These Gwyneth Paltrow stories are a few days old, but they’re worth discussing. First of all, how did Gwyneth’s big promotional push for Mortdecai work out? Not so well, especially compared to Jennifer Lopez’s offering, The Boy Next Door. TBND was made for $4 million and it made $15 million on its opening weekend. Compare that to Mortdecai, which was made for $60 million (WHY?) and it only opened with $4.13 million. The thing is, I’m not sure we could or should put that at Goop’s door. Mortdecai was billed as a Johnny Depp film with a star-studded ensemble. If Gwyneth had been less visible during the promotion, Depp alone would be eating this bomb. But because Gwyneth deigned to get in our faces, now she has to eat it too.

Speaking of Gwyneth’s eating habits, did you know she’s going to write (“write”) another cookbook? Her first two cookbooks – My Father’s Kitchen and It’s All Good – were bestsellers and likely made Gwyneth a nice chunk of change. Her first cookbook got a better reception, probably because the food was relatively normal. Her second cookbook was when all of Goop’s elimination diet stuff came out to play and she talked about starving her children of carbohydrates and everyone was like “Yeah, this isn’t a diet, it’s an eating disorder.” So what does she have in store for us this time?

Gwyneth Paltrow is writing a third cookbook, everyone.

“It’s fun — I really love doing it. It’s an awesome side project that I get to do, and I feel really lucky that people bought the first one and the second one!” the Mortdecai actress and Goop head said on Rachael Ray Friday morning.

So what can loyal Paltrow kitchen fans like Meryl Streep expect? “Clean comfort food” for the entire family, because she says she always finds herself running out of ideas. Plus, “I think I might do appetizers for a party section because that’s always a tough one. It’s like you’re having a party, and you don’t want to be in the kitchen. Make-ahead trays and stuff you can stick in the oven. … I love easy party food and kid-family food, and that’s where I am right now.”

The third title will follow 2013’s It’s All Good: Delicious, Easy Recipes That Will Make You Look Good and Feel Great and 2011’s My Father’s Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness with Mario Batali.

[From THR]

Clean comfort food and appetizers. So, carrot sticks and soup. Not just any soup, either. Low-sodium broth, probably.

While on Rachel Ray, Goop also told a story about trying to do a peasant version of eggplant parmesan and failing completely:

She dished to Rachael Ray that the worst meal she’s ever made was an eggplant parmesan when she was 18 years old.

“I went to the store and bought some eggplant, a jar of tomato sauce and some really rubbery mozzarella cheese,” she recalled. “I didn’t know that when you cook eggplant, you first have to sweat it to get all the bitter juice out, and I didn’t realize that you also have to bread eggplant parmesan and fry it before. So I put slices of raw eggplant with jarred tomato sauce and mozzarella! And everyone threw up.”

[From THR]

To be fair to Goop, she was just 18 years old when that happened. And she dared to use peasant prep-food like “a jar of tomato sauce.” She would NEVER do that today. NEVER. She would rather smoke crack than use tomato sauce out of a jar.

Gwyneth’s last Goop-letter was all about recipes too, so maybe she’s trying out some new stuff for her cookbook. She got a lot of headlines for suggesting a recipe for “Sex Bark” which is not as dirty as it sounds. It sounds like something I would want to try with Michael Fassbender, but in GoopWorld, Sex Bark is just a chocolate with “Moon Pantry Sex Dust”. In case you’re just dying to know, go here to read. She’s just shilling her friend’s herbs (truly).

Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.