Watch Ina Garten make a cartoonishly-sized cocktail in social isolation.
Ina Garten making comically sized cocktails is the quarantine energy we need right now
We should all aspire to be like Ina Garten as we try to get through social isolation.
Be Ina Garten making a cartoonishly-sized cocktail in social isolation.
Perhaps at no time in our lives — and hopefully at no other time in the future — has the world been so united against a common threat. And in this trying period, there is perhaps no better aspirational spirit than Garten.
This video not only made me laugh harder than anything has since isolation began, I believe it is also a recipe for weathering this pandemic. No, I’m not referring to the two-liter cosmopolitan. I mean Garten herself, three parts glee and one part manic escapism, jollily mixing cocktails for the end of the world.
I’ve always admired Garten from afar. I haven’t watched much Barefoot Contessa, but a guiding aphorism of the show — that “store-bought is fine” — has always stuck with me. Others have written about it much better than I can. Quickly, I appreciate the sentiment for our particular era, when social media inundates us with images from friends and advertisers, of extravagant meals and exotic good times, that seem to say, “If you’re not living like exactly this, you’re not living at all.”
In a material sense, almost none of us are living as well as Garten. Barefoot Contessa takes place on a glorious East Hampton property washed in sunlight, where Garten appears before us in an idyllic kitchen with the best and freshest ingredient mise en place, ready to woo us with her charm and talent.
That she acknowledges not everyone lives in her state of luxury by reminding us that “store-bought is fine” isn’t boasting. It’s a form of humility, a chip at the edifice she represents as a celebrity. It’s a way of saying that just because you don’t live gloriously at every moment, that doesn’t mean you’re not living.
And we are still alive, right? And if we’re living, that means we’re free to make a barrel-drum of cocktail at 9:30 a.m. if we damn well please. Bless you, Ina Garten. And bless your favorite martini glass too.
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