ina garten summer
a kitchen witch with a library card
hello.
i know what you’re thinking. goths don’t dream about tomato galettes and barefoot dinner parties. but i’m here to tell you: you can romanticize the rot and the ricotta. you can light a candle that smells like damp stone and still want to host a dinner where everything tastes like lemon and love.
this is a summer for both. for those of us who read haunted novels in june, wear black to the farmer’s market, and stir things clockwise (just in case). for the ones who know that staying seasonal is a kind of spell, that soft herbs and soft jazz can be protection, and that food made with intention is magic.
a kitchen witch with a library card
okay, moving into today’s letter…
the barefoot contessa fantasy
i fantasize about summers that smells like lemon zest, fresh tomatoes, and sea salt, where the afternoons stretch long and slow and someone’s always slicing fruit in a sunlit kitchen. it’s not really about the house in the hamptons or the perfect charcuterie board. it’s about something more tender.
i call it an Ina Garten summer.
i want to move through the season with that same kind of ease. soft clothes. jazz playing. herbs snipped straight from the garden. i want to throw fabulous dinner parties. everything simple but significant. everything made with love. it’s a summer that isn’t trying to be anything but itself… a little salty, a little sweet, slightly overripe in the best way.
an ina garten summer is cooking something slowly and reading in between steps, setting the table even if no one’s coming over. it’s deciding that maybe the point of all this isn’t to optimize life, but to taste it more deeply.
so this is your invitation: to a season made of butter and tomatoes and rereading old favorites and to movies that make you feel full. to a summer that feels like the kitchen at golden hour.
food as love language
i love feeding people, including myself. the soft labor of making something just because it will be delicious. remembering how someone takes their coffee or the intimacy of buttering toast for someone still half asleep.
food has always felt like a love language to me and a way of saying: i see you and i care. i made this because i wanted you to have something warm. sometimes i think the reason i love cooking is because it’s one of the only things in life that makes sense. you put time and care into something, and it gives back (lord willing).
so much of that love lives in scent. the rosemary on your fingertips, the garlic blooming in oil, the first burst of citrus when you slice a lemon. scent is how we remember meals and how we’re brought back, years later, to a summer kitchen or a particular evening or a person who once made you soup. herbs wilt on the counter. peaches perfume the air. even the smell of something slightly burned feels like home. it’s invisible, but it holds the memory.
there are summer meals that feel like love letters. fresh pasta with lemon and ricotta. cold watermelon eaten standing up. peaches sliced into bowls of cream. a cobbler perhaps. dinner outside, everything sticky with heat and sweetness, people talking over each other while the candles flicker. these are the kinds of moments that i never want to end.
and sometimes, it’s just for you. cooking for yourself especially in a world that tells you not to bother. there’s magic in making a beautiful lunch and eating it with a book open beside you. in roasting a chicken on a tuesday night just because. in stirring something on the stove while listening to music that makes you feel like the main character of your own life.
there’s no real recipe for an ina garten summer. just good ingredients, good intentions, and a willingness to slow down long enough to enjoy it.
a literary kitchen
some books make you hungry. not always for food, but for life, beauty, slowness, and i think the kitchen is the perfect place to read. it’s where your hands are busy but your mind can wander and the sensual and the intellectual meet. in a literary kitchen, you can feed every part of yourself at once.
and if you’re like me, you start wondering what your favorite writers might have eaten or what they reached for when they were alone. maybe what they cooked when the words wouldn’t come or what their kitchens smelled like in summer.
so here’s a little game i created: meals and moods inspired by the women i love to read. literary flavors, if you will.
clarice lispector
she wouldn’t make a whole meal, just toast, burned a little, with soft butter and one perfect fig. maybe a spoonful of salted ricotta. eaten standing in the kitchen with the window open, barefoot, thinking about god.
pair with: the hour of the star: a young woman drifts through rio de janeiro, surviving on hot dogs, coca-cola, and small hopes she barely knows how to name. slim, strange, and devastating, it turns an ordinary life into something impossible to look away from.
virginia woolf
she’d make lunch for herself at 3pm. a boiled egg, a bit of smoked trout, cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. everything elegant and melancholy. she eats in the garden with a notebook on her lap and crumbs on her skirt.
pair with: to the lighthouse: a family gathers at a summer house on the coast, where meals are served, children grow up, marriages strain, and years pass almost unnoticed. the plot is simple, but every glance, conversation, and ordinary moment feels charged with the weight of an entire life.
nora ephron
pasta, always. linguine with white wine, garlic, and too much parmesan. eaten at the kitchen counter while gossiping. dessert is lemon bars from the freezer. everything smells like butter and home.
pair with: heartburn: a food writer discovers her husband is having an affair while she is pregnant. filled with recipes, dinner parties, and observations about marriage. nora ephron, the woman you are! my forever comfort person.
anne carson
a bowl of pomegranate seeds eaten one by one. a piece of fish poached in milk. a fig cut open on a plate beside a stack of books. the refrigerator is nearly empty except for a few good ingredients, and dinner is usually simple, precise, and unusual. she cooks the way she writes, paying close attention to small details most people would miss.
pair with: autobiography of red: geryon is a shy, red-winged boy growing up in a difficult home when he meets herakles, a charismatic teenager who changes the course of his life. this is a coming of age story and love story. it follows geryon across years and continents as he tries to make sense of desire, heartbreak, and who he’s becoming.
laurie colwin
chicken soup simmering on the stove. thick slices of buttered bread. a jar of homemade jam pulled from the refrigerator. there is always a cake cooling on the counter or a pie that came out a little lopsided, and somehow that makes it better. her kitchen feels lived in and generous.
pair with: home cooking: memoir and cookbook, colwin writes about weeknight dinners, dinner parties, kitchen disasters, and the pleasures of feeding people you love. it’s warm and comforting, like spending an afternoon in someone's favorite kitchen.
reading in the kitchen is intimate. the soup simmers, the kettle whistles, butter softens on the counter and afternoon light crawls across the floorboards. you read a few pages, stir the pot, read a few more. somewhere between the recipe and the paragraph, the afternoon disappears.
the rest of this newsletter lives behind the paywall. i’m including summer recipes, fragrances, candles, films, and more summer fun for you. enjoy! thank you for being here and supporting my page.
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