“I love cooking for people I love,” says Ina Garten. “And cooking is just the medium; what I care about is connection.”

Austin Hargrave/Penguin Random House

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Austin Hargrave/Penguin Random House

Ina Garten, the host of the Food Network Barefoot ContessaShe still remembers a disastrous party she threw when she was 21. She had invited 20 guests over with the intention of making a custom omelette for each one – except she barely knew how to make an omelette.

“I was in the kitchen the whole time,” says Garten. “It was such a bad party that I almost never had another party.”

Garten says she learned a few things from the experience – not the least of which is to keep things simple. Your ideal dinner party consists of six people sitting at a small round table. And yes, the shape of the table is important.

“Very often people have long, rectangular tables that are way too wide, and people sit too far apart,” says Garten. “I like it when everyone’s knees are almost touching and it feels very intimate, with a dark room and a candle in the middle.”

Garten’s relaxed approach to entertainment is the hallmark of Barefoot ContessaThe series premiered in 2002. Filmed in the kitchen of her East Hampton, NY home, the series follows Garten as she shops for ingredients, tries out recipes, and sits down to eat with her husband, Jeffrey, and their friends.

“When you cook for people you love, they feel cared for, you make great friends, and you build a community for yourself,” she says. “And I think that’s really what we all need and what we’re all hungry for.”

Garten is an Emmy and James Beard Award winner and has also authored 13 cookbooks. In the new memoirs Be ready when luck happens, She describes how she went from working in the White House to becoming a popular culinary voice with fans from all walks of life.

“One of the things I love about my job is that everyone cooks,” she says. “One day I was walking down Madison Avenue and a woman in a big fur coat… said, ‘Honey, I just love your cookbooks.’ And a block later a truck driver pulled up and said, “Hey, baby, I love your show.” And I thought, That’s food. Everyone is interested in food.

Interview highlights

About how working for the federal government in the 1970s connected to her love of cooking

I worked in a group called the Office of Management and Budget, and we wrote the President’s budget that was sent to Congress. And I worked in nuclear energy policy. … I’ve always been very interested in science, and what I’m doing now is, in my opinion, science, but in the end you get something tasty instead of enriched uranium.

While purchasing a specialty grocery store in Westhampton, NY when she was 30

I went in and they were baking chocolate chip cookies. And I remember thinking, “Wow, this is where I want to be.” … So we met with the owner and I made her a good offer. She asked for $25,000, more money than we had in the world. And I just offered her $20,000 on a whim and thought, “Well, we’ll go home, we’ll negotiate, I’ll have time to think about it.” And we drove back to Washington (DC). And on Monday morning I was in my office and the phone rang and… (the owner) said, “Thank you very much. I’ll accept your offer.” And I remember thinking, “Shit, I just bought a grocery store.” I remember going to my boss and saying, “You’re not going to believe what I just did have.”

On the store’s name: Barefoot Contessa

The name really referred to Diana (Stratta, the previous owner), not me. But over the summer I realized it actually had a resonance. …It was about being elegant and earthy at the same time. And I think that’s what the store was all about.

At a time when she was separating from her husband Jeffrey

This was the ’70s and we both assumed that he would be the husband and I would be the wife, that he would handle the finances and that dinner would be on the table. I mean, we had prescribed roles, but it was a time when women realized that just because we were women didn’t mean we had to do something. I really commend Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan for making us think. And you may want dinner on the table, but that doesn’t mean as a woman you’re the only one who should have dinner on the table. I became aware of it, and Jeffrey, who had no reason at all to change his mind, was unaware of it. And so I felt a certain frustration about sitting in a prescribed role as a wife. …

One weekend in Westhampton, the first summer, we took a long walk on the beach and I said, “I feel like I need to be alone for a while.” And Jeffrey said the right thing. He said, “If you feel like you need to be on your own, then you need to be on your own.” And he went back to Washington and didn’t come back. And it was a hard time, but it led us back to a different kind of relationship.

While writing about her unhappy childhood

Remember, this was the 50s. This is not the era of helicopter parents encouraging their children to do extraordinary things. This is a time when you did what your parents told you. And my parents were particularly hard on it. … (My mother) coped by pushing us away and making sure she didn’t actually have to spend time with us. So I spent most of my time in my bedroom and my brother spent time in his. And then my father was a really, really strict authoritarian figure. If you didn’t do exactly what he wanted you to do, he would react with quite a bit of anger and sometimes even hitting you. And it was a very difficult way to grow up. …The only thing I remember is total disappointment because I didn’t do what they wanted me to do. They never gave me the opportunity to do what I wanted to do.

I talk about that in the book, not so much because it was such a terrible childhood. It certainly wasn’t a happy childhood, but there were so many worse childhoods. But I wanted people to know that the story of your childhood doesn’t necessarily have to be the story of your life.

Therese Madden and Anna Bauman produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz and Beth Novey adapted it for the Internet.