Breakfast with Ina
Last Christmas, my sister gave my eldest son a book by Adam Grant called Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World. When we all buckled down for our New Year’s cross 
country trek to New Mexico, Phil carved out a seat in the back of the car, curled up with the book and periodically shared chapters with us during the drive.
As he announced each new insight, I began to see myself in Grant’s work. I remember my mother asking me, “Why can’t you just settle down?” Over the years I found myself asking the same question. It wasn’t until my mid-40’s that I realized and finally accepted that a linear journey, just wasn’t in my DNA.
According to Grant, Originals are people who buck the trend, de-construct ideas and are comfortable leading into the unknown. Unlike the commonly held belief, that they have the “one” great idea, they are often people who continue to create.
In fact, he points out that “everything the most creative minds produce is not automatically great.” In fact, most of it isn’t. Instead, what those creators are doing is playing a numbers game. The more they produce, the greater the odds that they’ll come up with something original. Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets. Picasso produced 1,800 paintings and 1,200 sculptures. Maya Angelou wrote six autobiographies. Thomas Edison filed 1,093 patents.
In that spirit, I’m writing about one of my very favorite Originals, Ina Pinkney.
Jane and I met Ina in 2016, when we were in a competition for Chicago’s Next Best Food product. Ina was one of the judges and she loved our fresh and contemporary approach to slow cooking. With her fellow judges, they moved us into the finals.
She was dubbed the Breakfast Queen and is most famous for her long-standing restaurant, Ina’s Kitchen. Ina loves to share the fact that she was fired from 19 out of the 21 jobs she has held along the way.
In the documentary, Breakfast at Ina’s, she shares her unlikely journey from a little girl in Brooklyn who was afflicted by the ravages of polio. She said that as a child she was surrounded by adults, learned to listen and the importance of making herself heard. Her father encouraged her to live fearlessly.
Not only did she start her entrepreneurial journey in her late 30’s, but as a polio survivor, she has continued to work hard to eradicate that disease. She has broken down racial barriers and continues into her 70s to be an inspiration – always evolving.
Today I celebrate the rule breakers or as Ina likes to say the independents: not the people who are intent to do harm in the world; but those who challenge the status quo, continue to innovate and believe that everyone deserves a place at the table.
In celebration of Ina’s work, we hope you will join us this month as Jane will be creating a series of recipes for the breakfast table.
Enjoy!
Follow Ina…
To read more about Ina’s inspiring story you can purchase her book – part memoir part cookbook Ina’s Kitchen: Memories and Recipes from the Breakfast Queen. She’ll also be airing her documentary in Milwaukee on April 9th. For tickets and information, please go to www.jccmilwaukee.org.
Author’s Note: For those of you who experiencing the joy and complexity of raising an “original” child I wanted to share a terrific article, Educating an Original Thinker. Having been raised in a home where character was a guiding principle, my most important takeaway is to focus on values over rules.
Zen Moment
“Originality brings more bumps in the road, yet it leaves us with more happiness and a greater sense of meaning.”
