Jennifer Garner Once Explained Why She Named Her Dog Martha Stewart

With Jennifer Garner being such a huge fan of cooking, it makes sense that she keeps track of other celebrity chefs. Martha Stewart, in particular, was someone she’s had a close eye on for quite some time.

Jennifer Garner has been watching Martha Stewart for years

Stewart made a longtime fan out of Garner, who’d watch the expert cook in her element long before she hosted The Martha Stewart Show.

“When I was a young actress starting out and I would have auditions in the morning, I would come back and make myself lunch and watch her first cooking show. Back before she had a talk show or anything like that and it was just in the kitchen with Martha,” Garner once said on The Dr. Oz Show.

The two have gone on to develop a personal relationship over the years. Garner has even appeared on some of Stewart’s cooking shows from time to time. The Alias star shared how the famous celebrity chef helped inspired her own cooking for years to come.

“We did Thanksgiving together and it has been the Thanksgiving that I’ve made for my family every year — and it’s been 20 years,” Garner explained.

To pay tribute to Stewart, Garner named her pet dog after her. Which Stewart didn’t mind. In fact, she was thrilled about the idea.

“She was the world’s absolute best gorgeous dog and she and Martha Stewart, the actual human, loved that there were dogs in the world named after her. So she was always very sweet and very welcoming to Martha Stewart, the dog,” Garner recalled.

But she joked that she’d only call her dog Martha depending on her behavior.

“Well, I mean it depended if she was being good, maybe she was Martha, but she knew that if I called her Martha Stewart she’d better get off the couch,” she said.

Martha Stewart said that Jennifer Garner should avoid these animals while cooking

Stewart continues influencing Garner’s lifestyle even to this day. Like her idol, the Elektra actor also has a cooking show, but on a much smaller scale. Garner posts her Pretend Cooking series on social media, where she spends a few minutes demonstrating her expertise in the kitchen. But she wasn’t going to dedicate herself to a full cooking series like Stewart did.

“No, thank you,” she said about the idea according to People. “I like doing a three or four minute version in my pajamas at my house and I like being here but no, that’s as far as I go.”

Despite Stewart having such an impact on Garner, she refrained from giving her protege too much advice. With Garner’s accomplishments, Stewart wasn’t sure there was any advice to give. Still, she let slip a few words of wisdom, anyway.

“She seems to be doing very well without any advice from me,” she said. “And she’s raising three kids and maintaining a beautiful home and garden and a little bit of livestock. But don’t get any cows.”

“Don’t get any big animals, not yet, you don’t have to do that,” Stewart said. “Your career’s on fire. She has to keep going in that direction. I really think that if you have the kind of talent that Jennifer has, pursue that for as long as you can but spend enough time with your children.”

“You cannot overstate how much we have all learned watching you,” Garner said. ”You basically kicked off the Food Network, you, Emeril Lagasse, all those early [chefs.] Really just watching you do it has made a world of difference.”