Unnamed UK Prime Minister

Today is graduation day, and I'm exhausted. I'm a Harvard student, and over the last few months, we've just been watching the news scared. And we've somehow become pawns in this political culture war. Trump has been coming up with new ways every single day of how to come after us. We're currently in month four and we have a long time to go with this administration.

We feel bullied by this administration and we just don't really know where to go from here.

Mm-hmm.

So we really don't have a lot of hope that this is going away anytime soon.

I've been very proud to see the university stand up and resist what I think are overreaches from the Trump administration. It's not an easy thing to unite a place as opinionated as Harvard, and yet Trump has succeeded in doing exactly that.

I definitely think that some of the administration's criticism of Harvard is valid. I've been frustrated by how left-leaning a lot of the courses are, but I don't think the federal government should be trying to force Harvard's hand in this way to fix them.

I'm really concerned about the research that's lost and the projects that are going to be halted halfway through because of these funding cuts.

We as international students are asking ourselves constantly and each other, what control do we now have over our lives?

At this point, I think some of our listeners might be thinking to themselves, Serve the food already, Michael. Be done with it, Ina. This is not how I think about dinner. You guys are overthinking the whole thing.

I think with that, It might be time for us to think about cooking.

Would you do the honors of throwing us to the break?

Bravo! So Anna, tell us what you have picked for us to cook for the holidays. And why? And how it fits into this conversation we've been having about bringing people together in ways that are simple, efficient, and without the host's hair on fire.

So all we're going to have to do, is make the glaze.

Okay. Okay, you ready? I am ready.

I'm not going to feel judged as I do this because there is really no wrong way to do it.

I've always had a zesting question. Is the zest of an orange or a lemon or a lime simply when you've covered all the surface area with one or two goes, like how deep do you go into the skin?

all of which put her on a path to becoming a kind of guru for a relaxed, real, not too prim or glamorous way of entertaining at home. Wow.

That was a tool I didn't know I needed.

Okay, and just describe this. You're bringing this over to this enormous, amazing, precooked, pre-sliced ham, threaded with string.

Yeah, this glaze is just like that.

All right.

Do we ever.

Okay. I feel like everyone listening to this wants to know if the giant pandemic martini cup actually exists.

It's here? It's here. Can I just see it?

Oh my word.

Into the measuring cup goes the 20. Three quarters of a cup.

I would give it probably at most 12 seconds. Okay.

Yeah. Seems like two days.

These are beautifully chilled martini glasses to the touch.

I think I'm going to have to sell my whole family on this one, because it just feels like a perfect Thanksgiving cocktail.

Thank you. It's delicious.

And so after a few emails... Ina, to our delight, agreed to meet with us in her home studio.

I love the way the ham has kind of opened up and it's kind of fanning out.

If nobody had told you, I would think that you have been working on this for 24 hours.

I have to say, this looks really good. It's really punchy.

I can taste the orange zest.

No, it really, it's ham on steroids. It's really, really good.

I have learned a lot.

We'll be right back.

which she calls the barn, and to talk to us about the thing that so many of us are going to be doing today, hosting or being hosted.

So normally at the end of an episode, we do the headlines of the show. Today, we're going to do something a little bit different. I'm going to throw a bunch of rapid fire questions at you about cooking and entertaining. But to begin this, I need you to kick us off by saying, here's what else you need to know today. Okay, here are the questions.

Best cold appetizer that's ready when your guests walk in.

Bread or no bread on the table?

Your personal preference, pumpkin or apple pie?

Stuffing or mashed potatoes?

100%.

Criminal to have it out the other direction. Response that you give to a guest who says, can I help?

And if they insist on helping with the dishes?

Are you giving your guests leftovers?

That is hosting at a level I cannot fathom.

Well, on that note, I'm out. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving to you too. I'm grateful to you. I'm grateful for everything you've taught me as a amateur home chef. And I'm grateful just to have you in our world. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you. I think I'd be remiss if I didn't ask, where's Jeffrey?

It's 90 feet. Through the beautiful hedges and shrubs. I'm Michael Barbaro. This is a special Thanksgiving episode of The Daily. Today, someone is in the kitchen with Ina. And that someone is me. It's Thursday, November 28th. Well, I want to give you something. Oh, you didn't have to bring me anything. Now, of course, I wouldn't dream of coming to Ina Garten's house empty-handed.

All right. He's not going to be joining us. Oh, I'm sorry.

Today's episode was produced by Tina Antolini and edited by Wendy Dorr. It was fact-checked by Susan Lee, contains original music by Marion Lozano, Rowan Namisto, Corey Schreppel, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Special thanks to Paige Cowett, Kate Tyler, Sam Harnett, and my dearest mother, Jean Barbaro. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro.

Happy Thanksgiving, and see you tomorrow.

This is a tote and a bottle of what I understand, according to Google, is your favorite kind of wine from Burgundy.

And eventually, the two of us sit down at a table inside the barn for a conversation over coffee and a basket of pastries. I feel like you're literally modeling the behavior that we're going to be talking about.

The hosting begins early here. Ina, thank you. So happy to see you. So I just want to set the table for this conversation, as it were. To me, there's nothing as special as being invited into somebody's home as you have invited us for a meal, whether it's a dead simple backyard barbecue or an elaborate multi-course sit-down dinner.

And our destination was the home of a person who has very much been having a moment. Okay, so, so far, not much traffic. And that is the cook, television host, and creator of her own media empire, Ina Garten, a.k.a. the Barefoot Contessa. This is Billy Joel singing about the island run.

And it's always felt to me that good hosting is a kind of magic, right? And you are such a master of this particular art form, this magic of convening people and making the togetherness feel so special.

that comes from, that desire to comfort people, to make them feel cared for.

That's a pretty stark thing to have to say. Yeah.

Well, do you remember the first time? that you really hosted on your own?

Your first party, 20 people?

Well, how did it play out? So you're in the kitchen. You're making omelets. You're recognizing this isn't going super well. This isn't going well at all.

So it was... Bad? It was bad. It was really bad. Could you feel it? Like, was it tangible?

But you keep at it, quite obviously. So what does it look like for you to grow into a more confident, less omelet-centric host?

The lesson being that cooking is part of hosting, but it is not the totality of hosting.

Right.

Well, so let's get kind of clinical here and talk about how all of this works. Because it's not every day we get to pick the brain of the Barefoot Contessa. Okay. And it's really only once a year that I think so many of us are really focused on the act of really hosting, which is Thanksgiving. So just talk us through the elements of a good meal, a good dinner party. What's essential? What's not?

And if you know anything about Ina, you know that she's written over a dozen best-selling cookbooks. I have almost all of them. And that she's been married to her beloved husband, Jeffrey, for more than 50 years. So now it's about 7.40 a.m. and we have hit our first big patch of traffic. And that she lives in the Hamptons. Oh, we're in East Hampton.

Let's allow ourselves to go rather deep on this subject in a way we normally might not otherwise.

How much do you think about, how much should we be thinking about the group of people that you're bringing together? Thanksgiving is unique, of course. You don't always have a choice of who's in your family and who gets to come, who has to come. But to the extent that you do have a choice, how do you think about combining the right mix of people?

Two hours, 32 minutes. Plenty of time to do whatever. A few weeks ago, in the wee hours of the morning... Can I get you a tushy warmer? Yes, please. I started out on a very long drive with my colleagues, Paige Cowett, Wendy Doerr, and Tina Antolini. But I feel like I probably should have gone left. We should probably go to the BQE. Yeah.

Okay, the food. How do you decide what to serve or not to serve? And I'm not just talking about dietary restrictions, which, by the way, always come up, but just the whole question of what is going to be possible within the time that you have, what's going to feel the right level of simple food, Or if you wanted to, fussy and formal and meeting the occasion.

in a stately home that if you've ever seen her TV show is instantly recognizable. And I just missed her house. Except if you're the one driving. I'm so busy talking to you that I just missed her house. Now back to that moment that Ina Garten is having.

Okay, so now that we've talked about the food, the table, what's on the table? So let's talk about levels of how much we're supposed to even care about this. I care about it. Then it's important. My mother and I have been fighting for as long as I can remember about whether it's okay to use paper or plastic plates. How do you set the table and how much fuss do you put into it?

She just wrote a memoir about her childhood and her marriage and her improbable journey from working as an analyst in the Ford White House to purchasing a small specialty food store in the Hamptons that becomes wildly popular under her ownership. Okay, and we have just arrived at Ina Garten's house.

Right. Everything we're talking about here is really just a tool to bring people together. It doesn't really matter which tool we use. Exactly. Okay. Once the dinner's underway, the food is out, the conversation's going, I have to imagine once in a while in this line of business you're in, you went into the problem of a guest, a relative, a problem person. And how do you deal with that?

I'm thinking of my family. I'm thinking about an uncle of mine.

The dominator.

What do you do? You don't do anything.

We maybe have to go back to the people, but we have to end it.

The Syrian army concedes it has lost control of large parts of Aleppo.

Islamist forces are on their fourth day of a lightning offensive through several towns and villages towards Syria's fourth largest city, Hama.

opposition fighters now on their way going south towards Homs that then leads to the capital, Damascus.

Syrian rebels are telling media outlets they've entered the capital city of Damascus.

With the help of God, the city of Damascus was liberated and the regime of the tyrant Bashar al-Assad was toppled.

Yes, so this is a letter from His Majesty the King. It's an invitation for a second state visit. This is really special. This has never happened before. This is unprecedented. And I think that just symbolises the strength of the relationship between us. So this is a very special letter. I think the last state visit was a tremendous success.

His Majesty the King wants to make this even better than that. So this is truly historic.

Israel's prime minister, he made it clear today when he said, we are not done with the war in Gaza.

The Israeli security cabinet has approved a plan to escalate the military campaign in the Gaza Strip.