Garten Quotes & Sayings

I was always exploring relationships between art and science. — Ariel Garten

When I wrote 'Barefoot in Paris,' I wanted to make simple recipes that you could make at home that tasted like French classics. — Ina Garten

The Botanischer Garten in Berlin has one of Europe's finer winter trails, leading in careful order from glasshouses devoted to African-American and Australian desert species, through a fine collection of tropical plants, and on to the orchid house. — John Burnside

We've all had stress creep up on us without even noticing it until we lost it on someone who didn't deserve it, and then we realize that we probably should have checked in with ourselves a little earlier. — Ariel Garten

The most important thing for having a party is that the hostess is having fun. I'm very organized. I make a plan for absolutely everything. I never have anything that has to be cooked while the guests are there. The only thing I might have to do is take something out of the oven and carve it. — Ina Garten

The most overrated tool: a pasta maker. Why make it when you can buy it? It's a lot of work! — Ina Garten

Instead of going out to dinner, buy good food. Cooking at home shows such affection. In a bad economy, it's more important to make yourself feel good. — Ina Garten

You have to, in some ways, trust in the human spirit and in human ingenuity. — Ariel Garten

The planning is everything. Deciding which dishes you're going to prepare can turn into the make-or-break decision five days later, when you actually serve the meal. — Ina Garten

There's something really wonderful about a party where you help yourself. Of course, first you get what you really want. But 'family style' service also really encourages people to connect with one another. — Ina Garten

The dirty little secret is that I grew up in a household where there were no carbohydrates allowed, ever. No cookies, no bread, no potatoes, no rice. My mother was very extreme in terms of what she served. Since I left home more than 40 years ago, I've been making it right for myself. — Ina Garten

I buy a lot of cookbooks. Some of them you just kind of read, and you try one recipe, and it doesn't really work. So then you don't go back to it. The new Ina Garten cookbook, which is called 'Back to Basics,' I have not had a failure with. It is the most fantastic cookbook. I think I bought 20 copies of it for friends. — Nora Ephron

I get up every day, do the best that I can do, and go home and have a good time. — Ina Garten

The thing about all my food is that everything is a remembered flavor. Maybe it's something I had as a child or maybe it's something I had in Milan, but I want it to taste better than you ever thought. — Ina Garten

You can be miserable before you have a cookie and you can be miserable after you eat a cookie but you can't be miserable while you are eating a cookie. — Ina Garten

I like almonds as a snack - keeps your energy up but doesn't fill you up. — Ina Garten

My favorite fall or winter lunch is big steaming bowls of soup. I usually invite people for around 12:30 and have two hearty soups like shrimp corn chowder and lentil sausage soup, which can be made a day or two ahead. — Ina Garten

My favorite fall meal has to be a simple roasted chicken. Ina Garten does a fabulous one. There is just something about roasting your own chicken and vegetables that screams 'fall' and 'home' to me. — Christine Teigen

A vision without execution is an hallucination. — Jeffrey E. Garten

Every once in a while, a cookbook comes along that simply knocks me out. — Ina Garten

I don't like sitting at a table that's too large, where everyone is too far apart. That's a party killer. — Ina Garten

I've lived in the Hamptons since 1978, when I first bought my store Barefoot Contessa. — Ina Garten

I worked for the Office of Management and Budget in the White House, on nuclear energy policy. But I decided it would be much more fun to have a specialty food store, so I left Washington D.C. and moved to the Hamptons. And how glad I am that I did! — Ina Garten

I always like to have flowers on the table. I think they make it look special. — Ina Garten

If you think about a Thanksgiving dinner, it's really like making a large chicken. — Ina Garten

Consumer technology and medical tools have been created to benefit our daily lives. Without self-regulation, though, the industry could be at risk of potentially halting years of innovation and stunting growth in this field. — Ariel Garten

I think we're all very curious about our own minds, but we just may not have the tools to channel that. — Ariel Garten

Food is not about impressing people. It's about making them feel comfortable. — Ina Garten

I love to take something ordinary and make it really special. — Ina Garten

I absolutely adore Thanksgiving. It's the only holiday I insist on making myself. — Ina Garten

Do you ever make a meal and just know - I mean know, with absolute certainty - that somewhere in the Hamptons, Ina Garten would be like super proud of you? That even if she were completely absorbed in splitting vanilla beans for homemade extract, she would totally side-eye your dish and smile. — Andie Mitchell

He was already a sociopath, and he was just out of kinder-garten. I didn't think much of it at the time. It was the family way. — James Patterson

I always have music. I love it to be very upbeat. When you're having drinks, I like something like Cesaria Evora. During dinner, I like the much more traditional - old Frank Sinatra and things like that. — Ina Garten

Never let 'em see you sweat. Guests feel guilty if they think you've worked too hard to make dinner for them - which of course you have! — Ina Garten

Fun is the most important. If you do stuff for money, it never works out. — Ina Garten

Humanizing technology is about taking what's already natural about the human-tech experience and building technology seamlessly in tandem with it. — Ariel Garten

You don't have to do everything from scratch. Nobody wants to make puff pastry! — Ina Garten

Imagine if you had access to data that allowed you to rank on a scale of overall happiness which people in your life made you the happiest. ... Would you make more time for those people? — Ariel Garten

Muse is the brain-sensing headband that allows you to track your cognitive and emotional activity. It boosts your attention and helps you become more aware of the emotions that you're having. — Ariel Garten

Under the deluge of minute-to-minute text conversations, emails, relentless exchange of media channels and passwords and apps and reminders and tweets and tags, we lose sight of what all this fuss is supposed to be about in the first place: ourselves. — Ariel Garten

I use other cookbooks for inspiration. I must say I tend to cook from my own cookbooks for parties. — Ina Garten

I'm really a scientist. I follow recipes exactly - until I decide not to. And then I'll follow something else exactly. I may decide I could turn this peach tart into a plum tart, but if I'm following a recipe, I follow it exactly. — Ina Garten

I've taught myself how to use good, fresh ingredients and to prepare them as simply as possible by cooking only to enhance their intrinsic flavors. — Ina Garten

I learned that the hardest party to pull off successfully is Saturday night dinner. This meal is expected to be elaborate: appetizers, first course, dinner, dessert, and coffee. People arrive at 7:30 or 8 p.m. and stay for hours - definitely past my bedtime - and they all go home exhausted. — Ina Garten

The most important part of ourselves is the mind, and it has been rather inaccessible. — Ariel Garten

I started working with brain sensing tech in labs over a decade ago and was immediately fascinated by the potential to help people peer into the workings and behaviors of their own minds. — Ariel Garten

Take one flower that you like and get lots of them. And don't try to 'arrange' them. It's surprisingly hard to do a flower arrangement the way a florist does one. Instead, bunch them all together or put them in a series of small vases all down the table. — Ina Garten

Much of the time, we're transfixed by all of the ways we can reflect ourselves into the world. And we can barely find the time to reflect deeply back in on our own selves. — Ariel Garten

I try to greet my friends with a drink in my hand, a warm smile on my face, and great music in the background, because that's what gets a dinner party off to a fun start. — Ina Garten

All my life I dreamed of an apartment in Paris where I could cook, and now I have one, on the Left Bank. — Ina Garten

They say that gardens look better when they are created by loving gardeners rather than by landscapers, because the garden is more tended to and cared for. The same thing goes for cooking. I only cook for people I love. — Ina Garten

Grilled cheese and tomato soup is the ultimate comfort meal. — Ina Garten

I think the best shortcut is to choose really simple recipes. Because I think you can make simple recipes that are as delicious as complicated ones. — Ina Garten

My mother would never let me in the kitchen. I always wanted to cook, but I was never allowed to. Her view of the world was, 'Cooking is my job, and studying is your job.' I think, in retrospect, she didn't like the chaos. She was very orderly. It had to be her way. — Ina Garten

In the summer you want fresh, light and sort of quick things; in winter you want things that are comforting, so your body really tells you you want to go towards potatoes, apples, fennel, things that are warm and comforting. And loin of pork. — Ina Garten

Creme Brulee is the ultimate 'guy' dessert. Make it and he'll follow you anywhere. — Ina Garten

Obsession with conventional ideas of 'success' can be harmful enough, but compound that stress with relationships, family, financial woes and health concerns, and you find yourself in a constant state of fight or flight. This causes people to be more reactionary, which further perpetuates the cycle of stress. — Ariel Garten

Our feelings about how we're feeling are notoriously unreliable. — Ariel Garten

Muse is going to be part of everyday life as an indispensable tool helping people overcome mental, physical and emotional barriers. It's going to allow us to free ourselves in ways we never thought possible. — Ariel Garten

My extravagance is my garden - it's the first thing I look at every morning when I wake up. It gives me so much pleasure. — Ina Garten

I love Alton Brown's show 'Good Eats,' about the chemistry of food. It's really thoughtful. — Ina Garten

A few months ago people were talking about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Now the only hope is keeping the world economy from total deterioration. And you get a sense that it is all now truly left to Adam Smith's invisible hand
it's beyond any country's ability, and institution's ability to control. — Jeffrey Garten

Anyone who tries to make brownies without butter should be arrested. — Ina Garten

If it's a cocktail party, I generally make five or six different things, and I try to choose recipes that feel like a meal: a chicken thing, a fish or shrimp thing, maybe two vegetable things, and I think it's fun to end the cocktail party with a sweet thing. — Ina Garten

I measure everything, because I always think that if I've spent so much time making sure this recipe was exactly the way I want it, why would I want to throw things into a pot? — Ina Garten

I time everything. I'm a scientist at heart. — Ina Garten

To me, thought-controlled computing is as simple and powerful as a paintbrush - one more tool to unlock and enliven the hidden worlds within us. — Ariel Garten

It's so important that you don't put the stuffing in the bird, where in order for the stuffing to get cooked you have to overcook the turkey. It's better to do it on the side. — Ina Garten

People have more fun if they don't eat so much they have to be taken home in an ambulance. — Ina Garten

I've always been fascinated with knowing the self. This fascination led me to submerge myself in art, study neuroscience, and later to become a psychotherapist. — Ariel Garten

You can get bogged down in a recipe that's got a lot of steps and a million ingredients, and it takes all day to make. And then you realize, you've just got one dish. For Thanksgiving, you want an abundance of choices, and so you want dishes that you can put together really quickly, but that doesn't mean less flavor. — Ina Garten

I like to watch Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern, because I like them when they travel. I like Ina Garten, 'The Barefoot Contessa.' Giada is really nice, but I get a little bit bored with just staying in the kitchen. — Debi Mazar

I want to help give people the ability to stop and take just a few minutes a day to regroup and refocus: to give them a chance to get perspective on the things that matter and the things that don't. — Ariel Garten