Be Ready When the Luck Happens

by Ina Garten

I love traditional pursuits; I just want to do them my way and make my own decisions.

I never liked the places that made you feel like the person who’d crashed the party, where the staff was snooty or dismissive, or where the merchandise was so staged that it screamed “Don’t touch.” Anna taught me to stock the shelves and then remove one item so it’s not so perfect. That way, customers don’t subliminally feel that they’re ruining the display by taking something off the shelf. I wanted the store to say, “Please touch!” and “Please taste!” Basically, I wanted everyone to feel right at home.

The most dramatic example of the power of roasting is roasted tomatoes. Plum tomatoes from the grocery store have absolutely no flavor—in summer or winter. If you bite into a raw one blindfolded, I’m not even sure you could identify it as a tomato. But toss it in olive oil, sprinkle it with salt and pepper, and slow-roast it to caramelize the sugars in the tomatoes, and they taste like the best summer tomatoes you’ve ever eaten. It’s like magic!

Savory things tend to need something acidic, and sweet things tend to need something bitter to give them more depth of flavor. If you’re making something with sweet chocolate, vanilla is an important addition, not only because of its intense flavor but also because it’s a little bitter, to balance the sweetness.

the definition of a good marriage is that each person thinks they got the better deal.

The people I’ve known who are successful have faced enormous challenges, but they didn’t let the challenges stop them—they figured out some way over the wall or around the wall, or they just smashed the wall down. In fact, it was exactly those challenges that shaped their success.

one thing I know for sure is that everything changed when I met Jeffrey. This is when my life began. We all need only one person to believe in us, and for me, that person is Jeffrey. With his love and support, I learned to believe in myself and found happiness and peace.