Cooking with Ina Garten

Today, we are cooking with Ina Garten. It is actually more like cooking through my Ina Garten collection.

It is similar to my Martha Stewart Cooking Challenge but with Ina Garten. I am calling it Cooking with Ina.

I was inspired to do this challenge after I read the memoir Be Ready When Luck Happens by Ina Garten.

I read Be Ready When Luck Happens in October of 2024. I did not know a lot about Ina Garten, so I enjoyed reading more about her life.

We all know Ina Garten from The Barefoot Contessa, but she lived a lot of life before becoming famous.

She had a difficult childhood, met and married Jeffery at a young age, worked for the government, and more, all before she owned The Barefoot Contessa.

Shortly after I read Be Ready When Luck Happened, my sister told me about a cake by Ina Garten that she made and loved. I then made it—I actually made a gluten-free version of it—and I loved it, too.

I thought about my Martha Stewart Challenge and decided it would be fun to do something similar with Ina Garten’s cookbooks.

I have a huge cookbook collection. I own all kinds of cookbooks, from celebrity chefs to vintage church cookbooks, but most of my cookbook collections are books by Martha Stewart, Cook’s Illustrated, Taste of Home, and Ina Garten.

In the modern age of online recipes and information, I don’t turn to my cookbooks as often as I used to. I want to change that. I want to use my cookbooks. I want to pull them off the shelf and cook from them.

My Martha Stewart challenge helped me to do that. I found all kinds of new favorites from cooking from my Martha Stewart’s cookbooks.

I am excited to do the same with my Ina Garten cookbooks for my Cooking With Ina series. And since my grandma’s name was Ina, I like the Cooking With Ina title even better.

Ina Garten has written thirteen cookbooks. I own eight of them. When I decided to do this challenge, I only owned six, but my son gifted two more of her cookbooks for Christmas, which was perfect timing.

These are the Ina Garten books I own and will use for the challenge. Depending on how the challenge goes, I might try to complete my collection of Ina Garten cookbooks.

Barefoot Contessa At Home

Barefoot Contessa At Home was published in 2006.

Barefoot Contessa Back To the Basics

Barefoot Contessa Back To the Basics was published in 2008.

Barefoot Contessa How Easy Is That

Barefoot Contessa How Easy Is That was published in 2010.

Barefoot Contessa Foolproof

Barefoot Contessa Foolproof was published in 2012.

Make It Ahead

Make It Ahead was published in 2014.

Cooking For Jeffery

Cooking For Jeffery was published in 2016.

Cook Like A Pro

Cooking Like A Pro was published in 2018.

Go To Dinners

Go To Dinners was published in 2022.

Cooking with Ina

I hope you enjoy following along while I cook through my Ina Garten cookbook collection. I have already made several recipes and I can’t wait to share them with you.

Do you have a favorite Ina Garten cookbook or recipe? I would love to hear what it is in the comments.