Ina Garten is not just a barefoot contessa, she is also a kitchen goddess, full of ancient wisdom which she sometimes bestows on mere mortals. The other day, Maria Yagoda, the restaurant editor of Food & Wine, published a blog post summarizing the most important things she has learned from Ina. These include “Freeze your bread in chunks,” “Make two cakes at one time,” and “Store-bought is fine.” The list inspired one reader named Mary to write a poem called “ina garten,” which she shared with Yagoda via email and which Yagoda shared with the rest of us via Twitter.
Here is the whole poem. It is truly lovely.
We butchered our own chickens growing up
and my mother said never buy
chicken over 3 1/2 pounds. Ideally, it should be
around 3 pounds. My
mother once said all the chickens now look like
they have boob jobs.I only make one cake and unless you’ve got like
six people in your
family nobody should be eating a whole cake
anymore, especially at my
age, so I actually only make one and split it and
my friends know
they’re getting half a cake. They don’t mind.I like to try something new when I have
company over because I will
Splurge. That being said, I usually have people over
that are close to
me and they don’t care if I screw up. If I didn’t know
the people that well
I would do a tried and true.
Yes store-bought is fine occasionally, but most
of us can only get
Pepperidge Farm puff and I am not that
fond of it. It doesn’t
have any butter. WTF? It would take me an
hour and a half to two
hours to get to Trader Joe’s on I-4 which has
been undergoing
construction since 2001 with no end in sight
and is considered the
most dangerous highway in the United States. I
try to avoid this road.
When I lived in California, the French bakery
would sell puff pastry
dough by the pound... I loved those people.
There is a special place in
heaven for those people.