Ina Garten Played This Drinking Game For The First Time At A Taylor Swift Party

Ina Garten has written 13 cookbooks, but her latest release was her 2024 memoir, "Be Ready When the Luck Happens." It included tragic details about her life and stories about her career trajectory. One of the lighter tales in the book was about Garten playing beer pong at a Taylor Swift party.

The anecdote took place in 2015 after Garten took her team to Swift's 1989 World Tour at New Jersey's MetLife Stadium. The crowd was 60,000 deep, and Garten was a longtime fan. "It's impossible not to feel good when you're listening to 'Love Story' or 'Shake It Off,'" she stated in her book.

When the concert ended, Garten and her friends headed to the after-party, which Taylor hosts after every show for the workers and her friends. "All the eighteen-wheeler trucks that bring the stage sets and equipment make a huge circle in the stadium parking lot, and it becomes a party with music, food, firepits, and Ping-Pong tables," Garten explained.

Her publicist talked her into playing beer pong against the U.S. women's national soccer team, who were invited to the show after their 2015 World Cup victory. Even though Garten doesn't drink beer and admitted she didn't know what the game was, she got in on the fun, drinking wine instead. Garten wasn't a natural, later stating in a Wall Street Journal interview that it was her first and last time playing the game. She wrote that soccer player Abby Wambach tried teaching her the ropes, but she had trouble hearing her advice over the booming music. "Who won? Who cares!" Garten wrote. "We were all winners that night — and confirmed Swifties." 

Ina Garten is more than just a Swiftie, though; Garten and Swift have a real friendship. According to the memoir, they met when Swift chose Garten for a Food Network Magazine project that paired musicians with Food Network personalities they adore. "I loved the idea of doing a shoot with her because I'm a huge fan and I play her music all the time while I cook," Garten wrote. "As it turned out, while I was listening to her music, Taylor was actually cooking from my books!"

Garten requested that they cook something instead of simply taking photos together. She decided on mixed berry pavlova, a "concoction of crisp meringue, airy whipped cream, and (in my version) fresh berries and raspberry sauce." Garten prepped everything in advance for her and Swift to assemble. "I handed [a serving spoon] to Taylor and took one myself, and we destroyed that dessert," she admitted.

They two have only gotten closer since they first met. Garten wrote her a birthday tribute on social media in 2021, calling her "one of the most creative artistic geniuses of our time." On the flip side, Swift has said that Garten made her see cooking as "self-care" and called the Barefoot Contessa's Real Meatballs and Spaghetti one of her favorite celebrity chef recipes in an Elle interview, attesting, "I'll be making [it] at dinner parties for life."