Ina Garten

I absolutely adore Thanksgiving. It's the only holiday I insist on making myself.

If you think about a Thanksgiving dinner, it's really like making a large chicken.

I try to greet my friends with a drink in my hand, a warm smile on my face, and great music in the background, because that's what gets a dinner party off to a fun start.

My extravagance is my garden - it's the first thing I look at every morning when I wake up. It gives me so much pleasure.

I worked for the Office of Management and Budget in the White House, on nuclear energy policy. But I decided it would be much more fun to have a specialty food store, so I left Washington D.C. and moved to the Hamptons. And how glad I am that I did!

The thing about all my food is that everything is a remembered flavor. Maybe it's something I had as a child or maybe it's something I had in Milan, but I want it to taste better than you ever thought.

I love Alton Brown's show 'Good Eats, ' about the chemistry of food. It's really thoughtful.

Instead of going out to dinner, buy good food. Cooking at home shows such affection. In a bad economy, it's more important to make yourself feel good.