Dear Ina

Last night I had a nightmare that you invited a bunch of food bloggers to your house to hang out and swap cookies and that you didn’t invite me. Imagine the horror! But then I woke up and started reading Deb’s latest blog post and life screeched to a halt: you DID invite a bunch of food bloggers to your house to hang out and swap cookies! And you didn’t invite me!

Ina, do you realize how faithful I’ve been to you over the years? We’re talking almost a decade of me singing your praises. In January of 2004, I blogged about your tropical smoothie (ok I didn’t sing your praises in that post because I messed up the smoothie, but ignore that); in November of 2005, I made your orange pound cake WHICH I LOVED. There are TWO PAGES of Barefoot Contessa archives on my blog (including my most popular post of all time) and that hardly includes everything. Yesterday I posted a mac and cheese recipe and where did I get my inspiration? Your show. Mmmhmm.

Now, granted, your reaction to all this might be: “You’ve been stealing my recipes for years, why would I invite you over to my house!” Stealing is a strong word, Ina. I think “celebrating” is way more accurate. Also: have I mentioned that I’m a sophisticated gay male who would fit right in with your crowd of sophisticated gay male friends? Ok, I don’t have pastel shirts or pants and I don’t know how to string lights or make a flower arrangement. (Also, I’m not very sophisticated.) But you’re friends with Broadway directors Rob Marshall and Susan Stroman and, not to brag, but I directed a pretty amazing production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in college. My Rueben was hilarious (and also my boyfriend at the time).

Look, Ina, we all make mistakes. In fact, I’m guessing that this was some technical mix-up due to a frazzled intern forgetting to add my name to the list. (Please chain her up in the barn.) I want you to know that I can forgive you and move on from this if you promise that the next time you invite food bloggers to your house, you lose all their invitations and only invite me. And Susan Stroman. I want to show her my Joseph video.

Sincerely,
Adam Roberts
The Amateur Gourmet

24 thoughts on “Dear Ina”

  1. Seems like this is an example of food blogger sexism..notice how all of those invited were women food bloggers…

  2. I can’t believe you weren’t invited. It seems like a major oversight on the part of the PR team. I watched her show before but actually bought one her books because of you not any other blogger. And yeah, Ina is super cool. Did you see the episodes she went to England? I was like, she went all the way there to buy table settings at a special shop that sells every possible table setting style possible. Amazing.

  3. That’s so unfair Adam! You totally deserved to be the guest of honor at that cookie party. But I do love that you now have a ‘betrayal’ tag for your blog.

  4. Kimberly Wydeen

    Hilarious! Is it sad that when I was reading Deb’s post, I actually thought of this blog? I chalked it up to Ina’s team inviting NYC and surrounding area bloggers only, but you might be right.

  5. I love you Adam. I think it was an oversight. I love Ina, and hope it was just a mistake.
    Agreed, you’re too funny :)

  6. I wasn’t invited either, so…. On the other hand, neither do I food blog, nor do I own many pans. I do, however, have an Ina Garten autographed apron hanging in my kitchen. How fabulous is that?

  7. I think you were likely the unintended victim of The Barefoot Contessa’s miscommunicaton: Perhaps what happened was that Ina said to her husband Jeffrey to drop off your invitation at the post office; and the latter simply misunderstood and instead of dropping it off at the P.O. dropped the invite as part of a handful of invites onto the floor. Frankly, I would blame all or most of this on some personal assistant of The Contessa (That is probably who will get the blame for this goof of sorts anyway!!). :-) :-) :-)

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