In a Barefoot Contessa cookbook I have on hand and recently cracked open, Ina Garten's inscription says "My home is where Jeffrey is." Jeffrey is her husband you probably already know. He's the person for whom she is almost always cooking...because he's coming home from working out of town, because he loves this, because of their trip there, or just because.

If there is one thing I believe (besides the fact that we have a Zen Master on the San Diego Padres and no one really understands what they are witnessing at Petco Park), it is that food is the best way to express emotion. Ina gets it. Ina understands that food isn't for showing off, rather, it's a personal matter that can be for 2 or 200, and if love goes in, love will be the most memorable flavor. She's clever in presentation, short cuts and tips, but it's the heart I feel coming through her recipes and celebrations that makes me want to be like her.  

On a recent episode, Ina prepared steak sandwiches for her and Jeffrey and showed snapshots of a camping trip they took together years ago. My oldest pictures of me with my husband are sixteen years old, our first trip to Cancun, Mexico. The night he proposed to me we ate Spaghetti Carbonara and drank sparkling wine on the ocean. Have I ever imagined myself in my own little cooking show, whipping up Carbonara as I sip Chardonnay and look at pictures of us in our early twenties? Nah.

Well, maybe.

Because I wanna be like Ina.

I am not sure how old Ina is, I don't eaxctly know how long her and Jeffrey have been married. But whatever age they are and however many years they have accumulated as a couple, it is so endearing to watch them eat French Onion Soup together on a blustery day at the beach. They are so in love. Very often I like smacking the back of my husband's head just because he is there - but if I don't get to grow old with him it's quite possible I would become a modern day Miss Haversham, sitting around in an apron rather than a wedding dress, watching repeats of Barefoot Contessa instead of a fire.

I am not sure exactly what finance or economoic position Ina held, but I know she reinvented herself when she was around my age and followed her passion - food. I love writing and I love food, the two have intersected in my life and I am following my literary dreams for no other reason than it's because it's what I love and I think it's, just...in me. Ina's smile is genuine, whether on a book, taping a show, and even in her voice - because she did what she wanted, loved what she did - and from what I see those ingredients combined with diligence allowed her passion to become her work to become her happily ever after. 

Ina, I wanna be like you.

It's not just her shrimp and orzo salad in take-out containers that inspires me. It's how she dictates the recipe for a good life inadvertently that speaks to me. Simple things, like cooking for the people you love what they love the most. By saying I'm going to do this because it feels right.

I am comfortable in my own kitchen, writing down my own life word by word, but maybe one day I wil be like Ina.

You're all invited.