wholeheartedly approved. If you saw the picture Gwyneth put next to the recipe, you’d be salivating, too. And I knew the quality of the challah was of the utmost important in this recipe, so we set off to the Chelsea Market in search of high-quality challah.

Shoving through the crowds of screaming children and harried-looking tourists, we finally got to Amy’s Bread, who were coincidentally advertising their brand new whole wheat challah. Surely some higher power was directing this recipe. I requested one loaf, and the lady enthusiastically told me, “It’s the first day we’re offering this! Come back and tell me how it is!” I never did, but if you’re reading this, random lady, it was good. I also procured a couple vanilla beans and REAL Vermont maple syrup in the market, slightly miffed that Vermont maple syrup is just as expensive in the northeast as it is in the northwest. BOOOOOOO.

Challah loaf! So beautiful.

Back at Nora’s, I first had to extract the beans from the vanilla pods. Gwyneth does give me instructions, so I sliced the pod open lengthwise and used a paring knife to extract the beans from within. Now, maybe you’ll all laugh at me (and I’m sure a couple of my more… critical commenters will have a field day with this), but I was expecting vanilla beans to look like, well, small beans. Instead, what came out looked like soggy coffee grounds. Or mud. I had to Google it to make sure I didn’t get faulty vanilla. As cynical as I am, I do genuinely love the fact that Gwyneth Paltrow, of all people, is making me expand my culinary horizons. How unexpected.

For the unaware, these are vanilla pods. Like walking sticks for small woodland creatures.

Vanilla beans on the tip of my knife! Very artsy shot.

Anyway, I mixed the extracted beans/mud with a teaspoon of warm water, which created ghetto vanilla extract. I should have just bought vanilla extract. I then cracked two eggs into the bowl and whisked them, mixing with the vanilla beans. In that, I then whisked in some milk. Basically your classic French toast batter. Nothing too earth-shattering here.

Eggs. Milk. Vanilla beans. Whatever.

While some butter melted in a frying pan, I dredged the slices of challah in the batter and slowly arranged them in the frying pan. On top of each side, I drizzled a small amount of sugar. After the toast had cooked a bit, I flipped each slice and sprinkled some more sugar over the cooked side. Once everything was done, I simply plated, sliced a banana on top of the toast, and sprinkled some powdered sugar on top of the whole thing.

And that’s challah French toast! The toast was good, because the bread was good. I mean, that’s basically what it comes down to. The recipe itself is really basic French toast recipe, with bananas and powdered sugar added. Plus, I guess, the fairly ridiculous addition of the vanilla beans. Yes, it all tasted great, but it’s also not really a… recipe? Or at the very least not really Gwyneth’s recipe.

The Mutti in question is Gwyneth’s grandmother, whom she famously called a “real cunt.” She keeps things more family-friendly in the cookbook, euphemistically calling her “how shall I say this? — a unique person.” But she raves about Mutti’s balls (oh, stop), so I knew these were just the thing I needed to give me a leg up on all my roommate competition in this fierce city.

Plus, they’re so easy! Using my hands, I just mixed together two sticks of unsalted butter, a bit of flour, and two cups of crushed pecans. I then rolled them into small balls and baked them for roughly 20 minutes. Once they had cooled a bit, I just rolled them in powdered sugar, and there we have Mutti’s Butterballs! Or, as we’ve taken to calling them: cunt balls.

Cunt balls, pre-sugar.

Seeing as these are basically just butter, pecans, and sugar, you know they’re pretty good. Sadly, they’re very dry. Pop one of these cunt balls in your mouth, and immediately all the moisture in your body departs through your salivary glands. It’s an absolute must to have a glass of water on hand when eating one of these cookies. It’s like trying to eat eight saltine crackers in under a minute.

But dry cunt balls be damned, I knew it would be the thought that counted, so I wrapped a few in tin foil for each showing and presented them to all my prospective roommates as, “bribery cookies.” And were they successful? Well, out of four apartment showings early last week, I got four offers — including the place with over eighty prospects. (Sadly, nothing has become concrete with any of these offers yet, as landlords in this city are definitely the offspring of Satan.)

Score one for that old cunt Mutti!

First of all, I should apologize for the quality of the pictures. I have no idea where I packed my camera, so I had to resort to using my two-year-old phone’s camera, which led to pictures like this:

We had a lovely dinner in the middle of a haunted house, clearly.

Anyway, the recipes I decided to cook were: Italian Chopped Salad, Fried Zucchini Spaghetti, and Sauteed Greens with Onions & Soy Sauce. The last one didn’t really go so well with the first two, but I was nervous about trying anything too crazy my first time in a new, small kitchen, so I wanted to take it easy. So we had two Italian dishes and a vaguely Asian side, because New York is a melting pot? Sure, let’s go with that excuse.

First, I had to do some grocery shopping, so I trudged down to the Chelsea Trader Joe’s and spent the better part of an hour maneuvering through cramped aisles, and ended up waiting in the check-out line for nearly half an hour. JESUS CHRIST, THIS CITY. And this was at 2:00 PM on a Monday afternoon, so I can’t even imagine what that place is like during prime shopping hours. I then hauled the bags for what felt like miles, my first lesson in how to properly grocery shop in a big city. Lesson #1: Barely buy anything if you live 20 blocks away from the store.

As most of my belongings are currently locked up in a very inconvenient storage space (it’s actually one block away from Nora’s apartment, but the last time I went up there to retrieve my running shoes I ended up getting stuck for 20 minutes since no one was operating the elevator, and a creepy man in a dark hallway was staring at me and I’m pretty sure contemplating whether he had enough space in his storage unit to fit my body), I unfortunately had to buy some of Gwyneth’s more ridiculous ingredients all over again, even though I have half-full (or half-empty?) bottles of this crap packed in boxes somewhere. So now Nora and Mandy are the proud owners of their very own bottle of agave nectar! Congratulations, ladies!

My first step was to roast a red pepper, something that is old hat at this point. However, the girls don’t have a pair of tongs, so I rotated the pepper over the stove using two spoons, which actually worked quite well. Improvising! Thinking on my feet! While the burnt red pepper steamed in its little plastic-covered bowl, I sliced two zucchinis very thin (but not thinner than paper, Gwyneth cautions, as if we are all capable of slicing a zucchini thinner than a sheet of paper) and doused them in flour. In the largest frying pan I could find — which, this being a small New York kitchen, was roughly omelet-sized — I heated up a bit of olive oil and got to work frying all the zucchini slices, a tedious process that took over half an hour. But this is mostly due to the size of the frying pan, so we can’t blame Gwyneth. I’m sure she has a frying pan the size of your car.

Frying like ten zucchini slices at a time.

Meanwhile, I assembled the salad, which was very easy. Lettuce, scallions, cherry tomatoes, artichoke hearts, small balls of mozzarella, steamed green beans, and the sliced up roasted red pepper all thrown into a large bowl. To make the dressing I whisked together Dijon mustard, agave nectar, red wine vinegar, and olive oil. And that was the end of my very first NYC Gwyneth Paltrow recipe! Laughably easy. Coincidentally, Gwyneth says this was one of the very first salads she ever made (sidenote: who the hell remembers the first salad they ever made?). Following in her footsteps!

My camera makes the salad look much more disgusting than it really was.

As I cooled and drained the fried zucchini strips on a paper towel, I boiled water and cooked the spaghetti noodles. Meanwhile I prepared the “sauce” for the pasta, which was literally olive oil and Parmesan cheese. That’s it. To make the dish, I simply mixed the cooked noodles with the “sauce” and folded in the fried zucchini and some fresh basil. Jesus Christ these two recipes were easy.

Speaking of easy, I still had to make the side dish, which was even easier: I sauteed some onions, and then tossed on top of them a bunch of kale, which quickly wilted. Over the mixture I poured a bit of soy sauce and let it cook for a minute or two more.

Sauteed greens and onions, although my camera is just making everything look like sauteed barf.

Spaghetti. You know what? Let’s just stop with these pictures.

There! Three recipes completed in a tiny amount of time, in an entirely new kitchen, with very limited cooking utensils. Even though these recipes were laughably simple, I felt proud of myself for creating an entire meal on only my first full day in the city. One aspect I was particularly pleased with was my ability to finish all three dishes at roughly the same time, allowing me to plate everything without forcing one dish to sit and cool while the others finished cooking. I’ve always been terrible at timing this sort of thing, and I couldn’t help but wonder as I successfully tackled these recipes like a goddamned Top Chef, has Gwyneth actually made me a better cook? The thought is enough to send chills down my spine.

As for the food, it was all pretty boring. I wish there was more of an exciting sauce to the spaghetti, although the fried zucchini was pretty good on its own. The favorite dish seemed to be unanimously the sauteed greens, although that’s probably because the soy sauce made it really salty in contrast to the bland pasta, and you know how Americans love their salt. I enjoyed the salad and dressing, but, again, it was all pretty standard. Ho hum. I apologized to Nora and Mandy and promised better meals in the future, hoping this wouldn’t cause them to kick me out on the street.

It remains to be seen what New York has to offer as far as this project is concerned — and I’m more than a little nervous about the idea of carting whole dark carcasses and lobsters through the subway system in the middle of winter — but maybe being on Gwyneth’s home turf is going to give me an advantage. And rumor has it there’s a place in the city where I can find duck bacon…