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I love to take something ordinary and make it really special.
Ina Garten
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Ina Garten
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: February 2
Author
Chef
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Ina Rosenberg Garten
Ordinary
Special
Take
Something
Really
Make
Love
More quotes by Ina Garten
I've lived in the Hamptons since 1978, when I first bought my store Barefoot Contessa.
Ina Garten
I use other cookbooks for inspiration. I must say I tend to cook from my own cookbooks for parties.
Ina Garten
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
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
I don't like sitting at a table that's too large, where everyone is too far apart. That's a party killer.
Ina Garten
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
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
I always like to have flowers on the table. I think they make it look special.
Ina Garten
Food is not about impressing people. It's about making them feel comfortable.
Ina Garten
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
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
Instead of going out to dinner, buy good food. Cooking at home shows such affection. In a bad economy, it's more important to make yourself feel good.
Ina Garten
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
The planning is everything. Deciding which dishes you're going to prepare can turn into the make-or-break decision five days later, when you actually serve the meal.
Ina Garten
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
Every once in a while, a cookbook comes along that simply knocks me out.
Ina Garten
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
When I thought my professional career was over, it hadn't even started yet.
Ina Garten
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
I get up every day, do the best that I can do, and go home and have a good time.
Ina Garten
