We all know that I love food and I love to cook. Ron has his sports programs and I have my food network. My favorite television food personality is Ina Garten. She is known as The Barefoot Contessa and I simply adore this woman. Watching her show is like taking a chill pill. It totally relaxes me and puts me in such a good mood. It is apparent that she is well balanced and loves her life and her husband of 40+ years. She started out working in the White House as a budget analyst writing the nuclear budget under Ford and Carter. Not surprisingly she got burned out (no pun intended & she even has a pilots license!). Eventually leaving Washington, she purchased a specialty food store called The Barefoot Contessa in Westhampton Beach, New York. To make along story short she ended up selling the store years later (it eventually closed) and then The Food Network came-a-callin. She declined many times but finally caved in and her show is the highest rated on the network. Her show is filmed in her own kitchen in The Hamptons and often features her good (and most fabulously gay) friends.
If you have never seen her on TV then I highly recommend watching. Her cooking style is incredibly elegant and incredibly simple. I like to think of her as my informal mentor in the kitchen.
I came across an article in The New York Times that just make me love her even more:
“Bright-eyed and apple-cheeked,” Garten is enjoying unexpected success in the second half of her life. After 20 years of running a gourmet shop in the Hamptons (named for the Humphrey Bogart/Ava Gardner film The Barefoot Contessa), she sold the store and invested her own money in a cookbook, never expecting it to take off as it has. Now approaching 60, she has five cookbooks, a top-rated show on the Food Network, and a line of prepared foods.
But here’s the great part—Garten has rejected opportunities to expand even more. “She has turned down offers to start magazines or to be host for more TV shows. She has declined to endorse other food products beyond her own line and has rejected opening a chain of food shops.” Garten wants to preserve her quality of life, despite success. “There is a balance between having a life and having a business,” the article quotes her as saying.
That media whore Rachel Ray can suck it!
http://www.barefootcontessa.com/
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