Food meets family in new books from Ina Garten and Stephen Colbert

NPR's Book of the Day

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Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2024

⏱️ 19 minutes

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Summary

Ina Garten and Stephen Colbert share some big commonalities. They've both had long and successful careers in television, they're friends–and they love food. Garten has built her career around her persona as the Barefoot Contessa, with recipes that find the intersection between simple and interesting. And now, she's out with a memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens. Colbert also has a food-centered book, although his project is a cookbook co-authored with his wife, Evie McGee-Colbert. In today's episode, NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Garten about growing up in a home where food was strictly fuel and about the joy of solving complex problems. Later, Shapiro talks with the Colberts about the cuisine of the South Carolina Lowcountry and how they've finally learned to play sous-chef for each other 31 years into their marriage.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Late Night Talks Your host,
0:06.2	Stephen Colbert and his wife Evie have a new cookbook together. It's called Does This Taste Funny?
0:11.5	And we've got them on the pod talking about their inspirations behind the food they cook at home.
0:17.0	Unsurprisingly, Stephen Colbert talks about his mom. And he paints a familiar scene of a mom doing what she can to whip up something.
0:25.5	The family will eat and, you know, just get it on the table.
0:28.6	We'll hear that full interview in a bit, but when I heard that part of the interview, I was reminded of another famous TV figure, Ina Garden, you know, the barefoot contessa herself.
0:38.9	She's got a memoir out titled, Be Ready When the Luck Happens.
0:43.1	NPR's R. Shapiro spoke to her, and she also talked about her mom's utilitarian approach to food,
0:49.2	but it had a very different impact on her than it did on Colbert.
0:53.2	You'll get what I mean when you hear it.
0:55.0	That interview's up ahead.
0:57.1	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
1:01.8	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, sources and methods.
1:08.4	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people
1:11.7	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR
1:17.9	app or wherever you get your podcasts. Ina Garten has built a career as the barefoot contessa, making
1:26.3	simple good food that people can eat at home. There are
1:29.8	the TV shows, more than a dozen best-selling cookbooks, and it all started with a market in the
1:35.6	Hamptons called the Barefoot Contessa. It was 1978. Garten was a discontented federal government
1:42.5	employee sitting at her desk when she came across an ad in the newspaper.
1:47.8	The other day, Ina Garton told me she hadn't seen or thought of that ad in years until the co-writer of her new memoir,
1:55.4	be ready when the luck happens, dug it out of the archives.
	...

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