For some reason, I have become completely obsessed with Ina Garten again.
I don’t know what happened. There was no formal announcement. No one handed me a blue-and-white memo. I simply woke up one day and realized that I had made approximately five Ina Garten recipes in the last two months.
Five.
At this point, I feel like I should be hosting people for dinner in the Hamptons, even though I am mostly just standing in my kitchen wondering if I have enough room in the refrigerator.
There is something about Ina that has suddenly clicked for me again.
Maybe it’s the comfort of it all. The effortless-looking dinner parties. The roasted vegetables. The enormous salads. The casually tossed “good olive oil” into everything. The way she makes cooking feel less like a performance and more like an invitation to have a really nice evening.
And honestly? I think I needed that.
Because I am, and probably always will be, a Martha Stewart girl.
Martha is the icon to me. She is the blueprint. She is the reason I have spent an unreasonable amount of my life caring about tablescapes, crafts, cooking, flowers, entertaining, seasonal decorating, and the general idea that perhaps life can be made a little more beautiful if you just put some effort into it.
I grew up watching Martha and wanting to be Martha.
Not metaphorically.
I mean, I genuinely wanted to be the woman who had a beautifully organized pantry, knew how to arrange flowers properly, made elaborate holiday crafts, baked beautiful cakes from scratch, and somehow had a linen closet that looked like it belonged in a magazine.
But then I started thinking about my favorite recipe from each of them, and honestly, I think they explain the entire situation.
My favorite Ina Garten recipe is lemon pasta.
My favorite Martha Stewart recipe is poached pears in pastry with caramel filling.
Do you see the difference?
Ina is lemon pasta.
Martha is poached pears wrapped in pastry with caramel filling.
One is: Let’s make a really good dinner with some lemon, Parmesan, pasta, and good olive oil.
The other is: What if we poached a pear, wrapped it in pastry, filled it with caramel, and turned dessert into a tiny architectural project?
And unfortunately, I am both of these people.
I want the simple, comforting bowl of pasta.
I also want to spend an entire afternoon making an unnecessarily elaborate dessert because apparently a pear simply existing on a plate wasn’t dramatic enough.
Maybe that’s why my current Ina Garten obsession doesn’t feel like I’ve abandoned my Martha Stewart roots.
It feels more like I’ve unlocked another setting.
Martha is the part of me that wants to make everything beautiful.
Ina is the part of me that wants to make everything delicious and then actually sit down and enjoy it.
Martha makes me want to put together the perfect table.
Ina makes me want to invite people over and not stress if the table isn’t perfect.
And right now, I think I need a little more Ina.
I still want the pretty table.
I still want the seasonal decorations.
I still want to make ridiculous amounts of food from scratch for no reason.
But maybe sometimes I just want to make lemon pasta, pour myself something to drink, and call it dinner.
This isn’t even my first celebrity-chef phase.
I’ve had other eras over the years. I think I was in my Julia Child phase last year. Or maybe two years ago. Honestly, the timeline is blurry.
And trust me, I still want to make beurre blanc.
Because apparently I can never just have a normal relationship with cooking.
So for now, I’m in my Ina Garten era.
Ask me again in a year. I may be making something completely different and insisting that it is absolutely essential that I learn how to make it from scratch.
