you feel happy being in this space. i can see that. when i cook, i'm quite manic about cleaning up as i go along. unlike my husband who leaves a minor nuclear disaster. that's me. how can you cook like that? i throw everything in the sink and we work our way through it. you have so many cookbooks... i have a few. ..i collect cookbooks, but not on the scale you do. can we have a peek? i love that. this is my collection of things i use almost all the time. what would a good french bavette, like a flank steak, be? i will start looking in french cook books and say that's interesting, julia child will do this, and patricia wells will do that, and i will collect information for myself. you still refer to cookbooks? i do. there's so many great cookbooks, why not? let's go and sit. so we're going to have a drink. yes. thank you, thank you. i made some watermelon lemonade. i'm working on it for my next book. so it's a process. am i a guinea pig? you're a guinea pig, exactly. this is from the garden? yes. what have we got? watermelon, lemonade, a little strawberry in it. poured over ice. how easy is that? even i can do this. do you think i have enough mint here? we can grow a mint bush in here. so happy to see you. thanks so much for having us. that's great. i can taste the strawberry. i'm surprised i can taste the strawberry here. what i'm always looking for is layers of flavour, not too many, but you can taste them the same way. you get the watermelon first, then the lemon, then a hint of strawberry. and then a smell of mint. it looks beautiful too. how would it be with a shot of vodka in it? i happen to know. laughter it's delicious! 0k. afterfilming, guys, when we're no longer on public television. . .! a little slosh may fall in there. i'm wondering if it's a little thick. it's slightly slurpish. what would you do? add more lemonade? let me get some water. we're testing recipes while we go here. you know what you would do, would you ever put a tiny bit of soda water in it? that's a good idea. shall we do that? look at that. i have katty kay testing recipes for me. that's something i will take home — i encouraged ina garten to change a recipe and she listened. if it's bad, i'm taking no responsibility, by the way. i like that. this is a very at—home kitchen. i feel very at home here. slosh around. i like the colour better. it's a little lighter pink. not a bad idea. ok, that's perfect. mine is perfect now. refreshing, and i like a bit of soda water. i like the fizz. that's how i develop recipes. do i get a small credit? that's nice. not bad. more than not bad — good. right, let's go and sit. 0k. when you look at everything you have done, and your career — i hate the phrase "celebrity chef", i won't use it. firstly, i'm not a chef. i'm a home cook. what would you say your influences have been? if — you're incredibly influential, why? what is it? well, thank you. i don't know i am, but you know what i love? i love when i walk down the street and someone leans in and say, "you taught me how to cook, thank you." that to me, it gives my life meaning that i never expected to have. i wrote a cookbook, i was figuring out what i would do next, i didn't have anything to do. i thought, "i would write a cookbook while i figure it out." i had no idea that is what i would be doing. you need tojump in the pond, splash around, and do something. you don't know where it leads to. the way thatjulia child taught me how to cook, i've been able to teach other people. it's just extraordinary. there's something about you, i think. you have described it, particularly because all your instagram followers are younger, many of them are younger. it's a huge range, isn't it? it's a huge range of people. when i mention the people i'm interviewing for this show, it's always the young people who say, "you're interviewing ina garten." isn't that interesting. i don't think all of them even cook. people follow you, who don't cook. but it's something about you and your persona. that sounds terribly grandiose. but it's accessible. people will — it's about taking care of each other. i think we need that. and young people don't have mum in the kitchen any more, or grandma in the kitchen. so they don't know how to cook. it's just one of life's great pleasures is to cook for people you love. they kind of miss that. do you think all those years ago, when you were sitting in the white house... ..we have to go back here, you were in the white house working on nuclear energy policy, working in science. really? obviously. and clearly something was missing. something drove you to leave. you have this job that most people would die for. ajob in energy policy, nuclear energy policy — i wouldn't die for a job in nuclear energy — they wouldn't want me. why they wanted me, i don't know. clearly did. yet something was missing. a lot of things were happening at the same time. i wanted to grow up to be jeffrey. he was writing policy papers. i'm of a generation where women didn't necessarily go to work. i wanted to bejeffrey. i was offered this job in the white house i thought, "ok, this is what i want to do." but then i hit 30 and ijust thought, "this isn't me. this is jeffrey." i love to cook, i love to do — renovate old houses. i love the creative stuff. and i was — i was doing that as soon as i got home but i wasn't doing it at work. i saw an ad for a business for sale. it was a specialty food store. i came home and said to jeffrey, "that's what i want to do." we alljust need one person to believe in us. he said, "let's go look at it." you threw it in and bought the barefoot contessa. you worked insanely hard. the white house may have felt like a breeze by comparison. but i loved it. i started 5:00 in the morning. i would arrive when the bread bakers were arriving. i work in the store all day. then i would do catering at night. i do five parties at night. i come home at midnight or two in the morning and i do it all over again the next day. ijust loved the energy of it. i loved the creativity. i loved it was mine. i loved — instead of $25 billion subjects like nuclear power plants, it was $25. but it was my $25. did you — i know what it's like, that whole washington scene, because i live in washington and know lots of people who work in the white house, it takes quite a lot of courage, and self—awareness to say, this is not for me. because it's like a kind — it sucks you in, that world, where your identity is defined by "i work in the white house and i have a badge and i have clearance. and i'm terribly important." then to say i'm going to run a shop in the hamptons, that takes quite a lot of self—confidence. let's just say my parents thought i was crazy. they did everything possible to convince me not to do it. jeffrey was going, "if you do what you love, if you love it, you'll be really good at it." you got married at the age of 20. which is young. even back then. even then it was young, i know. but you also made a decision that's not very traditional, not to have children. and you made that decision young too. talk about that a little bit. about — you knew you want to get married but you didn't want children. did you know you couldn't do what you wanted to do if you had them? it's much harder. i don't think that's why i made the decision. i'm writing a memoir now. i'm looking back at my childhood. it was nothing i wanted to recreate. right. and it's so interesting to look — i'm always looking forward — to look back and realise a lot of my decisions were based on my childhood. so, i think that was really the motivating factor. and jeffrey and i were just so happy together. you make very bold choices. everyone wants to know "where am i going to end up?" forget knowing that. all you know is if you jump in the pond and you splash around, while you're there and you are going to look around and go that's very interesting over there, i think i will follow it there. and see what it brings you. if you're in a stream and you keep knocking against the river banks, you're in the wrong stream. what you want to do is be in a stream where the stream carries you along. and so i think it's — i'm always trying to find where that stream is, where it's going to carry me along. i don't know if you felt this — i felt it in the my 20s, i was in a terrible rush. and i had to do — oh, my god, you know — i remember the first time i got pregnant, bursting into tears, thinking "i'm never going to work again, my career is over." i wish i could have said to my younger self, "it's ok, take your time. you have lots of time." you talk aboutjeffrey and how he's always believed in you. i know you once said your mother tried to keep you out of the kitchen. i love the idea you have made a phenomenal success out of the one thing you were not meant to do! laughs is there a connection there? probably! laughs i'm 75 years old and i'm still saying you can't tell me what to do. do you still find it hard, cooking? yes. i always find it hard. but you make it — how do you do it? you make it look so easy. notjust you make it look easy, but you make other people believe it's easy. first of all, i have simplified a lot of things. i have such a high standard for myself. that when, you know, it'sjust like when i have people coming for dinner, the corn is different every single time. it's starchy, it's sweeter, depending on the time of year, whether it's from the farm stand or the grocery store. i have a flavour in my head i want everything to taste like, a texture, i'm looking for something special and i'm miserable before i get there. ——until i get there. i think cooking is hard because i'm hard on myself. i keep doing it. jeffrey once said — "why do i keep doing this? because it's so hard." he said, "if it was easy you wouldn't be interested in it. you would be bored." people think i'm throwing things together. and in 15 minutes before people are arriving and jeffrey is like chatting away. i'm like, "don't talk to me!" you still have that? that slightjumping off a cliff feeling? yeah. i have something to show you, ina. we have to move, though. is that 0k, cameras? are you happy? wait. some photographs. this is me in a tent in france. i want the whole story. every time i have read about this story... how heavenly. a teenage camping trip with the man you love on $5 a day. that is all we had. and we bought a tent and a sleeping bag, we rented a car. a renault. and the stick shift was on the dashboard and it was red and it rained every single night for four months we were on this trip. so we took the back seat out of the car and slept in the car and cooked in the car. were you happy? i was just so happy. at the end of the four months we wanted to keep going. i thought this is a good sign for a marriage that after four months in a tent that was this tall we still have fun together. itjust looks like happiness to me. this is the beginning. that was the beginning, the first store that i purchased. 400 square feet and because i knew nothing, the deal i made with the woman who sold me the store is that she would stay with me for a month and teach me how to cook and tell me when the brie was ripe and i decided i was going to be very creative and i did all of this new signage which at the time was very �*60s to have that font and the name go straight up. tell me about the name, barefoot contessa. 0riginally you did not like it. the woman who sold me the store was italian and when she was a little girl they used to call her the barefoot contessa. it comes from a movie and it has an idea of being elegant and earthy. when i bought the store i thought i don't want to call it the barefoot contessa, it does not say food or where it is or who it is but i did not know anything about the business so i thought i would wait for a year and then i will change the name. and then it did not matter because people would call me the contessa and the store, i think mostly it really is about being elegant and earthy. let's talk about jeffrey. this was jeffrey in the military. he was in charge of the green berets as a paratrooper. everyone sees him as an incredibly gentle and sweet guy which he is and he is also incredibly smart and really good. a wonderful guy. this was after you were married and he was in the military and you were apart for a year? four years and he was in thailand for one of those years and i was finishing college. he was in thailand and they said we couldn't go to thailand where he was and i said ok and then at some point after i graduated from college i thought they didn't tell me i can't go to bangkok. so i took a flight by myself to bangkok. you rule breaker. i got myself a flight to bangkok and he came to bangkok and picked me up and we went to, amazingly, there was a dartmouth club dinner that evening and we met somebody who said come live with us so i went and lived with them and i would go back and forth between wherejeffrey was in the middle of thailand and i spent i think three orfour months there. this is also the two of you and i chose this because this is what you got away from at the white house. when i worked at the white house all i wanted to do is have a job when nobody told me what to do and i could wear sneakers to work. you know, where you have to dress up every day and have to wear stockings and heels and silk blouse and you had to get really dressed up. ijust wanted to do something where i did not have to get dressed up anymore. idid it. we were talking earlier about what people love about you. i think your marriage to jeffrey and your love story with him, don't you think? i think there is something so... i got very lucky, i really did. he is incredibly generous and has a huge heart, he is smart and funny and he believes in me. i believe in him. what more could you want? exactly. and he is so much fun. we just have fun together. and for generations of young people who are looking, they look at you two and think that is what they want. a friend of mine said that any good marriage is one in which each person feels they got the better deal. and we do feel that way. we're off to the market. you ready? let's go, let's go. isn't this great? they grown their own everything. do you come at this time of year and just want to buy everything? yes. and i think we are, aren't we? these are the best. they have the best melons but the corn is extraordinary. the melons look like i would see in france. how do you choose a melon? it is simple. don't press it. it will have brown spots. what you want to do is just smell it and if it smells like a melon, it is ripe. so that one smells pretty ripe. that one is perfect. would you like some corn? i would love some. let's see. everybody always pulls back the top. you shouldn't do that. just cut the worms out. donut peaches, have you ever had them? we'll have to get some. we'll have to try some. we will definitely have to get some. will you hold this? you see these two you can just smell, that they smell like peaches. when you buy produce and it has a brown spot, that is because somebody pressed it. because somebody pressed it? so never press. never press. just smell. see, that one i'm not smelling as much. that is right. me neither. it is the best time of yearfor produce. fabulous. are we ready? perfect. look at these tomatoes. that is so good. i love these ones, the ones that are slightly... me too. they're flavourful. aren't they gorgeous? and look at all that salad. gorgeous. i don't know how we will check out because i have no money at all. does anyone have money? thank you. this is wonderful. people are running in. i like that. that is very nice. you're all set. thank you very much. i'm assuming with the corn... it's all for you. oh, thank you. it's a very tiny going home gift. and peaches. do you have any advice on the corn, what would you do? boiling water for seven minutes, boiling salted water for seven minutes. and then butter? definitely butter. butter makes everything better. butter makes all the difference. will you come back and spend another day with me? i will. that was so nice. thank you. let me give you back your hat. that was just the nicest day, thank you. thank you for coming. and for all of the tips. i think we shared lots of tips. thank you so much. it was good to see you. hello there. well, it's been a freezing start to the weekend, hasn't it? saturday morning, we had temperatures down at minus eight at shap in cumbria. meanwhile, in spadeadam, also in cumbria, temperatures only reached one degree celsius during the afternoon. now at the moment, we've got clear skies with us, scotland and the bulk of england, and that's allowing a widespread frost to develop, those temperatures continuing to drop away and so, it's a very cold one. the temperatures probably in the countryside getting down to about minus six, minus seven again. this time, north—east scotland having some much colder weather. you'll notice the frost melting away, though, across northern ireland, wales and south west england as we head into the first part of sunday. the reason for that is we've got cloud moving into the west associated with this next area of low pressure, and it's that cloud that really will lift the temperatures as it moves in off the atlantic. and so, some damp weather moves into northern ireland. eventually, we get some damp weather pushing into wales and south west england. the rain quite persistent but probably not all that heavy. however, i think it really will be very cold. 0kay, towards the end of the day, you might see temperatures climb to about nine or ten in the west, but that's at the end of the day — a very slow rise in temperatures — and for most of the day, we're a lot lower than that. i think scotland and a good part of central and eastern england should hang on to some bright or hazy sunny spells for most of the day. now, through sunday night, it's a bit more rain to come for northern ireland, england and wales. 0ur area of low pressure moves into the continent. we then get some cold air coming back in to the north of the uk. showers turning increasingly to snow across modest hills in northern scotland and still a lot of cloud further south. and for most, monday will be another cold day. temperatures quite widely again around six or seven degrees below average for the time of year. and this cold weather looks like it's going to last, to me, a long time — at least a week, could be two weeks. why do i say that? well, even into next weekend, the weather pattern�*s very blocked with high pressure dominating across the arctic and the greenland area and we continue to see these cold north to north—easterly winds. could there be some snow? well, we'll certainly see some snow in the showers affecting parts of scotland but there are scenarios where weather systems could bump in to the cold air and we see rain turn to snow elsewhere. problem is the details just aren't there at the moment, so it's a difficult week ahead for us forecasters. what i do know is it is going to stay cold throughout with some sharp frosts around and temperatures really struggling — well below average. watch out for a mix of rain and maybe a bit of snow at times, too. live from washington, this is bbc news. the faces of israeli women and children on their way home after a second group of hostages is released. they'll be reunited with their families here, at a hospital in tel aviv. in the west bank, celebrations through the night after palestinian prisoners are freed. plus, ukraine issues another air alert for incoming russian drones, a night after reporting the largest drone attack since the war began. hello. i'm carl nasman. after 50 days in captivity, a second group of hostages has been released from gaza as part of a deal between israel and hamas. they arrived at this hospital in tel aviv, where they are expected to be reunited with their families. among the freed hostages is irish—israeli emily hand. she's 9 years old and was initially thought to have been among those killed in the attack on kibbutz be'eri on october 7. she was at a sleepover at a friend's house on the kibbutz when she was abducted without any family. also freed, 12—year—old hila rotem. she was taken captive with her mother raya rotem, who remains a hostage in gaza. an accountant shiri weiss, aged 53, and her 18—year—old daughter, noga weiss, were also released. along with 21—year—old maya regev and adi shoham, aged 38, who was kidnapped from kibbutz be'eri during a visit