Welcome to Litsy!

I finished this today moving my youngest home from Uni. This is the tidy storage unit holding his stuff until his next adventure. My house is not tidy 😩 I liked this audio book but I didn‘t love it

Really enjoyed it

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Lovely and charming, like Ina Garten herself. It‘s probably exactly what you think it is—Garten telling her story, starting with childhood with emotionally difficult parents, falling in love with Jeffrey as a teenager, and then her paths through school, travel, education, and work all the way to Barefoot Contessa and TV. Perfectly enjoyable, not difficult or surprising.

Very enjoyable listen and I also bought the book for pictures and recipes!

Lukewarm about this. 🤷‍♀️ She does a lot of name dropping and complaining about how awful her parents were, both of which I dislike.🥮

Listening to this one while I start holiday baking. I feel like I‘m missing something, so I keep checking the book for the pictures.

So very excited to learn more about Ina‘s childhood and life story. She is so sweet and i am truly amazed at all the hard work it took to run her Barefoot Contessa store.

I‘ve always liked Ina. I enjoyed watching a feminist perspective inform her personal and professional growth. But this is a light pick for me. I think I just wasn‘t the right reader for this book, at least not in this moment in time/history.
Further thoughts in spoiler comment below! Not spoilers per se, but I wouldn‘t want to mar anyone's experience of escaping into this one, as the food (and many other) aspects are delightful!

I learned how to cook watching Ina and Giada on the Food Network years ago, and have always been a Barefoot Contessa fan. Her life is even more fascinating than I expected, and I loved reading about her relationship with Jeffrey, warts and all. I‘m a Hamptons girl myself and her warm and breezy aesthetic reflects all the best things about this area. Listening to this was a balm for the past week and all the horrendous news here in the US.

I‘ve only watched bits of BC here and there but heard good things about this, so I decided to give it a go when it popped up at my library. I enjoyed spending some time with Ina and hearing her story. Only a small bit of this talks about her show and I liked that. She‘s very relatable, and I like her life philosophy enshrined in the title.

I‘ve harbored a crush on Ina for as long as I can remember. A crush in the sense that I wanted to be in her orbit, read her books, watch her shows, make her recipes and be as cool as her. What a wonderful story of hard work, stubbornness and perseverance, not to mention a thread of her love story with Jeffrey throughout. Well told in her own words and voice.