Ina Garten Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. I'm the founder and editor of Cherry Bombe Magazine.
Guess what everybody? Today's guest is Ina Garten. I'm sure you all know the Barefoot Contessa and love her like the whole team at Cherry Bombe does. I'm so excited to welcome Ina back to our podcast. She joins me in just a minute and we talk about her highly anticipated memoir, “Be Ready When The Luck Happens,” which is out tomorrow, October 1st. Speaking of luck, I was able to read an advanced copy and I couldn't put it down. “Be Ready When The Luck Happens” will no doubt be a huge bestseller.
By the way, Ina's book is the subject of the next Cherry Bombe Book Club. Our book clubs are virtual get-togethers. We do as part of the Cherry Bombe membership. It's taking place on Zoom on Thursday, November 14th, so that gives you plenty of time to read Ina's book. If you are a member, you can sign up right now. Just check your inbox. Not a member? Head to cherrybombe.com for more details on how to become an official Bombesquad member. Stay tuned for my chat with Ina Garten.
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The fall issue of Cherry Bombe's print magazine is finally here and guess who our cover star is? It's Jeni Britton of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, the artisanal ice cream company that changed the game. This might just be our coolest cover yet and I can't wait for you to read all about Jeni and her entrepreneurial journey. Also, we have a bonus cover. It's the delightful Abi Balingit of The Dusky Kitchen and the award-winning cookbook, “Mayumu.” This issue is dedicated to the creative class and highlights innovative and imaginative folks in and around the world of food, including fashion designers, artists, photographers, and of course, lots of pastry chefs. If you're a subscriber, your copy will be in your mailbox very soon. If you aren't a subscriber, head to cherrybombe.com to snag a copy or check out our list of retailers to find Cherry Bombe's print magazine at a store near you.
Now, let's check in with Ina Garten. Ina welcome back to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Ina Garten:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
I have to tell you, I love the book so much. I cried. I have laughed out loud so many times.
Ina Garten:
I'm so glad. Thank you. I didn't want it to be, I went here, I did that, I said this. I wanted it to be fun to read, and I wanted the stories to be fun, but I wanted them to have a point. I learned something and I hope it's interesting to you.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, I think that comes through loud and clear. I want to ask you first though, why did you want to write a memoir?
Ina Garten:
Well, I didn't. I have a very good friend, Deborah Davis, who was my writing partner on this, who had written her own wonderful books like “Madame X” and “The Party of the Century” about Truman Capote's, the-
Kerry Diamond:
The Black and White Ball, yeah.
Ina Garten:
But she also has written quite a few memoirs including Oprah's and Tina Turner's. She'd been talking to me for about a year about doing it, and I kept saying, "Oh, my life's not that interesting. I mean, who would care?" And she said, finally, after a year of conversations at least, she said, "Somebody's going to write your memoir and it should be you." And I went, "Whoa, okay."
So the deal we made is that we would do it together. She would help me with a lot of the research and the writing, but I was integrally involved in every detail and that if at any point I thought it wasn't interesting enough, I could pull the plug and she's a very good friend anyway, so I really trusted her, and halfway through, she was like a therapist. She found people I went to high school with I haven't spoken to, and I hate to say this, 60 years. I found the process really interesting. I'm so glad I did it.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you learn anything about yourself that you didn't realize?
Ina Garten:
So much. I had no idea. I really thought of myself. I wrote about this in the back of the book. I really thought of myself as being unbelievably lucky. I mean, I had a really tough childhood. Other people have had worse childhoods, but I had tough childhood and I was really lucky that I met Jeffrey who totally believed in me, which gave me some confidence to overcome that. But I felt that along the way when I decided to write cookbooks or when I started specialty food store, that was really the beginning of specialty food stores in America and that it was, the timing was just perfect.
And then when I started writing cookbooks, people went from having “The Joy of Cooking” and Julia Child's and maybe one other book to having whole bookshelves filled with cookbooks, so the timing was really perfect. And then, when I started doing TV, it was when Food Network went from being chefs with their white tokes on to being good home cooks.
So I felt like I was lucky, but then in the process of writing the book and Deborah took me back to my days in Washington, I came to realize, wow, I taught myself how to cook when I was there and I bought old houses and I renovated them. I went to the bank for loans. I learned about renovations and business, and I went to business school at night and I look back and I think, how did I have a job in the White House and do all of that at the same time? But I didn't really think of that as work. I thought it was what I did for fun.
Kerry Diamond:
One of the things you point out in the book is that you were very much, especially at a younger age, all about leap before you look.
Ina Garten:
Yeah, I kind of still am.
Kerry Diamond:
So there is a luck element with those things?
Ina Garten:
Well, it is luck, but I realized that I actually had done the work. Every single day, I came home and made something from Julia Child's. Her books are really in education because she doesn't just tell you make the holidays, she tells you why it works, if it goes wrong, to do this. She makes you understand the process. So I found that just an incredible education. I love renovating old buildings, old houses mostly, and negotiating deals with buyers and sellers, and I just found that really fun. All of that gave me the knowledge that I needed to later run a specialty food store.
Kerry Diamond:
You also credit Oprah in the book with a little bit of the realization that it was more than luck. Can you tell us about the time Oprah slapped you on the arm and what happened there?
Ina Garten:
It was shocking. It was very nice. I was given a Matrix award for Women in Media and there were probably, I'm thinking eight women on the stage and each of them had somebody that introduced them.
I had Anna Quindlen who I just adore, introducing me, but I was sitting next to Oprah on the stage and she was introducing Gayle King, who was being given an award, and you were asked to give literally a minute and 30-second speech, which is about all I can handle without having a total meltdown, and I basically said, "I'd been really lucky in my life," and I sat down and she smacked me on the arm in front of 2,000 people and said, "You make your own luck."
And I said, "Well, I actually had been incredibly lucky," and then she smacked me again and I was like, "Okay." Many years later when I was writing this memoir, I thought, she was kind of right that I had done the work. So when I did the thing, running especially food store was the basis for writing a cookbook. I had actually really done the work, and so I have to give her credit. She was right.
Kerry Diamond:
So was that the ‘be ready’ part of the title of the book?
Ina Garten:
No. What this was is, while I was writing it, I didn't know what I was going to call it, and very good friends of mine are Rob Marshall and John DeLuca who were the director and producers of huge movies like “Chicago” and “Mary Poppins Returns” and just fabulous movies, and we were having dinner one night.
Mom just happened to mention that when he was 24 and he was the dance captain for a broadway show with Liza Minnelli. Liza came over to him and said and to paraphrase what she said, "Be ready when the luck happens." It just gave me chills because I thought, "Oh my God, that's the connection." It's not a new idea. It's from the Greeks or something, it's preparation and inspiration. And I thought, "Well, actually, I had kind of been ready when the luck happened," and so it wasn't just lucky. At the end, I gave her full credit for the statement.
When I see young people now, they just want to be rich and famous, but they don't understand that you have to do the work. You have to understand what you're doing and you have to just dive in not knowing where it's going to go. I mean, we grew up long before you thinking, I mean not as women, but certainly the boys I grew up with, what are you going to be when you grow up?
The things you don't decide that now. You decide what you're going to do now and it's going to lead to something else and you leave yourself open and you figure it out along the way, and I think that's the fun of it, not like I'm going to be a doctor, a lawyer, and that's all I'm ever going to think about doing.
Kerry Diamond:
We'll be right back with today's guest. We're hosting our very first Jubilee wine country at the beautiful Solage Resort in Calistoga, California on October 26th and 27th. Join me, Dominique Crenn, Jeni Britton, Tanya Holland, and lots of other amazing folks, for what is going to be an incredible weekend of food, drink and of course, wine. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit cherrybombe.com.
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi peeps, it's Jessie Sheehan, the host of She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I have big news for you. My new cookbook, “Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy Snackable Bakes” is now available. This is my first savory baking book and I'm so excited to share it with all of you. It features 100 easy-peasy baking recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and of course, snacking, from sage butter scones to smash burger hand pies and tomato za'atar galette. You'll also find six of my essential savory baking hacks, including how to make my magic melted butter pie dough and the quickest and easiest caramelized onions. My cookbook tour is underway and tickets are on sale right now at cherrybombe.com. Thanks to everyone who joined me in New York. I'll be in San Francisco on Tuesday, October 8th; Chicago on Tuesday, October 15th; and Boston on Wednesday, October 23rd. I can't wait to see you. Thank you to Kerrygold and King Arthur flour for supporting my tour. You can click the link in the show notes of this episode to order the book or pick up a copy at your favorite local bookstore. I hope you love “Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy Snackable Bakes” as much as I loved writing it.
Kerry Diamond:
You mentioned people asking what you wanted to be when you grow up. I was really struck by how few expectations there were for you, Ina. It was be a wife.
Ina Garten:
You were going to get married, and that was that, and the rest was prescribed, and I actually never thought about anything else, and it was Jeffrey, who I'm sure I've told you this, that I consider him the first feminist I met and he came home one day, I was watching TV at 11:00 in the morning, and ironically, I was watching “That Girl” with Marlo Thomas and it was so dramatic and so out of the box that she was a young woman living on her own in New York City in an apartment without a chaperone.
I mean, this isn't a thousand years ago, this was in the 60 years ago, and her boyfriend was coming to visit. I mean, that was even scandalous, and Jeffrey said, "You need to figure out what you're going to do with your lives. If you don't, you won't be happy," and it had never occurred to me.
Kerry Diamond:
It took you a while to get there.
Ina Garten:
Well, first I had to finish college.
Kerry Diamond:
Yes. Didn't you have to do three different colleges just to finish?
Ina Garten:
Yes, a lot of different colleges because I got married in the middle of my college and when I was a junior, when my parents put so much pressure on me about grades in college and being academically successful, I really pushed back. I said to him, "I can't figure out my grades. I just can't do this." He said, "So don't go to college." And in that moment, I remember thinking, "Oh, it's up to me." And after that, it was easy. I don't like having somebody tell me what to do.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, that's why I had to laugh when I asked about the memoir and you said your writer and friend sort of talked you into it in the beginning because one thing definitely comes through in the book, you don't do things unless you want to do things.
Ina Garten:
Yeah. That comes through loud and clear.
Kerry Diamond:
Just a little.
Ina Garten:
Yeah, but Jeffrey's got my number. If he wants me to do something, he always somehow says, "Whatever you do, don't do it," and the next thing I know, I'm doing it.
Kerry Diamond:
That's the secret. Okay, good to know. I'm also curious with the memoir, you've always been a fairly private person. I mean, a lot of us think we know you because of the TV shows and the books, but we only know a little bit of you. Were you worried about letting people know more about your life or the real Ina?
Ina Garten:
I thought it was interesting because in the social media world, everybody has a very thin view of everything, that these people are perfect and they have perfect lives and everything's beautiful all the time, and that's not the way life is. I think that when I look back, it's the times of stress, like when Jeffrey and I were having issues and we just didn't know what to do and I decided to put on the brakes. Those are the really meaningful times in the long run because that's where we shifted our relationship.
It was really hard. It was really scary because he could have walked out. Thank God, he stuck around for it and was willing to just sit down and say, "Okay, what are we going to do?" That really made my life. I mean, jumping off a cliff from the White House to buying a specialty food store in a place I'd never been, if I hadn't had the courage to do that, I'd still be working in Washington. I'd have a perfectly fine life, but it wouldn't be what I wanted to.
So I think people needed to know that I just think it was important to share that it's the scary things that you do that really are the doing of your life or the making of your life, and I'm not saying for people to do things that are so scary. I always had an exit strategy. I knew if it didn't work out, I could do something. I wouldn't destroy myself or Jeffrey, but you got to take a chance.
You can't stand on the side of the pond thinking, "Oh, it could be cold. It's wet. It's dark. I don't know what it is." You have to just jump in the pond, splash around and find out what it was and find out what it is. And at some point, you may say, "Well, this is interesting, but I see something over there that's even more interesting," and you go there. You just got to be a little more flexible.
Kerry Diamond:
The media has really jumped on the fact that you and Jeffrey separated for a short time. Were you surprised about that?
Ina Garten:
No.
Kerry Diamond:
You knew that would be the thing people talk about?
Ina Garten:
I think people would be surprised. So I think that was part of why I told the story. It was a really long time ago. It was a really scary thing, but I wasn't happy and I felt that our relationship was like husband and wife, which relationships in the '70s were, and I couldn't shift back. It was assumed that I would make dinner, that I take care of the house, and maybe I'm happy doing it, but I don't like that it's expected, and that Jeffrey was the husband and he would take care of the finances, and he would say to me, "So what's this bill from Bloomingdale's?" And I'm like, "I'm not justifying this."
And at some point, Jeffrey just said, "Here, you do it." And I was like, "Okay, I'll do it." So we needed to shift it from husband and wife to partners. It was a time when women were having a hard time doing that. Of course, men had a good deal. They always came home and there was a good meal on the table for dinner.
Kerry Diamond:
You also clarify why you and Jeffrey didn't have any children, and I was curious why you included that. Were you tired of that question?
Ina Garten:
No, I wasn't tired of the question. Very few people have asked me actually. The reason why I included the story of my childhood, which was so unhappy and so fraught, is not that I thought it was the worst childhood ever. I mean, certainly it was bad, but it was not as bad as a lot of other people, is that I just wanted people to know that the story of your childhood doesn't have to be the story of your life.
And I made an absolute determination when I was 15 that if I was dating somebody who someone just raised his voice to me, I was out of there. I think a lot of people make that decision, but end up marrying somebody that's like their family. I married somebody who's totally different and at every step of the way, I've really rejected the relationships I had at home and created different relationships, and I think part of not having children was I had a very unhappy childhood.
Being a child in that family was terrible. There was no joy. There was no fun. Nobody hung out and played games and nobody cared about what we thought. And I didn't really understand in my 20s why people even had children because it was such a miserable experience. Now, that I'm older, I understand people have wonderful family lives and they have total joy from their children, but I hadn't seen it.
Kerry Diamond:
One of the things that I always marvel about you, Ina, is just how prescient you are. You mentioned earlier some of the things like getting into the food business, getting on television, writing cookbooks, even during the pandemic, two years earlier, started working on a book called “Modern Comfort Food,” the book we all needed.
Ina Garten:
Isn't that crazy?
Kerry Diamond:
When you did the fun cocktail thing and made us all smile during the pandemic.
Ina Garten:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Just so many examples of that over and over again, but in talking about not having children, of course, I have to ask you about the term childless being weaponized and thrown around in a way that's just really ugly toward women, I think, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I was just curious if you had any reaction to that when it happened.
Ina Garten:
Technically, it's not an ugly word. It's being used as an ugly word. It's being used in a way that says if women don't have children, they have no value. It's that simple, and they have no value to society. They have no value to other people. It's obviously ridiculous.
Kerry Diamond:
You are definitely not a cat lady, though.
Ina Garten:
That's funny. I said to somebody, "I'm not just childless, I don't even have a cat." So I'm the worst kind of childless cat lady.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh my gosh, that's so funny. Have you guys ever had pets?
Ina Garten:
Our lives are so simple. We do what we love to do. We spend a lot of wonderful time together, and we're not responsible to anything except to each other and the people that work with us and our friends. The things that people fight about, we don't even have.
Kerry Diamond:
Maybe it's the Hamptons thing and the fact that you like a convertible, but I see you too as Golden Retriever people.
Ina Garten:
Now, there's fur all over everything.
Kerry Diamond:
And muddy paw prints, right?
Ina Garten:
And muddy paw prints. I know people love their pets. I know they love their children, and I admire that. I just don't have it in me.
Kerry Diamond:
Again, this is clear just from our interview, but very clear in the book that you do operate on instinct often and trusting your gut and you react when an opportunity is presented to you. Has there ever been a time when you've said, "I'm going to work on a five-year plan," or "I'm going to set some goals for the year?"
Ina Garten:
I just don't. I never have and I never, what's happened to me has been so outrageously outside the bounds of what I could have imagined that to set a five-year goal just seems like a waste of time because I think it locks something in as opposed to saying, I literally just operate as, I don't go to sleep until I know what I'm going to do tomorrow, and I've got all my pencils or my ingredients or whatever I need lined up, and tomorrow, I'm going to do the best job I can possibly do with what I have to do, and then, at the end of the day, I'm going to figure out what I'm going to do the next day.
And it just seems to me, for me, it works the best. If something comes across my screen, I'm free to look at it and say, "That's interesting," or "No, I'm not going to put my name on your fertilizer," which is an opportunity that I was presented with. And I was like, "No, I'm not putting my name on your shit." And then, something comes across and somebody says, "Would you like to do a show on Food Network?" And you go, "Well, that's kind of interesting, but I don't think I will, but maybe I'll just dip my toe on that water and see what it's like."
Kerry Diamond:
I get the sense you run your business still as a family business. Do you have a CEO or anybody who runs the business for you?
Ina Garten:
I'm the CEO. I'm the CFO. And actually, when I hire people to come work with me, they think I have a big organization. One of my employees said, a friend of hers who worked for Wolfgang Puck said, "Have you ever met Ina?" Because she had never met Wolfgang. I mean, it's a huge organization. She had never met Wolfgang.
And literally every morning, I walked from the house across the lawn to the barn, and I have two assistants, full-time assistants and one part-time accountant and we meet at the barn and we decide what we're going to do that day, and that's basically the organization.
Kerry Diamond:
I love it.
Ina Garten:
And it's great because if I have a question about something, we batted around until we decide what to do. I love to hear people's opinions, but it's my responsibility to make the decision.
Kerry Diamond:
So you've written the memoir. Does that mean no more cookbooks or will you go back to cookbooks?
Ina Garten:
I am probably three quarters of the way through the next cookbook. Yeah, I'm definitely going back to cookbook's sense now, but as I said to you, it could change, is I have a contract for a cookbook, which is next, that'll come out in 2026 and a design book in 2028, and it's not a pretty pictures design book for your coffee table. It's going to be, this is how I think about flowers on a table for a dinner party. This is how I think about arranging the chairs in a room, where the sofa goes. It's about gardens. It'll be about all the things that I kind of do for fun.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, I love that. Do you think you'll be back on that every two-year schedule that you were on?
Ina Garten:
Two years just feels like I have the time to really delve into it and do a really, it's not a surface job, really spend time doing a good job and designing it and editing it and photographing it. That feels like it's a lot every two years.
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely, but I do think for some of us who are big fans and who love your books, it also gives some sort of, I don't know, structure to our own lives. Okay, two years have passed, Ina's got a new book. What's going on?
Ina Garten:
I also feel like I want people to absorb what I've gotten this year, and it takes a year or two to work on the recipes and feel like I want people to look around and go, "Oh, is there another book coming soon?" Rather than, "Oh God, it's another book."
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely. Did you let Jeffrey read the memoir before you turned it in?
Ina Garten:
I wrote the entire memoir. Deborah and I wrote it together and I wanted him to read it. I gave it to him actually like 24 hours before I was giving it to my editor. I knew we had an editing process. I wanted him to read it for accuracy because unlike an autobiography where everything has to be very accurate, a memoir is how you remember it, and I just wanted to be sure that there was nothing in it that was upsetting to him because of course, a lot of it it's about him, but also that what I said was accurate and I gave it to him.
I mean, he reads a lot, but he's also dyslexic, so it takes enormous amount of energy for Jeffrey to read, and he usually reads in blocks. And so, I gave it to him after lunch one day and he sat at the kitchen table and he didn't move until 7:30 when he finished it. And I was bringing him snacks and drinks, and I was like, "Oh my God." And of course he knew everything in the book, but he'd never read it in the way that we wrote it, and I was really glad that he was pleased.
Kerry Diamond:
He had no changes?
Ina Garten:
One change, a friend of his who had enormous influence on me, I thought had worked at the State Department, he worked at the World Bank, but that was it.
Kerry Diamond:
And that was it?
Ina Garten:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow. Were you nervous? I mean, you two know each other so well.
Ina Garten:
Yeah. Of course, I was nervous because I want him to admire my work, and he thought it was just wonderful. So that was good. It was a moment.
Kerry Diamond:
That's amazing. I think you mentioned in the book that Jeffrey is very private and has never really done many interviews.
Ina Garten:
He's had so many requests for interviews because of the memoir, and he's just said no to all of them.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, okay. So we shouldn't request to get him on Radio Cherry Bombe?
Ina Garten:
Yeah, not going to happen.
Kerry Diamond:
Jeffrey, if you're listening, we all want you to come on the show. So he's at the top of my list with Oprah.
Ina Garten:
I'll tell him. Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell him, friendly territory, if he comes here. Does Jeffrey cook?
Ina Garten:
Jeffrey makes really good coffee, and which is wonderful because I come downstairs in the morning and his coffee ready for me. And during the pandemic, because I was working so hard, I was doing recipes for people that were stuck at home out of their pantry, they didn't know what to do, and then I'd have to make lunch and dinner because you couldn't order out. I was just exhausted. And Jeffrey said, "You know what? Why don't I just take over doing the dishes?" I was like, "That would be great." So even after that, he's taken that over. So he's been wonderful doing dishes and loading and unloading the dishwasher.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, that's nice. And...
Ina Garten:
It's cute.
Kerry Diamond:
... he doesn't break the dishes?
Ina Garten:
No.
Kerry Diamond:
I've had some passive-aggressive boyfriends who are like, "I'll do the dishes," and then they break the first two and you're like, "You know what? Let me do the dishes."
Ina Garten:
Well, I know, that's very passive-aggressive. No. He knows I hate a scavenger hunt for the spatula I'm looking for, so he's not sure. He leaves it on the counter and I put it away in the morning. So we have a nice list.
Kerry Diamond:
I love talking about it as a scavenger hunt. That's exactly what happens. You've done so many things now. I mean, the memoir kind of the cherry on top, what is left on your big to-do list?
Ina Garten:
I don't have a list of things that I'm dying to do. I love my life the way it is. I love writing books. I'm never retiring because I can't imagine what I would do with myself, and I like the challenges. I can always challenge myself. I think I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing, which is writing books I like, that I've opened it up a little bit with a memoir and the design book, and “Be My Guest” has been just stunningly wonderful for me to connect with people.
It's kind of the thing I missed in my childhood, having a connection with people and cooking together and meeting people that I wouldn't ever have met and very often becoming friends with them, which is wonderful.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah, it's so clear how much you love doing that show...
Ina Garten:
Love it.
Kerry Diamond:
... and it's a show and a podcast for people who don't realize that.
Ina Garten:
Yeah, it's been extraordinary, really extraordinary.
Kerry Diamond:
How do you stay inspired?
Ina Garten:
I think traveling and reading, and I have a library behind me that has a million cookbooks in it. I think it's probably like for doctors is like medical journals. You just enjoy reading them. When you travel, you see things that have nothing to do with cookbooks, but I may see the colors of fashion in Paris and think, "Oh, those would be great for the cover of a book." So I think when you travel, you see what other people are doing and you use what you've learned in a way that works for you and it's osmosis, you just absorb it.
Kerry Diamond:
I have a few questions from the Bombesquad. We got a great one from a 16-year-old named Summer. She would like to know what your life advice is for a 16-year-old who wants to do everything.
Ina Garten:
The best advice I ever gave, and I'll pass it on to you, is do what you love. If you love it, you'll be really good at it. So think about what you used to do when you were 10 before you had this idea that you had to be something when you grow up and figure out how to make a living out of it. I mean, I know somebody who loved to watch movies and I mean, how do you make a living watching movies? And she became the movie critic for a newspaper. So there's always a way to incorporate what you love to do.
Kerry Diamond:
Projet Chocolat wants to know what's been your life's purpose?
Ina Garten:
Well, a friend of mine actually writes books about mattering and mattering is when we feel that our lives matter to other people, and I didn't do this deliberately, but it's the way it worked out. When I walk down the street and people say to me, "You taught me how to cook," I feel like my life matters.
When you cook, everybody shows up and you create a community around yourselves and connections with people, and that's really what makes us happy, and I think the people who feel that their lives matter to other people, and it could be just showing up at somebody's house with chicken soup when they're not well, you say to them, "Your life matters to me and I want to take care of you." So I think cooking really satisfies that for me, and I did it because I felt like writing cookbooks, but it turned out that it made me feel like my life matters.
Kerry Diamond:
There's a great new culinary bookstore in Buffalo called “Read It & Eat,” and the folks there would like to know which of your recipes has most stood the test of time? You do have some recipes in this book.
Ina Garten:
I do. If I'm telling a story that involves a recipe, like a story about Nora Ephron, I included the truffle sandwich that she and I connected over. I hate to say it because it's kind of cliche by now, but I mean roast chicken. Most people don't know how to make a really good roast chicken, and it's really simple. You just don't overcook it. There's really not much of a secret to it.
I think one of the very few things I took from my mother was she used to make Parmesan chicken and I ended up putting a salad with a lemon vinaigrette on top of it. Those are two things that I make all the time. My other current favorite is vanilla panna cotta with salted caramel, which I just love whenever I serve it. I just look around the table and nobody's talking. Everybody's just like, mhm.
Kerry Diamond:
I love that.
Ina Garten:
That just makes me feel so good that people are so happy.
Kerry Diamond:
Sure. I thought you might say coconut cupcakes.
Ina Garten:
Oh, coconut cupcakes, definitely. Yeah, exactly.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. My Little Pasadena Kitchen wants to know if you get invited to potlucks.
Ina Garten:
We don't do potlucks so much, but I think it's a good idea as long as it's organized. You don't want to potluck where everybody brings a green bean casserole.
Kerry Diamond:
Yes.
Ina Garten:
You know what I like about potlucks is that everybody feels like they're involved. And if you ask somebody to bring something, it says, "I trust you to bring something really good," so you're part of the team. But I have to say, I usually ask people to just come and bring their adorable selves and have fun.
Kerry Diamond:
All right. We all know you love gardening and you love your garden. Kim Friday is a first-time gardener, and she wants to know, are there any herb plants that you bring in for the winter?
Ina Garten:
Well, you can bring them all in. The only question is will they last? I think sometimes they get a little mold on them. They're really hard to do, but it's certainly worth doing. I don't know that you can expect to put them out again next year, but one herb plant, like one basil plant makes a lot of basil. And sometimes, I have Rosemary that overwinters for a couple of winters, and then I have to buy new ones. As long as you're willing to just say, "Okay, this isn't working, and buy a new one," it's certainly worth keeping them for as long as you can.
Kerry Diamond:
For everyone else who sent in questions, thank you so much. If I didn't ask you a question, it means Ina answers it in the book and you have to buy the book and read the book. Ina, you know what we didn't talk about that I just loved was the early Barefoot Contessa days. I shook my head as many times as I laughed out loud, and again, just this plunging forward, not knowing what you don't know.
Ina Garten:
I mean, taking all the... We didn't have time to count the cash, so we used to stuff it into night drop bags for the bank, but we kept both keys so they couldn't get into the bag. As soon as we had money, we would put it into the night drop, and then on Monday, my manager, Sarah and I, would go to one of those little booths where the safety deposit box are, and we would spend the entire day counting cash.
Kerry Diamond:
That's called a good problem.
Ina Garten:
Well, we knew that maybe this was going to be a good business.
Kerry Diamond:
I mean, really fun stuff. Lots of hijinks, everything from people stealing from the store. You got held by gunpoint in the city. I mean...
Ina Garten:
Exactly.
Kerry Diamond:
... this is like a movie.
Ina Garten:
It was pretty crazy. I just did what I needed to do and maybe because I'd never been in the business before, I just went headlong into it, as you say, and just figured it out on the way.
Kerry Diamond:
A thousand baguettes that you would have to make every day?
Ina Garten:
I had a baker who was, we were only open in the summer, so we'd hire an entire staff in April and then they would be gone in September. So in April, I hired this young man. He was a perfectly lovely young man, his family were bread bakers, and he was going to be the bread baker because I had just gotten these French deck ovens and he just made terrible bread. I think he knew how to make classic American white bread, but not baguettes.
And I get there at 3:00 in the morning, try and get him to, and I just couldn't. And in walks this absolutely gorgeous Swedish girl, and I just said, "Have you ever baked bread?" And she said, "No." And I was like, "Would you like to learn?" She said, "Yes." And I mean, I taught her how to make bread and she was in the window. The bread baking was in the window so you could watch it. I mean, people from all over the country felt like came to watch her bake bread because she was so beautiful and she makes fabulous baguettes and she stayed for years, and we would literally sell a thousand baguettes a day when she was there. Isn't that incredible?
Kerry Diamond:
That is amazing. But even her story, a case of right time, right place, saying yes...
Ina Garten:
Saying yes, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
... to an opportunity?
Ina Garten:
I thought, "Okay, here's a bread baker who thinks he knows how to bake bread and I can't change him. I'll just try somebody who I know how to bake bread, so I'll just teach her how to do it," and she was just fabulous.
Kerry Diamond:
So folks might not be looking at this book as sort of like an entrepreneur manual, and so many of you out there are entrepreneurs. There is a lot of great advice for starting a business and just succeeding despite just so much craziness around you.
Ina Garten:
Thank you so much, Kerry.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
Ina Garten:
That's exactly what I wanted people to get from it is sometimes you don't have to go to business school to figure it out. You have to jump in and figure it out and use your common sense and do what feels right.
Kerry Diamond:
All right. Let's do a little speed round because you are busy and we're so grateful that you gave us the time, Ina.
Ina Garten:
Thank you so much.
Kerry Diamond:
Thank you so much.
Ina Garten:
I love what you do and I'm so glad to be part of it.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, I know the whole world wants to interview you, so it means a lot.
Ina Garten:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Speed round, morning beverage?
Ina Garten:
Coffee. Good coffee. Good coffee with milk. That's a really good coffee with whole milk.
Kerry Diamond:
What are you streaming these days?
Ina Garten:
We're always watching some kind of a British series. We love British series. We're watching a series called “River,” I think it's an old series, but I love the British series because they're all about human beings with quirks and flaws and anxieties, and they're trying to solve a crime, so they're great.
Kerry Diamond:
Are there any treasured cookbooks that you're referencing these days or taking a look at?
Ina Garten:
I tend to look at, especially food store cookbooks, because they're things where food that's made in advance that you take home to reheat and they're still really good, as opposed to a restaurant where you grill a steak and serve it and somebody eats it. So I find them very useful. I love “Loaves and Fishes” cookbooks. I love-
Kerry Diamond:
And that's a whole series of cookbooks.
Ina Garten:
A whole series, and Sarah Chase who had a specialty food ftore, Que Sera, who actually works with me, fabulous cookbooks and I love. She actually wrote the second “Silver Palate” cookbook. She knows about simple recipes that taste fabulous.
Kerry Diamond:
I was thinking of doing a fun social media thing and cooking through the “Silver Palate” cookbook.
Ina Garten:
Oh yeah. And remember, they didn't have photographs. They had drawings, and sometimes there are like three recipes on one page. So I mean, that's just fabulous.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah, that book is a triumph of graphic design, that is for sure, how they squeezed all those recipes. And what's your favorite smell?
Ina Garten:
Vanilla.
Kerry Diamond:
What's your favorite snack food?
Ina Garten:
Cheese.
Kerry Diamond:
Any particular kind?
Ina Garten:
I mean, whatever's in season. I like sharp cheddar. I like really good brie, just stuff, and obviously in-season baserri.
Kerry Diamond:
But your friend Oprah said recently, "Don't take my Tupperware." Do you feel the same way about your own Tupperware?
Ina Garten:
I don't even own Tupperware.
Kerry Diamond:
I think she was using-
Ina Garten:
She said "don't take my Tupperware?"
Kerry Diamond:
I think she was using it in the generic sense, like don't take my nice containers.
Ina Garten:
Oh, I have quart containers and pint containers and mini bites. Oh yeah, absolutely. They're all stacked together. I use them all the time.
Kerry Diamond:
Are you proprietary about them?
Ina Garten:
No because if we're cooking something and my staff wants to take something, then it goes into one of those containers. But at some point, I just say, "Can you bring some of those back?"
Kerry Diamond:
Exactly.
Ina Garten:
Or I take them from here to the house and I have to bring them back. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Ina, who do you admire?
Ina Garten:
Julia Child. Let's think about Julia Child. She had a passion for food. Cookbooks weren't a thing. She proposed in an era where people were looking for fast food and quick tricks like Velveeta. She was proposing, we go back to real food and complicated cooking. Alfred Knopf famously said, "If we sell any of these books, I'll eat my hat." And she did it anyway. She did it anyway. She was not going to let somebody stop her.
She wrote the book, because of her passion for it and her belief that people would enjoy cooking if they took the chance. We're still using that book today. Then, she went into TV. I mean, nobody, who would want to watch cooking on TV? Cooking was beneath people and she made it something really worthwhile. I don't think there's anybody have more admiration for than Julia.
Kerry Diamond:
All right. Last question. And you can't say Jeffrey, even though Jeffrey is kind of a food celebrity these days, if you had to be trapped on a deserted island with one food celebrity, who would it be and why?
Ina Garten:
Eric Ripert. I mean, obviously probably the most accomplished chef in the world. The co-owner and chef at Le Bernardin. He's fun. He's adorable. He's a Buddhist. I think I would learn a lot from him if I was trapped on a desert island and I think we'd have a very good time, but don't tell his wife. She can come. Sandra can come too. She's wonderful.
Kerry Diamond:
I thought maybe you picked him because chances are you'd be surrounded by water and his specialty is fish.
Ina Garten:
Yeah, fish. It would be perfect. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
You'd never starve. Yeah.
Ina Garten:
We'd never starve.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you know you are our number one answer to that question?
Ina Garten:
I'm your number one answer?
Kerry Diamond:
Yes.
Ina Garten:
You're kidding? Well, that's just wonderful.
Kerry Diamond:
I think 90% of our guests say, Ina Garten.
Ina Garten:
Oh my goodness. Thank you. And I picked Eric Ripert for the same reason, because I thought it'd be fun and we would eat well.
Kerry Diamond:
Would you be good on a deserted island? Should people be picking you?
Ina Garten:
Well, how big is the deserted island? They get claustrophobic pretty quickly. I'd probably be building a boat really fast. As long as I had funsters around me, I'd be okay, but I think alone on an island, oh, that's not pretty. I'd be in a rabbit hole so deep, you wouldn't be able to find me.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you say the funsters?
Ina Garten:
Funsters, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Okay. Well make sure you're surrounded by funsters. Thank you again, Ina.
Ina Garten:
Thank you. It was wonderful to be with you, anytime, anywhere. See you soon.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. I would love for you to follow a Radio Cherry Bombe, wherever you listen to podcasts and leave a rating and a review. Let me know what you think about the show and who you would love to hear from on our future episode. Our theme song is by the band Tralala, Joseph Hazan is a studio engineer for Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center. Our producers are Catherine Baker and Jenna Sadhu, and our content and partnerships manager is Londyn Crenshaw. Thanks for listening, everybody. You're the Bombe.