Ready to serve: The Barefoot Contessa’s long-awaited memoir to come out Oct. 1

NEW YORK (AP) — The long-awaited memoir from Ina Garten, known to millions as host of “The Barefoot Contessa” and author of numerous cookbooks, will be published Oct. 1.
The title, announced Tuesday, is “Be Ready When the Luck Happens.”
“There is no recipe for writing a memoir, and the process helped me see that what happened to me in my 20s and 30s prepared me for what was to come,” Garten, 76, wrote on her Instagram page.
Garten had worked in various other jobs, including as a White House budget analyst, before her culinary career took off in the 1980s.
First announced in 2019, Garten had originally planned to release her book through the Macmillan imprint Celadon. But she quietly changed publishers to Crown, which had released much of her previous work through its Clarkson Potter imprint.
“Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail,” the publisher’s announcement says.