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Celebrating Ina Garten’s 13th cookbook with her biggest fan

Trent Pheifer has made all 1,272 of her recipes and counting

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Trent Pheifer cooking with Cassandra Schultz of Cassandra’s Kitchen. (Photo courtesy of Pheifer)

Ina Garten’s gay appeal is undeniable. From her fabulous home and gardens, to her creative cocktail recipes, to her many gay friends and over-the-top brunch parties, who wouldn’t want to count Ina as a friend?

He may not be on the brunch invitation list yet, but we can all live a bit vicariously through Trent Pheifer, 37, a home cook who chronicled his quest to cook all 1,272 of Garten’s recipes on Instagram (@storeboughtisfine), catching her eye and ultimately cooking with her on a Zoom event earlier this year. 

To celebrate the release of Garten’s 13th cookbook this week, “Go-To Dinners,” the Blade sat down with Pheifer to talk all things Ina.

“She pulled me in, in a way that wasn’t about cooking,” Pheifer said. “She was always having a good time, it was approachable.”

Pheifer said that when he first started cooking he tried Julia Child, but ran into problems with her lengthy recipe for Beef Bourguignon. 

“A lot of those recipes weren’t working out for me because I didn’t have the skills,” he said. “I had made a few of Ina’s recipes and everything was easy to read and gave me confidence in the kitchen and the results were delicious.” 

Pheifer loved the film “Julie and Julia,” about a Julia Child fan who cooked all of the iconic chef’s recipes, and thought he would cook his way through Ina’s many recipes. 

It took him nearly six and a half years, but he did it and in March of this year, he reached the end, culminating in a memorable Zoom event with Ina herself in which Pheifer cooked the final recipe, her Boston Cream Pie, a notoriously tricky dish.

What did he learn during all that time in the kitchen as an amateur cook?

“It’s about diving in — you just have to do it,” he says. “So many people think they aren’t good cooks because they’ve never cooked or they’ve tried something too complicated. … Don’t overdo it when getting started and slowly build.”

Pheifer noted that he was eating mostly prepared foods from Trader Joe’s when he started and now can make anything in Ina’s vast repertoire. But learning to cook isn’t all about impressing dinner guests with fancy dishes. Pheifer, who’s gay and works as a fundraiser for the Advertising Council in New York City, said the bigger lesson was discovering his self-confidence.



“I’ve always struggled with self-confidence — not being good enough or smart enough – and I think in the last seven years of this project my confidence has skyrocketed,” he said. “Having worked hard at something and being recognized, having fun with people, I found confidence in being myself and that has spilled over into my job and life. I wouldn’t be where I am without it.”

Pheifer also shared his thoughts on Ina’s appeal to gay men, noting that about half of his Instagram followers are men, most of whom he assumes are gay.

“A lot of gay men are attracted to strong women,” he said. “A lot of gay boys grew up with ‘Barefoot Contessa’ and a lot of her friends are gay and it’s a place you knew you were welcome. She never waved the Pride flag, but I knew I would be welcomed into her home.” 

Aside from baking cookies with his mother and grandmother as a child, Pheifer didn’t grow up with an interest in the kitchen, though he noted the family sat down to dinner most nights together. By college he wasn’t cooking at all.

“When I was approaching 30 I realized I didn’t know how to cook for myself and it’s expensive to go out to dinner every day,” he said. Julia Child inspired him at first, until that run-in with the Beef Bourguignon. After discovering Ina’s recipes were more approachable, he only encountered one bad experience while cooking his way through her books: vegetable lasagna.

The recipe calls for roasting three trays of vegetables and making a sauce — not an easy feat in a small New York City kitchen. “There were too many elements at the same time,” he says.

Undeterred by the laborious lasagna recipe, Pheifer soldiered on for nearly seven years, sometimes wondering if all his efforts and Instagram posts would be noticed. He says he didn’t start the project hoping to get media attention, but there were thoughts that maybe all of this could lead somewhere.

“At some point you get years into the project and wonder, will anyone notice,” he said. “Ina is so beloved that she inspired this fan base of people who love her and I think I got lucky that no one else was doing it already.” He added that he didn’t do any outreach and the subsequent media attention was organic and came via word of mouth. 

One highlight of Pheifer’s culinary journey came unexpectedly while on a vacation in Paris, which happens to be Ina Garten’s favorite city where she and husband Jeffrey own an apartment. He was on a foodie trip with friends and snagged a coveted table at Verjus, known for its tasting menu, when he spotted Ina and Jeffrey at a table in the intimate dining room. When they finished, Pheifer summoned the courage to approach his culinary idol. 

“It was kismet,” he says, “the color ran from my face. I approached after they finished and my friend knocked over their bottle of wine as I was shaking their hands.” 

He introduced himself as the man behind @storeboughtisfine and Ina immediately recognized him and they posed for a photo.

“I couldn’t think of a more magical way to meet her,” he said, “this was such an intimate experience and in the city she loves the most. Ina is obsessed with Paris so it was a magical moment.”

With Ina’s new book out Oct. 25, Pheifer says he will continue his quest to cook all of the recipes. He plans to tackle two or three each week. 

And if Pheifer could pick the theme for Ina’s 14th cookbook, he says it would be “Store Bought is Fine.” Ina has said her next book will be a memoir and Pheifer hopes she will write about what drives her to create.

Although Pheifer turns to Ina for French, Italian, and American dishes, he said he collects all sorts of cookbooks and his favorite this year is “Korean American” by New York Times writer Eric Kim.

As for Pheifer’s favorite Ina recipe to make, he says it’s her rigatoni with sausage and fennel from “Cooking with Jeffrey.” Least favorite: pear and parsnip gratin. His go-to Ina dinner: Shrimp and Linguini Fra Diavolo with Outrageous Garlic Bread. Go-to dessert: Mocha Iced Box Cake. And his favorite Ina cookbook is “Barefoot Contessa At Home.”

Ina Garten’s latest, “Go-To Dinners” is out Oct. 25 from Clarkson Potter and includes breakfast-for-dinner options, make-ahead ideas, and simply assembled dishes. 

Trent Pheifer making Ina Garten’s Easy Tomato Soup. (Photo courtesy of Pheifer)

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PHOTOS: National Champagne Brunch

Gov. Beshear honored at annual LGBTQ+ Victory Fund event

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Gov. Andy Beshear (D-Ky.) speaks at the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund National Champagne Brunch on Sunday, April 19. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund National Champagne Brunch was held at Salamander Washington DC on Sunday, April 19. Gov. Andy Beshear (D-Ky.) was presented with the Allyship Award.

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

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PHOTOS: Night of Champions

Team DC holds annual awards gala

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Team DC President Miguel Ayala speaks at the Night of Champions Awards Gala at the Georgetown Marriott on Saturday, April 18. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The umbrella LGBTQ sports organization Team D.C. held its annual Night of Champions Gala at the Georgetown Marriott on Saturday, April 18. Team D.C. presented scholarships to local student athletes and presented awards to Adam Peck, Manuel Montelongo (a.k.a. Mari Con Carne), Dr. Sara Varghai, Dan Martin and the Centaur Motorcycle Club. Sean Bartel was posthumously honored with the Most Valuable Person Award.

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

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Television

‘Big Mistakes’ an uneven – but worthy – comedic showcase

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Taylor Ortega and Dan Levy in ‘Big Mistakes.’ (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

In the years since “Schitt’s Creek” wrapped up its six season Emmy-winning run, nostalgia for it has grown deep – especially since the still painfully recent loss of its iconic leading lady, Catherine O’Hara, whose sudden passing prompted a social media wave of clips and tributes featuring her fan-favorite performance as the deliciously daft Moira Rose. Revisiting so many favorite scenes and funny moments from the show naturally reminded us of just how much we loved it, even needed it during the time it was on the air; it also reminded us of how much we miss it, and how much it feels now like something we need more than ever.

That, perhaps more than anything else, is why the arrival of “Big Mistakes” – the new Netflix series starring, co-created and co-written by Dan Levy – felt so welcome. We knew it wouldn’t be the Roses, but it seemed cut from the same cloth, and it had David Rose (or at least someone who seemed a lot like him) in the middle of a comically dysfunctional family dynamic, complete with a mother who gets involved in town politics and a catty sibling rivalry with his sister, and still nebbish-ly uncomfortable in his own gay shoes. Only this time, instead of running a charmingly pretentious boutique, he’s the pastor of the local church, and instead of a collection of kooky small town neighbors to contend with, there are gangsters.

As it turns out, it really does feel cut from the same cloth, but the design is distinctly different. Set in a fictional New Jersey suburb, it centers on Nicky (Levy) and his sister Morgan (Taylor Ortega) – he openly gay with an adoring boyfriend (Jacob Gutierrez), yet still obsessive about keeping it all invisible to his congregation, and she drudging aimlessly through life as an underpaid schoolteacher after failing to achieve her New York dreams of show biz success – who inadvertently become enmeshed in a shady underworld when a gesture for their dead grandmother’s funeral goes horribly awry.

They’re surrounded by a crew of equally compromised characters. There’s their mother Linda (Laurie Metcalf), whose campaign to become the town’s mayor only intensifies her tendency to micromanage her children’s lives; Yusuf (Boran Kuzum), the Turkish-American mini-mart operator who pulls them into the criminal conspiracy yet is himself a victim of it; Max (Jack Innanen), Morgan’s live-in boyfriend, who pushes her for a deeper commitment and is willing to go to couples’ therapy to prove it; Annette, his mother (Elizabeth Perkins), who lends her society standing toward helping Linda’s campaign against a misogynistic opponent (Darren Goldstein); and Ivan (Mark Ivanir), the seemingly ruthless crime boss who enslaves the siblings into his network but may really be just another slave himself. It’s a well-fleshed out assortment of characters that helps our own loyalties shift and adapt, generating at least a degree of empathy – if not always sympathy – that keeps everyone from coming off as a merely “black-and-white” caricature of expectations and typecasting.

To be sure, it’s an entertaining binge-watch, full of distinctive characters – all inhabiting familiar, even stereotypical roles in the narrative – who are each given a degree of validation, both in writing and performance, as the show unspools its narrative. At the same time, it makes for a fairly bleak overall view of humanity, in which it’s difficult to place our loyalties with anyone without also embracing a kind of “dog eat dog” morality in which nobody is truly innocent – but nobody is completely to blame for their sins, anyway.

In this way, it’s a show that lets us off the hook in the sense that it places the idea of ethical guilt within a framework of relative evils, as it permits us to forgive our own trespasses by accepting its “lovably” amoral characters, each of whom has their own reasons and justifications for what they do. We relate, but we can’t quite shake the notion that, if all these people hadn’t been so caught up in their own personal dramas, none of them would have ended up in the compromised morality that they’re in.

However, it’s not some bleak morality play that Levy and crew undertake; rather, it’s more an egalitarian fantasy in which even “bad” choices feel justified by inevitability. Everybody’s motivations make enough sense to us that it’s hard to judge any of the characters for making the choices – however unwise – that they do. In a system where everyone is forced to compromise themselves in order to achieve whatever dream of self-fulfillment they may have, how can anybody really blame themselves for doing what they have to do to survive?

Of course, all things considered, this is more a relatable comedy than it is a morality play. As a comedy of errors, it all works well enough on its own without imposing an ideology on it, no matter how much we may be tempted to do so. Indeed, what is ultimately more to the point is how well this pseudo-cynical exercise in the normalization of corruption – for that is what it really about, in the end – succeeds in letting us all off the hook for our compromises.

In the end, of course, maybe all that analysis is too deep a dive for a show that feels, in the end, like it’s meant to be mostly for fun. Indeed, despite its focus on being dragged into the shady side of life, the arc of its messaging seems to be less about a moralistic urge toward making the “right” choice than it is a candid recognition that all of us are compromised from the outset, often by choices we only force upon ourselves, and that’s a refreshing enough bit of honesty that we can easily get on board.

It helps that the performances are on point, especially the loony and wide-eyed fanaticism of Metcalf – surely the MVP of any project in which she is involved – and the directly focused moral malleability of Ortega; Levy, of course, is Levy – a now-familiar persona that can exist within any milieu without further justification than its own queer relatability – and, in this case, at least, that’s both the icing on the cake and substance that defines it. That’s enough to make it an essential view for fans, queer or otherwise, of his distinctive “brand,” even if he – or the show itself – doesn’t quite satisfy in the way that “Schitt’s Creek” was able to do.

Seriously, though, how could it?

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