Some people would love nothing more than a night to themselves. However, it turns out that is Ina Garten’s worst nightmare. When asked what misery looks like to her, she responded, “An evening home alone with nothing to do.”To fully understand how much she hates being alone, she even said she does not plan to die alone. Her vision for death looks like, “I don’t care as long as Jeffrey and I go together.”
When watching Ina Garten cook on Food Network, it’s easy to assume that she’s always done this. Cooking seems to come so naturally to her, but there was a time when she was as far from the food industry as you can get. “I was working on nuclear energy policy. How’s that for a precedent for the food business?” So how did she make the switch? It turns out Garten always knew deep down that she was meant to work with food. “And by the late ’70s, I had been working here for four years, and nothing has happened. And I just didn’t feel like I had any impact on anything,” she shared. “And I hit 30, and I thought, I want to do what I want to do. And I thought I want to be in the food business.”
Owning a specialty cooking store in the fabulous Hamptons certainly doesn’t sound like humble beginnings, but you didn’t see the store. “It was 400 square feet,” Garten told NPR. “You fit the stove in the kitchen, so it was actually in the store. If you wanted to put something in the oven, you had to go into the store.” However, for Garten, size didn’t matter. She loved that little store and took pride in growing it. “And it was great. I mean, it was — I always wanted it to feel like a party, and it did,” she shared.