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Ina Garten, creator of the Barefoot Contessa brand of TV shows, books and foods, is a world-renowned host of parties. So you'd think that for New Year's Eve, the biggest party night of the year, she'd pull out all the stops and invite hundreds of guests to her house in the Hamptons for champagne and the finest hors d'oeuvres imaginable.
But you'd be wrong. On Sunday, Garten told the Today Show's Erica Hill about her New Year's Eve traditions. She never throws a big party. Instead, every year, she cooks a "simple" dinner for two. Just she and her husband Jeffrey, who may well be the luckiest man in the world. Because when Garten says "simple dinner," she doesn't mean what the same thing that other people do.
First off, the dinner's in Paris, not New York. But the food also doesn't sound all that "simple" to us. As you can see in the clip embedded above, Garten says:
I always make something really simple. Like pasta with white truffles... or I have a lemon capellini with caviar in my first book that we make a lot. It takes 10 minutes to make, and you can make it at midnight. Have a little glass of champagne, salad and cheese.
Hey, maybe it really does take a seasoned kitchen veteran like Garten 10 minutes to make! At least if you don't count the time it takes to trek all the way to Petrossian to buy caviar.
Garten's celebration of the New Year doesn't end there. On New Year's Day, she and Jeffrey usually take a nice walk through Luxemboug Gardens and have "a nice lunch somewhere like Jules Verne in the Eiffel Tower."
We have to admit it all sounds divine. We would like to say that we resolve to be more like Ina in 2013 -- except that in the Today Show clip above, she comes out against resolutions. Seems like we'll have to just envy her from afar.