Ina Garten said she once worried, ‘This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done,’ but her husband Jeffrey got the perfect advice

Ina Garten found an experience in her career so difficult that she thought it might be “the dumbest thing” she had done. Her husband Jeffrey assured her it was the right choice and his encouragement made all the difference.

How Ina Garten became the ‘Barefoot Contessa’

Garten is well known for her nickname, the Barefoot Contessa, but not everyone knows what she was called that. At the time, Garten was working as a government official, but decided on a whim to buy a specialty food store that was on sale in Westhampton, New York.

The store was called Barefoot Contessa.

As the new owner of an unknown business, Garten doubted he had made a good decision. During an interview for Munchies: the podcast, Garten remembered her doubts, wondering if this was “the dumbest thing” she had done.

The former store owner helped Garten make the transition after buying the store, allowing the now famous food guru to follow the owner as she learned the ropes for a month.

Ina Garten shared Jeffrey’s advice that calmed her worries

Garten had gone into the depths of owning a business and found the initial return on investment disappointing, given the hard work required for his new store.

She told the interviewer how much she doubted herself in those early days.

“At the end of the weekend, I just said to Jeffrey, ‘This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done,’ she recalls, saying, ‘This will be the worst summer of my life and I will never learn this business. “

Jeffrey, forever her biggest supporter, lifted Garten up with wise words when she needed it most. “He told me, which was really smart, he said, ‘If you learn the trade in one week, you’ll be bored in two weeks,’” she recalls, he told her. “And he was right.

“From there it was like that big sandbox. There was always something really interesting to do there, ”she added.

RELATED: Ina Garten Refuses To Use This Ingredient In Her Favorite Cocktail Recipe

Garten was put to the test and found his way

The interviewer asked Garten how she overcame obstacles and doubt. “Well, during the first week I really thought, ‘I’m never going to learn this trade.’ I found it to be really difficult, ”she explained.

Garten recalled how the woman who sold him the store had tested her. “She came with me everyday and really supported me and showed me what I needed to know,” she explained. “And then it took about 10 days, after I bought the store, she didn’t come one morning.”

Garten was worried that the former store owner was not there to help her, but she managed to run the business very well without her.

“And at the end of the day, I realized that everything was fine. And I said to him the next day, “What happened? She said: ‘I knew you didn’t think you could run the store and I thought you could. So I didn’t come in a day to show it to you, ”Garten recalls.

“I thought to myself that she was a great teacher,” she explained. “I was so lucky that she was both incredibly good at running a specialty food store, but also incredibly good at supporting me, which was incredibly lovely.