Blog Archives
Taylor Swift + Chris Martin = ?
Once you go Brit, you never go back.
Or so it seems for Taylor Swift. I’ve been amused this week to hear that Tom Hiddleston is the latest in her string of British boyfriends (Calvin Harris, and before him, infamously Harry Styles).
I kind of wished she had waited a heartbeat and considered dating Chris Martin, Coldplay’s front man, who seems to be smitten with American women (famously married to Gwyneth Paltrow, then seen dating Jennifer Lawrence and possibly Heather Graham). It could very well be a match made in heaven. I can see it now. She’ll giggle as he talks about the “loo” and fixes her a cup of tea (okay … maybe not in that order). He’ll love her “garage” and “aluminum foil” and meatloaf, but we may need to wait it out. He appears to be quite content with his current wildcard girlfriend Annabelle Wallis, who hails from Portugal of all places.
Give it time. I’m quite certain the stars will align and he’ll be back on the market looking for an American girlfriend, around the same time that Taylor Swift grows tired of Tom Hiddleston’s dad dancing.
I give it three months.
The pitfalls of marrying an American woman/British man
In light of the Gwyneth and Chris Martin split, the Daily Telegraph has taken it upon itself to do some deep digging into the British man/American woman match, which I touched on last week. I absolutely ate it up!
Here’s journalist Sally Peck’s piece, “Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin split: The pitfalls of marrying a British man.”
And here’s writer/comedian/British husband Tom Cowell’s piece, “Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin split: The pitfalls of marrying an American woman.”
Woo! Enjoy š
The end of Gwyneth and Chris
When I heard that Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin were separating after 10 years of marriage, I can’t say that it come as a huge surprise. And yet Gwyneth’s quintessentially Britishness has been so rooted to her marriage to Chris that the idea that that they are “consciously uncoupling” is kind of unsettling.
If there’s anything that I find endearing about her, it is her pseudo-British quality. That properness of her that makes most people haters. I like the fact that she married an Exeter boy and the idea that she became an anglophile and raised her family in England. She is invariably my favorite non-British British person and I’m admittedly a little sad that she could be shacked up in the near future with a non-Brit and unwind herself from the British scene altogether.
Unless she ends up with Robert Downey Jr. because they are just ridiculously adorable together (which is unlikely since he is still married and good for him! Keep that going!) then I don’t wanna know. Certainly, don’t tell me she’s going to Chateau Marmont with anyone on Lindsay Lohan’s sex list. Please.
If you’re looking for me, I’ll be gorging myself on her dad’s recipe for pancakes (which I think are my favorite homemade pancake recipe of all time) with extra maple syrup and mourning the loss.
British fashion featured on Goop.com
Stylist Elizabeth Saltzman has rounded up some lovely British designers and fashions this week in Goop.com, Gwyneth Paltrow’s digital media and e-commerce brand. She’s pulled together a range of looks from designers like Stella McCartney, Victoria Beckham and Antonio Berardi.
My favorite pieces of the bunch are these soft pastels, perfect for dressing up and for more relaxed weekend fun.
Blythe and her blueberry muffins
I realize that Gwyneth Paltrow is not actually British, but she’s British enough (married to a Brit, raising two half-Brit sprogs, speaking in that often strange, Madonna-esque English).
I bought her cookbook “My Father’s Daughter” last year and every once in a while, I will dip into it and have been rather successful. Her father’s pancake recipe is legendary in our house. I like her best stir-fried chicken recipe and her ten-hour chicken recipe. She’s got some great simple pasta dishes. But there’s one recipe I’ve eyed from the start – her mother Blythe Danner’s blueberry muffin recipe – and I finally made it on Saturday.
It’s a basic muffin recipe. You mix dry ingredients in one bowl. Wet ingredients in another bowl. Mix them together and then fold in the blueberries. It was straightforward, except the results were more like a drop scone batter than a cake batter.
And the final results:
Not very pretty, and not like the photos in the book, but it was as she described. Tart and sweet. It tasted wholesome and even a little nutritious. The kids actually ate around the blueberries (which were the tart component) and the cat wouldn’t leave us alone once the muffins came out of the oven. She didn’t eat them but lingered like she had hoped a piece of muffin might be in her future (as it turned out, I did offer her some and she smelled it longingly but didn’t go for it.)
Here’s the recipe:
8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 organic large eggs
1/2 cup milk
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup plus 1 tsp granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp fine salt
2 1/2 cups fresh blueberries
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with papers.
Whisk the butter, eggs and milk together in a bowl. In another bowl whisk together the flour, the 3/4 cup of sugar, baking powder and salt. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold in the blueberries. Divide among the muffin cups and sprinkle the muffins with the remaining teaspoon of sugar. Bake until a toothpick tests clean and the muffins are golden brown, 25-30 minutes. Best to eat these warm.
Yield: 1 dozen muffins. Active preparation time: 15 minutes. Total preparation time: 45 minutes.
BRITRISH.COM 