Up next in the parade of memoirs, mostly of women, we come to Ina Garten’s Be Ready When the Luck Happens. Off the top, I’m going to say that I knew very little about Garten, pre-reading: I knew she was called the Barefoot Contessa, and that she had a cooking show that occasionally made it into my viewing queue, and that she is a quality meme format (‘store bought is fine’), but that was about all.
As it happens? I was missing out.
Because Garten is whip-smart, friendly without leaning into the saccharine (an affliction I often feel impacts cooking show hosts disproportionately), and her life is full of amazing adventures & the gems of wisdom she curated from those adventures. Sometimes, it feels as if the people who came immediately before us didn’t exactly live in interesting times, which is both provably false, and somehow universal: Just like older generations like to opine about how ‘easy you kids have it these days,’ younger generations will similarly opine that their elders were the ones who had it easy. (It’s hard to know, sitting here in 2025, living through yet another ‘once in a lifetime’ economy crash, while the news talks about ‘once in a generation’ mega-storms every single night, if either of those ring true, or will be true, moving forward, but let’s just say, that, until now, neither of these adages were based in many actual facts.)
For example, Garten was born at the very beginning of the Baby Boom (1948), & my mother was born at the very tail end of it. My mother wouldn’t necessarily consider that she lived through an excess of societal changes, but it’s quite obvious, from Garten’s reflections, that she must have. We often can’t recognize these shifts, however, as they’re happening. 99% of the time, it’s only clear in hindsight that a thing you’ve taken for granted as bedrock, unshakable & true, has somehow been flipped on its ear, and you’re standing in a whole different world. Listening to Garten talk about her European honeymoon, where she & her husband Jeffrey backpacked & camped their way through multiple countries for the completely mindboggling sum of five dollars a day, for example, could make any modern-day American human want to sit in a puddle and weep at the opportunities we’ve missed out on. (The inflation rate calculator tells me that $5 in 1970 is worth only $40 today, and the idea that you could buy so much as a baguette and some good cheese in Paris for that sum is laughably absurd.)
Still, it very much wasn’t all eating French market food on picnic baskets, even then. Discussing FirstWave feminism, Garten explores her marriage and the constraints that she felt in the early 1970s (which, is sadly still quite relatable today):
At our wedding – and most weddings at the time – the last words were ‘I pronounce you man & wife,’ which set up inequitable roles for the couple at the starting gate. Now, I was the wife, expected to take charge of anything that had to do with the household. After a long day at the office, I made dinner, took care of the laundry, did countless other chores, and I began to resent it. I didn’t like that it was assumed that I would make dinner, nor did I like that it was assumed that Jeffrey would take over the finances and pay the bills. I thought these classic gender roles were annoying and unfair. I wasn’t alone: Women everywhere were rethinking their roles & responsibilities. Yes, we had new opportunities in the 1970s, but it began to dawn on us that we were expected to add them to whatever we did in our traditional roles. It wasn’t having it all; it was doing it all.
Garten’s approach to her life cannot exactly be considered carefree – she cares very much, about a lot of things – but there’s still so much of her successes, her experiences, her story that seems to involve just… taking risks, without too much consideration beforehand. The existence of her second professional life as a store owner, then a caterer, then a television cooking show host, then a cookbook author, etc. all stem from chance encounters and a little buzz of acknowledgement, within herself, that this – the next big thing – might be something she was good at, or wanted to be good at, or wouldn’t be bored doing. It’s kind of amazing – as a comple
tely non-fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants person, to watch, over and over again, as Garten just… jumps.
She includes many excellent anecdotes about her myriad of shows – My favorite of her name dropping includes a day taping with Mel Brooks, who seems as lovely and hilarious (if exhausting) in person as he is on television, but also the Elmo episode is entertaining as well. She talks about her life, and about knowing that she never wanted children. She’s an evocative writer, especially when discussing design (she designed more than one of the places she’s been lucky enough to live), or food (cookbook writer shining through), or travel (I would pay good money to travel with Ina Garten, who seems like she could find something good to eat & something interesting to look at, no matter where she is).
She discusses the lows of her life, as well as the highs, which I always admire in anyone managing an even semi-truthful memoir writing. We know, readers, going into a memoir that there will be hard things, and I often feel cheated when a memoirist has seen fit to barely mention or skip over them altogether. Garten does not shy away from her most difficult moments, and in fact, finds purpose in them:
“Sometimes you have to trust that the hard times, the pain and the tragedies in life have purpose. They may make no sense at the time, may bring you to your knees and you will wonder why this hell is happening and if you’ll ever get through it. But trust is your trajectory, sending you along your path, and if you listen, learn, heal and grow along the way, things will one day make sense.”
This is a philosophy she reiterates quite a bit, that things happen for a reason. While I am not similarly inclined to believe in some big overreaching life plan, it’s still interesting to see how well she has applied that philosophy to help her out of hard times. I personally preferred/related more to the quote I’ve included in the title of this review. It’s actually a little long to fit the whole thing in there, but it seems to me a sensible way to live:
I concentrate on what’s in front of me, and work hard, because I love what I do, and I have fun doing it; and then I leave the door open, so I’ll be ready when the luck happens.
Work hard, have fun, be ready for luck if it shows up. Sounds like life goals to me.
