2 Unexpected Ingredients Ina Garten Avoids Cooking With

Picture it: You've decided to host a dinner party. You're excited, but you're also new to entertaining, or a bit rusty. Who are you going to turn to? The Barefoot Contessa, of course. The cookbook author and television host is a generous fountain of genius advice, much of which pertains to hosting special, impressive gatherings that take a refreshingly low amount of work. Ina Garten is the authority on simple ways to set up stress-free dinner parties, promoting effortless menus to cook for guests and surprisingly approachable course options like store-bought vanilla ice cream with limoncello for dessert. With years of entertaining — some pretty VIP guests at that — and working in catering, Garten has this hosting thing down to an art, so it's worth listening to her advice to ensure your own flawless but stress-free results. And one thing that might be a game-changer the next time you cook for others is knowing the ingredients the Barefoot Contessa avoids in these situations, and why.

As revealed by the Food Network, neither spinach nor poppy seeds get an invite to Garten's gatherings. The reason is simple: They get stuck in people's teeth. While other foods can do this, too, these offenders are notoriously likely to stick and hard to get out, thanks to spinach being fibrous and poppy seeds being so tiny. They're also especially visible, and worrying about this can distract guests from enjoying themselves. So, Garten kindly removes the possibility from the table.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that Garten is willing to permanently 86 ingredients from her party menus to keep guests comfortable. All of her approaches to everything from decor to cooking and baking to serving are shaped with everyone in attendance feeling relaxed. Some of her other recommendations are asking guests ahead of time about anything they can't eat so everyone's happy with the menu, making dishes that are on the less fussy side that guests will be comfortable with and excited about; and not making so many dishes that guests — or you as the host — feel overwhelmed.

If you had your heart set on a spinach dish for your menu — maybe you already stocked up at the farmer's market — think about teeth-friendly uses, like blending it up in a five-minute almond mint pesto where the spinach replaces the basil. You'll have a tasty sauce you can use to jazz up pasta or bruschetta. Or, make a simple palak paneer, a crowd-pleasing Indian cheese dish with a spinach sauce. And if your salad is lacking crunch because you were going to sprinkle it with poppy seeds, you can substitute seeds that are just as flavorful but white, avoiding any dental-related social anxieties. Try sesame seeds, mustard seeds, or amaranth seeds. In signature Garten fashion, these are simple steps to put guests — and you — at ease.