Be Ready When Brownies Happen

Ina Garten’s memoir and a brownie love story

My famous brownies of love. My husband was very pleased that I needed to bake them this week in order to take a photo for this post.

I remember the first time I stumbled onto Ina Garten’s cookbooks. I was leafing through Martha Stewart Living magazine and Martha recommended Ina’s first cookbook. I bought The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook immediately. Twenty-five years and quite a few cookbooks later, I’m still a fan of Ina Garten so naturally I received her new memoir, Be Ready When Luck Happens for Christmas.

I don’t read very many famous people’s memoirs so I don’t know how this one stacks up against others but it was a nice, holiday read for a fan girl, but what really struck me was what Ina said about baking brownies for her husband:

“This is the very first time I thought of food as an expression of love. Before I started cooking for Jeffrey, food could be good, bad, or mediocre like the food at home, but it didn’t matter because it was just sustenance, not pleasure. Now baking something delicious was a way to express my feelings and to connect with Jeffrey-I’d think of him while I cooked, and when he reached for one of my cookies or brownies, I knew he’d think of me…I think those homemade brownies were for Jeffrey the culinary equivalent of a low-cut dress: irresistible and guaranteed to make an impression.”

I can, in many ways, relate.

When my daughter was in kindergarten, she told her teacher her dad married her mom for her brownies. She’s was kind of right. My brownie recipe is damn good.

The first time I baked brownies for my husband was when we were first dating. He was in grad school at Cal Tech, working on a PhD in Nuclear Physics, and had to take his candidacy exam. He told me he needed time to go deep into studying and I shouldn’t expect to see or hear from him for a week or so.

Being the young, insecure, twenty-two-year-old I was, I was nervous about this news, but I tried to push my insecurities to the side and be supportive. Somewhere along the line I decided that bringing him brownies would be a good way to show him I was supportive of him and his academic endeavors.

At least that’s what I told myself I was doing but as I look back, I’m suspicious I was looking for a way to check-in when I was supposed to be giving him space. It was an attempt to avoid being forgotten. The way to a man’s heart is through is stomach was an adage that I took somewhat seriously.

I baked my family’s famous brownie recipe and drove thirty minutes to Pasadena to deliver them. I knocked on the door to his apartment and his roommate answered.

As his roommate went to get my boyfriend, he left me standing outside the door, on the threshold, holding a tin of brownies. My heart felt as though it was pounding outside my chest, and I shivered in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot at the top of the long staircase in the cool night air, wishing I was anywhere but there. But it was too late to turn back now.

My boyfriend came from his room, eyes blurry from studying. I thought I saw a flash of annoyance across his face. I had broken the rules, he asked for space and yet here I was at his doorstep.

If I asked my husband now, he would likely deny that he was annoyed. Maybe he wasn’t. It very well could have all been in my head. Maybe it was the guilt and disappointment in myself that I was transferring onto him.

Nonetheless, there we were, facing each other, both our minds racing during this pivotal moment. Telling ourselves truths and lies. I quickly shoved the tin of brownies into his hands, explaining they were study snacks and wished him luck on his exam. He thanked me but didn’t ask me in. I fled down the step stairs, my cheeks burning with shame and embarrassment all the way home.

A few days after taking and passing his exam, he called to thank me for the brownies. He told me he loved them, that he hid the tin in the closet in his room so that his roommate wouldn’t find them and eat them. He told me he was touched by the gesture. I breathed a sigh of relief. A little under two years (and a few more pans of brownies) later we were married.

I’ve told this story many times to my daughter. Never mentioning the insecurities of the moment. Only that I was sweet and baked brownies for her dad, and he loved them so much he knew he wanted to marry me one day.

The story is told the way I want it to be told, the insecurities of a new relationship left out, leaving only the sweetness of a happy ending.

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At the Check-Out Desk

Hello Friend,

Thank you for reading today’s essay. I’ve been doing a lot of planning and writing lately and I can’t wait to spend 2025 connecting with you here, where we talk about reading, writing, cooking, and anything else that comes up. This little section, At the Check-out Desk, that you usually find at the bottom of most posts, is meant to be like a quick chat you would have if you were at a real library (instead of this magical, online, Cozy Library) and you were chatting with a real librarian (instead of me playing librarian).

I just completed making a little card catalog of posts that will help you find some of my series more easily. You can find it here and it contains links to the Classic Children’s Literature series I did and the Meta Journal Workshop. I hope that helps you if you want to follow along or want to revisit a post that inspired you.

As I write this, I’m getting ready to have cataract surgery on one of my eyes. By the time you read this it will be over. I’m very nervous! I worry that I won’t be able to see and then I will be like Burgess Meredith in that Twilight Zone episode where he finds he has an entire library at his disposal and no one to bother him, and then his glasses break. I don’t know any reader who doesn’t remember that episode with complete horror. Keep me in your thoughts and I will report my progress in the comments.