How It All Started
Any time a person sets out to do something, whether it’s a huge undertaking or small goal, there’s generally some inspiration behind it. Most businesses started with a dream that was inspired by someone or something, and that inspiration can take many forms. While my mom has heavily influenced my journey and beginning with food, my ultimate inspiration and motivation for everything I’ve done is thanks to one person: Ina Garten.
It all started when I was 15 years old. Before I even started journaling, I would come home from school every day and be so motivated to become great at something. I grew up with a mom that cooked and baked professionally, so it was sort of a no-brainer for me to try and gain my own talents and skills. I definitely learned a lot from my mom, but one day I came home from school and The Barefoot Contessa was playing on TV. Ina was making profiteroles, and I had never heard of them and figured it was a great way to start trying to learn things on my own. Very soon after, watching Ina became my after-school entertainment and extracurricular activity. I would write down what she was making with a pen and paper, beg my mom to get the ingredients, and I would try to make it. My mom was super tight on money, so I couldn’t always get all the ingredients that I needed, but sometimes when I was lucky, I’d have what I needed to try the recipes I was writing down.
At the time, I had issues at home. I had an alcoholic stepfather that did some pretty major damage to my family. He and my mom fought a lot, he’d often yell. Luckily, the arguments were never physical, and I know he would have never harmed my mom, but the emotional damage was substantial. I became depressed and anxious. Even the slightest noise in the night would make me sit up in bed because I got scared that they were fighting again. So, it’s no wonder I mostly stayed in my room every night. I didn’t like when he was there because I didn’t know when he was drinking or sober. It was just my sister Christina and I living with my mom at that point because my other two sisters were in college. My parents divorced when I was 10 and she remarried pretty soon after.
It was a night when I was 14 and we were all up in New York visiting some relatives on my mom’s side of the family. I was sitting on the couch between my oldest sister and my stepdad, and for a solid 10 minutes, they were just quietly passing insults back and forth at each other, and I was just silently there, literally in the middle, just listening to it. Eventually, I just couldn’t keep listening to it, so I stood up, shouted at them both to shut up, and that’s when all hell broke loose. It became a yelling match between them, him calling her awful names, my mom getting up and yelling at him, my other sister and I just crying, sitting in the corner watching it all happen. The cops were called, and we found out he had been sneaking drinks the whole night, getting totally plastered. We all slept on the living room floor that night, or at least we tried to sleep. From that point, my family was never the same. My mom was in such a tough place, she loved this man, but he had this awful sickness that was doing so much damage. For a couple years, she tried so hard to make it work, help him get better, all while taking care of my sister and I on a shoestring budget. For those years, my sisters wouldn’t talk to or see my mom. They wouldn’t even come over on holidays. Most of the time, my mom just spent the holidays crying, and my sister and I simply did what we could to make the day a little better for her. This went on for years, and you can only imagine the emotional damage that all of that inflicted on us. After that point, we are to where I started this entry. I came home from school, had emotional issues, and wanted, or basically needed, something to add to my life that made me feel better about myself. The kitchen became my safe space, and Ina became my mentor. She pulled me out of the dark times, whether those dark times were me trying to isolate myself in my room, or my listening to my mom and stepdad fight. It was also around that time that I watched Julie&Julia for the first time, and it immediately became my favorite movie. I was so emotionally drawn to it, and I was so inspired by it. Watching Julia Child’s portrayal of her literally paving the way for the food industry in America, and an unhappy Julie Powell trying to escape the monotony and bleakness of her day job. I told myself that I’d follow in those footsteps. I would start a journey with food and learn how to be a pro all on my own. That movie gave me hope. It made me feel something other than sad. It’s still my favorite movie today.
There is a reason I have developed the mindset that I have, the motivation that I have, the work ethic that I have. I have witnessed people that let everything go for nothing. I have witnessed people who have potential but lack the strength to turn it into something. I have witnessed friends and family die at young ages and miss out on so much. I refuse to live a life where I don’t give it everything I’ve got. I refuse to live a life where I have goals that I don’t attempt to reach. I’ve gone through too much already to allow any negativity to stop me. When I discovered the Barefoot Contessa and started my journey in the kitchen, the lessons I Iearned were some that I ended up applying to my life in general. Ina was in a place in her life where she was successful, and I wanted that too. When I started asking for her cookbooks as birthday or Christmas gifts, reading and cooking from them became the only thing I did to pass time or distract myself. I soon developed a long list of kitchen items, equipment, and ingredients that I hoped to have some day because it was all the stuff Ina was using. It was all super expensive, and I knew it would be a long time before I’d have any of it, but it became the subject of almost all my daydreams. It was also at that point when I decided to write Ina a fan letter. I hand-wrote a 3-page letter, explaining to Ina how much she meant to me and how much she helped me. In return, I got my most prized possession to this day, an autographed photo on which she also wrote “For AJ”. 14 years later, that photo is still framed and sitting in my living room, where I can look at it every day.
It's crazy that something like a photo can carry such an intense and emotional story. It’s not often that I really think about all that I went through as a teenager, but I can’t forget how all of this started, and I never will. Fast forward to now, I crossed off every item on that list of things I hoped to have some day. Ina inspired me to try and write my own cookbook, and I did. She inspired me pursue what I loved even though I didn’t have formal training, just like she did. She took a leap of faith, and now she’s an icon. I took a leap of faith, and I feel successful. I’ve achieved an unbelievable amount accomplishments for someone my age. All of the big goals I wrote for myself: the cookbook, being on food network, etc. I promised I’d make happen by the time I turned 30. I just turned 29, and I’ve already crossed all of it off the list. To this day, in the rare occasion I have free time, I’ll find some Ina videos on YouTube and watch them, and all the memories, emotions, and so much more, just flood back at one time. To see where I was then, and where I am now, I don’t really have any words for it. Years and years of hoping, dreaming, trying, job-hopping, being broke, making mistakes, and just so much more, lead this point in my life where I finally am reaching the place I always dreamt of reaching. It’s full circle.
