At the moment, Ina Garten is kind of like the Food Network's Chris Brown.

The "Barefoot Contessa" star allegedly turned down a request from the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

The foundation reportedly tried to contact the celebrity chef twice on behalf of a six-year-old boy suffering from leukemia who wanted to cook with her. And twice they were rebuffed.

The story is hard to believe: Garten, the soft-spoken, endearing hostess?

Yet Garten's rep all but confirmed that it's true, saying that: "despite her demanding schedule, [Ina] participates and helps as many organizations as she can throughout the year, helping children and adults like Enzo with life threatening and compromising illnesses."

That's as close as any publicist will ever get to straight-up admitting: "Yeah, we just turned down the Make-A-Wish Foundation."

A better idea -- hopefully Food Network execs are holding a conference call right now to suggest this -- is that Garten just backtracks and invites the kid over.

We're sure that she truly is pretty busy.

But if she had time to throw a charity lunch for six Hamptonites -- who paid $100,000 to be there -- she can make time to whip up some meringues with a six-year-old.

Then we can all go back to adoring her. As Garten herself would say, "how easy is that?"