Ina Garten quotes

You can be miserable before you have a cookie and you can be miserable after you eat a cookie but you can't be miserable while you are eating a cookie. (Ina Garten)
I always like to have flowers on the table. I think they make it look special.
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
You don't have to do everything from scratch. Nobody wants to make puff pastry!
Ina Garten
Creme Brulee is the ultimate 'guy' dessert. Make it and he'll follow you anywhere.
Ina Garten
When I wrote 'Barefoot in Paris,' I wanted to make simple recipes that you could make at home that tasted like French classics.
Ina Garten
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
I love to take something ordinary and make it really special.
Ina Garten
If you think about a Thanksgiving dinner, it's really like making a large chicken.
Ina Garten
I've taught myself how to use good, fresh ingredients and to prepare them as simply as possible by cooking only to enhance their intrinsic flavors.
Ina Garten
Grilled cheese and tomato soup is the ultimate comfort meal. (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
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 learned that the hardest party to pull off successfully is Saturday night dinner. This meal is expected to be elaborate: appetizers, first course, dinner, dessert, and coffee. People arrive at 7:30 or 8 p.m. and stay for hours - definitely past my bedtime - and they all go home exhausted.
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
The most overrated tool: a pasta maker. Why make it when you can buy it? It's a lot of work!
Ina Garten
My extravagance is my garden - it's the first thing I look at every morning when I wake up. It gives me so much pleasure.
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
I love Alton Brown's show 'Good Eats,' about the chemistry of food. It's really thoughtful.
Ina Garten
I like almonds as a snack - keeps your energy up but doesn't fill you up.
Ina Garten
People have more fun if they don't eat so much they have to be taken home in an ambulance. (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'm really a scientist. I follow recipes exactly - until I decide not to. And then I'll follow something else exactly. I may decide I could turn this peach tart into a plum tart, but if I'm following a recipe, I follow it exactly.
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 worked for the Office of Management and Budget in the White House, on nuclear energy policy. But I decided it would be much more fun to have a specialty food store, so I left Washington D.C. and moved to the Hamptons. And how glad I am that I did!
Ina Garten