An upcoming book to be published by Penguin Random House.

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Ina Garten

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In her long-awaited memoir, Ina Garten—aka the Barefoot Contessa, author of thirteen bestselling cookbooks, beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and cultural icon—shares her personal story with readers hungry for a seat at her table.

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Time, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Town & Country

Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose.
 
From a difficult childhood to meeting the love of her life, Jeffrey, and marrying him while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned along the way: do what you love because if you love it you’ll be really good at it, swing for the fences, and always Be Ready When the Luck Happens.

Leseprobe
Over the Wall

“There has to be something more fun than this,” I said to myself, probably for the millionth time, as I sat at my desk drafting nuclear energy policy at the White House. I should have been thinking about enriched uranium, but more often than not, I was looking for distractions. I was most likely planning a weekend dinner party and wondering which ingredient would make the flavor of my chocolate cake POP (it’s coffee, by the way).

My ongoing frustration was that nothing ever happened in government, and even if it did, it took a really long time. Working in the Office of Management and Budget was exciting in the beginning because the issue papers I worked on went directly to the president—first Ford, then Carter. But after four years of shuffling what seemed like very important papers and pulling numerous all-nighters, I realized that despite my working on multibillion-dollar federal budgets, nothing ever seemed to get done. And when it did get done, somehow the next year, it got undone.

The only good thing about having a low threshold for boredom is that I’ve always been willing to take crazy risks just to get out of that miserable state. In my bureaucratic job, I was just part of a larger process, but I wanted to be the process—to do my own thing, either in real estate or in the food business, and, for better or for worse, to make my own decisions and mistakes, risking my own money. I also need immediate feedback, and there was nothing immediate about government work. The issues I was working on involved $50 billion budgets and $25 billion construction projects; I knew I’d be so much happier if they involved only $25, but my $25. I distinctly remember thinking, If I were asked to be the head of OMB, would I want it? And if not, what was I even working toward? I also knew that my success there would depend on a man choosing me to be the head of the organization, and in 1978, that would never happen. I needed to find an alternate track where my success would be measured by my own business skill and nobody could stand in my way.

I didn’t whine—no one wants to hear someone complain about working in the White House!—but I was withering a little more each day. Jeffrey, who knew all too well how unhappy I was, encouraged me to find a passion and follow it. “Pick something you love to do,” he urged. “If you love it, you’ll be really good at it. And don’t worry about whether you make money. Just do it!”

I was sitting in my office, exhausted, and it was only ten a.m. I had the whole day in front of me, so I decided to catch up on The New York Times instead of working. There it was—in the Sunday, April 2, 1978, Business Opportunities section, where they advertised everything from dry cleaners in the Bronx to a coffee shop with an apartment upstairs, or the hottest new food fad in the seventies: a frozen yogurt store (though it was hard to predict if frozen yogurt had a future).

I had never even seen that section of the paper before. As I studied the tiny print, I spotted an ad for a specialty food store called Barefoot Contessa, for sale in a place I’d never been: Westhampton Beach, New York—all the way at the end of Long Island. The ads were written in a shorthand that was difficult to decipher, and the word opportunity seemed like quite an overstatement. To this day, it’s hard for me to imagine why this ad spoke to me, but I’m so glad it did, because it changed the entire trajectory of my life. This was the ad:

Honestly, it sounded like a prediction you might find in a fortune cookie, especially the “gross over six figures” part. And cheese shoppe? Who would answer that ad?

That night, I went home and told Jeffrey that I really needed a new profession, and that’s when he reminded me that I should think about doing what I love. “Funny you should mention it! I just saw an ad for a specialty food store for sale in The New York Times.”

“Let’s go see it!” Jeffrey said cheerfully. Looking back, I imagine that he was probably just humoring me. We lived in Washington, DC, and Jeffrey had an important job writing issue papers and speeches for the secretary of state. How in the world could I work in Westhampton Beach? But Jeffrey always had the most positive attitude—If this is what you want to do, we’ll work it out. We got in the car the very next weekend and drove to Westhampton to see the store and meet the owner, Diana Stratta.

On the way, I reminded myself that there was no reason on earth why this was a good idea. Yes, I had taught myself how to cook and I loved being in the kitchen, but I’d never worked a day in the food business. In fact, I’d never hired an employee, I’d never even set foot in the Hamptons, and this certainly wasn’t its most welcoming time of year. Signs of spring were everywhere in Washington, where the air was warm and the cherry blossoms were a week away from their stunning peak moment. But Westhampton in early April was cold and cloudy, a sleepy summer resort town reluctantly waking up from its long winter nap. By the time we parked in front of Barefoot Contessa, the place we’d traveled more than five hours to see, I’d decided that it was a crazy impulse and predicted we’d take a fast look, then turn around and drive home.

The shop, a white clapboard building on a corner in the center of the village’s Main Street, was small—only four hundred square feet. It was so small that the stove didn’t fit in the tiny kitchen in the back and was instead right there in the store. There was one employee who was taking care of absolutely no customers (in fact, there seemed to be no one in the whole village), but she was baking big chocolate chip cookies. Instantly, the scent triggered a rush of good feelings, like endorphins on s…