Ina Garten

At 76 years old, Ina Garten has this physical status:

Ina Rosenberg Garten ( EYE-n?

born February 2, 1948) is an American author, host of the Food Network program Barefoot Contessa, and a former staff member of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Ina's mother in law purchased a Time Life cookbooks collection that she loved and encouraged her to cook.

She continued to refine her recipes by relying on intuition and feedback from colleagues and customers.

Eli Zabar (the baker of Eli's Manhattan and Eli's Breads) and Martha Stewart, a food connoisseur, were primarily mentored by her.

Céur à la crème, celery root remoulade, pear clafouti, and a simplified version of beef bourguignon are among her dishes.

Garten's culinary career began with her gourmet food store, Barefoot Contessa; later, she expanded her business to include numerous best-selling cookbooks, magazine columns, self-branded convenience items, and a nationally syndicated television show.

Early life

Ina Rosenberg, a Brooklyn transplant who specializes in otolaryngology, and her mother, Florence (née Rich), a dietitian, was one of two children born to Charles H. Rosenberg, a surgeon specializing in otolaryngology, and his partner, Florence (née Rich), a dietitian. She demonstrated a natural aptitude for science and has said she experiments with recipes using her scientific mindset. Ina's mother, a writer with an interest in opera, advised her not to help in the kitchen but rather directed her to schoolwork. Garten referred to her father as a socializer and admits she has more in common with him than her mother.

She met her future husband Jeffrey Garten on a trip to visit her brother at Dartmouth College at 15 years old. She studied at Syracuse University majoring in economics but decided against marrying but decided against it.

Personal life

Jeffrey Garten, a professor at Yale, was Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Bill Clinton administration from 1993 to 1995, and Juan Trippe Professor in the Study of International Trade, Finance, and Company. From 1995 to 2005, he served as the dean of the Yale School of Management. He can also be seen on her cooking show, assisting his wife with basic tasks or sampling the dishes she has created. They divide their days between Manhattan, East Hampton, and Paris.

Planned Parenthood's 16th Annual Hudson Peconic Benefit was held by Garten as hostess of Planned Parenthood. Garten, a Democrat, has contributed to George H. Bush's presidential campaign funds, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, John Kerry, and Barack Obama, who was born in New York as a Democrat.

Garten also serves on the Design Review Board for East Hampton, which is a committee that grants building permits and approves architectural and design elements of the village. The board is working to protect the historic district and improve the overall appearance of the area.

Source

Career

Jeffrey and Ina were married in Stamford on December 22, 1968, and shortly relocated to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In an attempt to fill her hours, Jeffrey began dabbling in cooking and entertaining; during the Vietnam war, she served on a four-year military tour. She also obtained her pilot's licence. The couple travelled to Paris, France, for a four-month camping break; the trip ignited her passion for French cuisine after her husband's service. She was introduced to open-air markets, produce stands, and fresh cooking ingredients during this journey. She began to develop her culinary skills by reading the volumes of Julia Child's popular book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. During this period, weekly dinner parties became a thing, and she and her husband developed their home entertaining skills as she and her husband moved to Washington, D.C., in 1972.

Jeffrey Johnson served in the White House in Washington, WA; he spent his graduate studies in the State Department. Garten began as a low-level government aide and then moved to the Office of Management and Budget, where he climbed the political ladder. She eventually took over the role of budget analyst, which required drafting the nuclear energy budget and policy papers for presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

Garden, who was strained by her jobs' pressures, converted to entertainment once more, while still flipping houses for profit in the Dupont Circle and Kalorama communities. Garten was able to buy Barefoot Contessa's specialty food store, thanks to the proceeds from her book.

Garten left her government service in 1978 after seeing an advertisement for a 400-square-foot (37 m2) specialty food store named Barefoot Contessa in Westhampton Beach, New York. "My work in Washington was intellectually stimulating and enthralling, but it wasn't me at all," she continued four years ago.

She made a hasty decision to purchase the store and then moved to New York to assume ownership after traveling to see it. In honor of Ava Gardner's 1954 film, the store's original owner had naming it. Garten retained the name when she took over; it fit well with her vision of a "elegant but earthy" lifestyle. Ironically, she had not seen the film as of 2006, which was surprising considering she had not seen it.

Garten had migrated Barefoot Contessa across Main Street into a larger building within a year, which quickly outgrew. In 1985, the store moved to the newly vacated headquarters of gourmet store Dean & DeLuca in East Hampton's wealthy Long Island village. East Hampton is a year-round neighborhood, offering a larger, wealthier customer base in comparison to Westhampton's seasonal beach atmosphere. Garten in East Hampton expanded the store by more than sevenfold from its original 400 square feet (37 m2) to more than 3,000 square feet (280 m2). The store, which is located in a new, larger space, is specializing in delicacies such as lobster Cobb salad, caviar, imported cheeses, and locally grown produce.

Although doing much of the cooking herself, Garten also employed local chefs and bakers as the company expanded, including Anna Pump (who later founded the Loaves & Fishes bakery and Bridgehampton Inn). "All you have to do is cook to enhance the ingredients," Garten credited Eli Zabar with her main cooking technique. Celebrity customers, like Steven Spielberg and Lauren Bacall, lauded the store in the newspaper.

After two decades of running Barefoot Contessa, Garten found herself in 1996, when she sold the store to two employees, Amy Forst and Parker Hodges, but retained ownership of the building itself. She took a six-month absence from the culinary scene and built offices above the store in case she wasn't sure what career move to take after selling the store. She investigated the stock market and attempted to sketch out plans for future business ventures. Barefoot Contessa's website, which also included her coffees and a few other items that were not available online, became extremely popular around this time.

Barefoot Contessa had become a legendary gathering spot for East Hampton by 2003; director Nancy Meyers had even chosen the store as one of the sets for the Jack Nicholson-Diane Keaton film Something's Gotta Give. As the property lease came to an end, the store was inactive in 2004 and discussions between Garten (still the building's owner) and the new owners were fruitless. After Forst and Hodges lost the store to Citarella, a competitor, Garten eregibly refused to attend lease talks to regain control of the store. Garten did not reopen the store, but rather saved the property for prospective new tenants.

Garten resurfaced in 1999, with her attention shifting to publishing. In her 1999 sleeper bestseller, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, she maintained the Barefoot Contessa name. Both Garten's and publisher Clarkson Potter's hopes were exceeded by the book, which featured the recipes that made her store so popular. After the initial pressing of 35,000 cookbooks was published, Garten eventually sold over 100,000 copies in the first year, prompting the second and third printing runs. Barefoot Contessa Parties! Barefoot Contessa Family Style was also recognized for its high success and high sales; Barefoot Contessa Family Style was also popular in 2002. The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook and Parties! In the Entertaining & Special Occasion Cookbooks category, candidates were nominated for 2000 and 2002 James Beard Awards.

Parties!

It was a surprise entry: Garten was perceived as too young to compete with experts such as French chef Jacques Pépin and international wine specialist Brian St. Pierre.

To avoid an encyclopedic style, her cookbooks are based on coffee table books. Some commentators claim that this technique sacrifices space that could be used for recipes by including a full-page photo accompanying each dish. Despite this, her cookbooks have received rave reviews; Giada De Laurentiis, a British cook, named Garten as one of her favorite writers in 2005. Garten's cookbooks have sold over six million copies as of 2008. She had published eleven cookbooks as of October 2018.

Barefoot Contessa, Garten's 2010 cookbook, by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. How Easy Is That? Its use of high-fat, high-calorie, and high-cholesterol meat and dairy ingredients has made it one of the year's "Top Cookbooks" for a nutritional perspective. Eric Felten of The Wall Street Journal called the book "an assault on cookbooks that dare to venture outside lentils."

Garten came to prominence in 2002 with the debut of her Food Network program, establishing herself with her cookbooks and appearances on Martha Stewart's show. Garden was approached by Food Network with an invitation to host her own television cooking show after the success of The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook and Barefoot Contessa Parties! Until the London-based production company responsible for Nigella Bites was hired, she turned down this bid several times. Barefoot Contessa premiered in 2002 to a rousing reception, and she complied with a 13-show season.

Her show features her husband and their families, as well as some celebrities who are her friends. About one million viewers tuned in per episode and has produced some of Food Network's top ratings.

The press picked out Garten as a potential replacement after Martha Stewart was arrested on charges linked to disruption of justice in a stock exchange lawsuit in 2004.

The show was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award in the category of Best Service Show in 2005. In 2009, the show and Garden were once more nominated for Daytime Emmy Awards in the categories of Outstanding Culinary Program and Best Culinary Host, respectively, and Garten captured her first Emmy in the latter category.

Following Barefoot Contessa at Home, Garten revealed that she had signed a three-year deal with Food Network to continue her cooking show, and that two more cookbooks would be released the same year. Garten was reportedly offered the most lucrative contract for a culinary author to date, as part of a multimillion-dollar contract for multiple books. She has been approached several times before to create her own magazine, line of furniture, a collection of cookware, and chain of boutiques (similar to Stewart's Omnimedia), but she has declined these bids, claiming that she has no intention in complicating her life. Barefoot in Paris sold almost 400,000 copies between 2004 and 2005, achieving the New York Times bestseller list number eleven.

Garten founded Barefoot Contessa Pantry in 2006, together with her business partner Frank Newbold and Stonewall Kitchen. These breakfast items are based on her most popular from-scratch dishes, such as coconut cupcakes, maple syrup scones, mango chutney, and lemon curd. These items are relatively expensive (for example, the suggested retail price for a single box of brownie mix is ten dollars), and they are only available in upscale cookware and gourmet stores like Crate & Barl, Sur La Table, and Chicago's Fox & Obel Market Cafe). If the first line of products is well-received, she plans to expand the brand in the near future.

After critical praise and strong sales of her first three cookbooks, she went on to write Barefoot in Paris and several columns for O, The Oprah Magazine. She also acts as the magazine's entertaining, cooking, and party planning consultant. Before 2011, House Beautiful, a shelter magazine, published "Ask the Barefoot Contessa" as a monthly garden column. In reaction to letters from her readers, she shared cooking, entertaining, and lifestyle advice in this column. She founded a small line of note cards and journals to complement her books, as well as the forewords for Kathleen King's Bake Shop Cookbook and Rori Trovato's Dishing With Style. In The Best American Recipes 2005–2006, one of her recipes, 'lemon roast chicken with croutons,' was included in The Best American Recipes. Another of Garten's dishes was selected for Today's Kitchen Cookbook, a compilation of the most popular dishes on the daily news show The Today Show. On their home page, her recipes were highlighted for Thanksgiving 2010. She started a Facebook blog in June 2012 and found over 100,000 followers only three weeks later. Sheryl Haft and illustrator Jill Weber co-authored Goodnight Bubbala, which also included her recipe for potato latkes, and was on the Today Show in 2019.

Source