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Food is not about impressing people. It's about making them feel comfortable.

Ina Garten

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Ina Garten
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: February 2
Author
Chef
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Ina Rosenberg Garten
People
Impressing
Impress
Cooking
Comfortable
Food
Making
Feel
Feels

More quotes by Ina Garten

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Every once in a while, a cookbook comes along that simply knocks me out.
Ina Garten
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You can get bogged down in a recipe that's got a lot of steps and a million ingredients, and it takes all day to make. And then you realize, you've just got one dish. For Thanksgiving, you want an abundance of choices, and so you want dishes that you can put together really quickly, but that doesn't mean less flavor.
Ina Garten
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In the summer you want fresh, light and sort of quick things in winter you want things that are comforting, so your body really tells you you want to go towards potatoes, apples, fennel, things that are warm and comforting. And loin of pork.
Ina Garten
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You don't have to do everything from scratch. Nobody wants to make puff pastry!
Ina Garten
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Grilled cheese and tomato soup is the ultimate comfort meal.
Ina Garten
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When I thought my professional career was over, it hadn't even started yet.
Ina Garten
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I always like to have flowers on the table. I think they make it look special.
Ina Garten
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The most overrated tool: a pasta maker. Why make it when you can buy it? It's a lot of work!
Ina Garten
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Take one flower that you like and get lots of them. And don't try to 'arrange' them. It's surprisingly hard to do a flower arrangement the way a florist does one. Instead, bunch them all together or put them in a series of small vases all down the table.
Ina Garten
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They say that gardens look better when they are created by loving gardeners rather than by landscapers, because the garden is more tended to and cared for. The same thing goes for cooking. I only cook for people I love.
Ina Garten
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My mother would never let me in the kitchen. I always wanted to cook, but I was never allowed to. Her view of the world was, Cooking is my job, and studying is your job. I think, in retrospect, she didn't like the chaos. She was very orderly. It had to be her way.
Ina Garten
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The dirty little secret is that I grew up in a household where there were no carbohydrates allowed, ever. No cookies, no bread, no potatoes, no rice. My mother was very extreme in terms of what she served. Since I left home more than 40 years ago, I've been making it right for myself.
Ina Garten
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I use other cookbooks for inspiration. I must say I tend to cook from my own cookbooks for parties.
Ina Garten
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I've lived in the Hamptons since 1978, when I first bought my store Barefoot Contessa.
Ina Garten
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I try to greet my friends with a drink in my hand, a warm smile on my face, and great music in the background, because that's what gets a dinner party off to a fun start.
Ina Garten
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My favorite fall or winter lunch is big steaming bowls of soup. I usually invite people for around 12:30 and have two hearty soups like shrimp corn chowder and lentil sausage soup, which can be made a day or two ahead.
Ina Garten
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I love to take something ordinary and make it really special.
Ina Garten
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I always have music. I love it to be very upbeat. When you're having drinks, I like something like Cesaria Evora. During dinner, I like the much more traditional - old Frank Sinatra and things like that.
Ina Garten
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If it's a cocktail party, I generally make five or six different things, and I try to choose recipes that feel like a meal: a chicken thing, a fish or shrimp thing, maybe two vegetable things, and I think it's fun to end the cocktail party with a sweet thing.
Ina Garten
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I measure everything, because I always think that if I've spent so much time making sure this recipe was exactly the way I want it, why would I want to throw things into a pot?
Ina Garten