Ina Garten Quotes

My best hostess tip is to have good food and really good music!

The only thing I've cooked while entertaining is stir-fry.

I love to have a dinner party. I love to have people over. I like the feeling it creates in my home - having guests laughing and telling their stories - and I put a lot of thought into it. I plan my menu kind of depending on whatever mood I'm in.

I love to cook. I love to entertain.

If you have a guy over, and there's a whole bunch of china from your wedding, it's not a good idea.

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.

Dinner parties are still highly popular, and I believe they always will be.

I'm a really good dinner party guest. I am always so appreciative, impressed that anyone has even managed to turn on the oven and cook for me.

Entertaining on any scale can be stressful and daunting.

Planning a dinner party in a way that you're actually capable of getting it done without panicking is important. It's bad hospitality for the host to be freaked out.

I love being at home, having friends over.

I don't throw a lot of parties. I find throwing parties a bit intimidating.

Hosting is work. It means you don't get to go up to your room and disappear and take a nap. Like everybody else does after lunch. I'm talking about hosting, not hosting a dinner party, but hosting people staying in your home.

I don't think I've ever hosted anything in my life.

It's stylish to have people over. But unstylish to make them bring food. It's so tacky, making everybody appear at the door with a dish. Better to order in, use a caterer or bring prepared food into your kitchen.

If you're going to be hosting any event or a performance or having dinner with people after a performance, it is work, but it's also social: food and a glass of wine would be involved often.

If I host something, even if it's just dinner at my house, I like the event to move. So that means cocktails in the family room, and then moving outside and having appetizers on the patio, and then moving to dinner at the dining table. It's just the idea of the event being curated to every little detail.

I love cooking and having people over and it means you don't have to get a babysitter.

I consider a good dinner party at our house to be where people drink and eat more than they're meant to.

That which chiefly causes the failure of a dinner-party, is the running short--not of meat, nor yet of drink, but of conversation.

Most cooks try to learn by making dishes. Doesn't mean you can cook. It means you can make that dish. When you can cook is when you can go to a farmers market, buy a bunch of stuff, then go home and make something without looking at a recipe. Now you're cooking.

For a State Dinner there are many people involved in the menu planning—many cooks in the stew as it were.

I like to have a home for people just to have a lot of fun.

I like serving family-style or setting up a buffet. Everyone just goes to town, scoops their own food, and mixes their own drinks. You know how people love to come and watch you in the kitchen now and talk your ear off? If you give them something to do and something to drink, they don't do that as much.

I have two garden parties a year to avoid going out to dinner.