Barefoot Dan

Ina Garten has been on an extensive press tour promoting her new memoir. In interviews she is at once polished, vulnerable, authentic, and relaxed. Her communication style is almost as unattainable as her lifestyle hosting real-life friends in her real-life East Hampton home on her real-life television show.

I do appreciate that she admits cooking is hard. There are chefs, like Bobby Flay, she says, who have spent years working in kitchens making the same dishes so many times that the activity becomes rote. She, however, may only test a recipe a few times before filming a show, or perhaps a dozen in preparation for a cookbook. Her admission makes messing up the occasional fried egg feel slightly less shameful.

Most touching is her recounting of how she created a life of abundance and connection after being raised in an extremely strict environment largely void of love. While her life “Out East” is anything but relatable, her heart reads so pure as to suggest she could have owned a small specialty grocery store in any town in America and still hosted fabulous dinner parties with friends. Maybe you could, too.

And that is the appeal of Ina. She doesn’t lay down the law like Martha or claim her meals only take 30 minutes like Rachel, but she shows you what it would actually look like to slow down and savor and share.

I myself am far too busy to be concerned with such things, but when Ina talks, she makes it sounds like she just might have a point.