my girl-crush on Gwyneth Paltrow

I am not usually drawn to blonds, but I admit it. I am totally in like with all things Gwyneth Paltrow. (Except, with all due respect, her singing.) Ever since I saw her in the movie Se7en with her then-boyfriend Brad Pitt, I’ve had a soft spot for her movies. (Except, with all due respect, the ones in which she sings.) How many times in my own life have I had a Sliding Doors moment? And the period pieces? Love. How I wish I could do a British accent.

I so wanted her and my other crush, Ben Affleck, to make it as a couple. That would have been quite convenient. But alas, he took the J.Lo detour. Gwyneth assumed a macrobiotic diet. And in some chronological order that I don’t know without looking it up, she won an Oscar, lost her beloved father, met Chris Martin from Coldplay and had babies named Apple and Moses. I still marvel that they didn’t notice (or perhaps they did) Apple’s full name is one vowel away from being Apple Martini.

Then, aside from looking hot for the Iron Man movies, Gp sort of slipped under the radar for me except when I came across the random shot of her in my InStyle magazine. She is definitely the consummate trend-setter, making every look seem effortless (except that one goth ensemble she wore to the 2002 Academy Awards). Something about Gwyneth’s style makes me want to grow my hair long, buy a closet of white cotton blouses, and wear Tod’s driving shoes.

A year or so ago, my friend Adrienne introduced me to Gp’s website and newsletter Goop. Goop! I love Goop! Granted, I am pretty sure I will never stay in any of her recommended hotels in Paris (unless I am there on my next honeymoon). I won’t be doing her insane detox program (though only Gwyneth could make me think twice about drinking kale juice for breakfast). And I certainly didn’t need to see her list of international apothecary drugstore products to know that I am a sucker for such a thing (after all, I discovered the Boots line that Target now carries when studying in the UK in 1991.)

And then there is her recently released cookbook, My Father’s Daughter. I have to admit, I bought it on a whim. I tend to be a little skeptical of celebrity cookbooks. Sophie Dahl’s attempt, Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights (which I actually first read about on Goop) sits in my kitchen without a single recipe having been prepared from it (though her recipe preludes are very entertaining and the photography is brilliant). But in two nights I have made three recipes from MFD and they all were fabulous. Even the kids cleaned their plates, which held such green things as kale and zucchini.

I do have to mock a little. Aside from her slightly preachy comments on organic and unprocessed foods (we know, we know) her recipes are peppered with comments like “good for the working parent” but none more so than ten-hour chicken. Having just roasted a chicken for the boys, which they declared “the best chicken in the world” I thought I should take a look. She bills this recipe as the perfect dish for the busy working parent. According to her recipe, put your whole chicken in a 200 degree oven before you leave for work in the morning, and when you get home that night, the chicken will be done. Yeah. Except most of us don’t have help who stay at our houses during the day to make sure they don’t burn down when we leave the oven on unattended for ten hours. An editor didn’t notice that maybe this is a great recipe for a cold Saturday when you don’t intend to leave the house but might not be not appropriate for those of us who neurotically check and recheck the knobs on our gas stoves before we leave the house in the morning?

But I forgive. After all, last night, my kids ate kale. Tonight, they ate fried zucchini spaghetti which is only significant (since they like zucchini) in that usually Jack won’t eat foods that touch. But he never once complained that his vegetable and his pasta were co-mingling in the bowl.

And if her recipes are so good, how bad can her detox program be?