When I was about 11 or 12 I would watch Food Network on weekends and summers. One of my favourite shows was Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa. I enjoyed cooking shows a lot but wasn’t necessarily empowered to cook. All the ingredients were inaccessible to me. Where would I find these herbs and cheese in a small city in the Philippines? I also had no economic power which meant I had zero say in what to shop at the groceries. It wouldn’t be two years later until I would be given the responsibility to do the produce shopping at the wet market.
My older sister was much more ingenious, she would take leftovers and random cupboard ingredients to make what we now call her “chamba dishes.”
I forgot about the cooking shows when I entered high school and while I did get saddled with the responsibility to buy produce at the wet markets, I wasn’t the one doing the cooking. I’d oversee it, or just heat up the food cooked by the housekeeper.
My relationship with food and cooking started out as a necessity. I needed to learn how to cook because once we migrated, we would be without help. I spent six months trying out random recipes and getting creative with our meals. At one point I made my family suffer by making a dish out of tofu and chicken in homemade bechamel.
I never thought I’d actually migrate to another country but here I am. I’ve started reading Ina Garten’s newest book recently, and now I realized how simple her dishes are to make! Fennel? nutmeg? Oh my god, I live right across a produce store and many of these ingredients are already in our cupboards. I even have access to butchers I personally know thanks to my job.
I didn’t even know she had a new book until I read snarky comments on Threads about her “privileged” life, how she had a pilot’s license and decided it wasn’t for her, or that she worked at the White House and decided it wasn’t for her. I’m glad my curiosity (instead of being quick to judge) got the best of me.
Garten’s Be Ready When the Luck Happens is a memoir sprinkled with recipes for each chapter. She touches on her tough childhood growing up in a financially stable but cold and critical family. I felt it reflected some similarities from my own childhood. A lot of people brush off these experiences because they’re not necessarily “big” or “in your face” disadvantages and traumas. My therapist calls it the “Little Ts” but they’re not necessarily small, it’s just that people take less notice of it and brush it off as normal even when it damages your psyche.
Ina and Jeff, while not the most privileged, were well-connected and like the boomers of their time, had financial privileges that we as millennials don’t have access to. This, I will admit.
But I also appreciate her honesty in describing her parents and the ways they’ve affected her. I think, so many of us are afraid to say how our parents have damaged us. Or at least I am. I’m still quite apologetic, and I still fear writing it in fear that I would hurt my mother. Even when I now understand the circumstances that have led them to certain decisions and ways of raising. Even when my mother has admitted herself that we were emotionally neglected children.
I also watched Martha Stewart’s documentary, which I think I still need to process. I’m impressed with how she built a media empire but I also see how she took on the attributes of the men she was exposed to, which I don’t feel attuned to– Type A, capitalist, hedge-fundy finance bros meh.
One of my key takeaways, apart from all the recipes I’m excited to try, is that I am never going to get married unless someone loves me the way Jeff just loves, adores and supports her. I have lived in too many households and seen even the “nicest” of men be the most annoying people who cramp your style. Anyway, now I’m off to the grocery to shop for ingredients for my own lunchbox.
I look forward to making dishes such as her eggplant caponata, meatloaf, Italian wedding soup and in the future, her “engagement” roast chicken. This had me all excited again.
