Love and hate - a food blogger
- rosemary
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
"An incredibly successful food blogger/influencer who has millions of followers, struggling with a severe eating disorder." reddit commenter
On to the next website on my list - Half- Baked Harvest whose home page is shown above. Having now 'finished' my research, I feel somehow a little 'dirtied' if that's the right word - simply because of some of the invective that I have come across - and which I shall come to - but also because it all made me feel so ignorant and/or naive.
The lady in question is called Tieghan Gerard. And yes she is young - well not super young I suppose. She began her blog back in 2012 at the age of 19 which makes her 32 now - and the blog is still going, with posts of new recipes almost every day. Since that beginning she has published four cookbooks, and has around 4 million followers. And along the way there were awards, and interviews.
Her 'mission statement' on the blog is not very unusual - American in a way that I always find hard to describe, and also very similar to many other food blogger's intent:
"I spent the first 14 years of my life in Cleveland, Ohio until my family moved to the very snowy mountains of Colorado. I now live in a converted horse barn and work out of a studio barn that we built next door. It is a special place that I was able to design entirely around my lifestyle. It’s where I shot my third cookbook, and where I spend my days experimenting with new recipes, photographing my creations, feeding my family, and making one giant mess in the process. My hope is to inspire a love for food in others, as well as the courage to try something new!"
Her family is large - she has seven siblings, one of whom is an Olympic skier of some kind, and she became interested in cooking when at the age of 14 she took over the cooking to help her parents feed a large family at a reasonable time, finding that she actually loved it. Having failed to pursue a career in fashion in Los Angeles I think, she returned home, which is when her mother suggested the blog.
I think I must have found a recipe that I liked some time and for some reason decided to add it to my list. In very many ways it is so like so many other successful food blogs, which may well have gorgeous looking food, but which are incredibly irritating, because of the ads that keep popping up all over the screen and in between every few lines of chat. And the chat I have to say is really not very interesting, and is mostly that gushing kind of style - e.g - when introducing her list of the 2025 top 25 recipes:
"Looking ahead, I’m excited to lean into a “back to basics” approach — simple, comforting dinners, easy appetizers, and unfussy desserts made with real ingredients, great spice blends, and straightforward methods. Nothing overthought — just really good food."
She does her own photography and I have to say the finished dishes and the photographs of the cooking process are indeed excellent. This is her most recent book - I don't know whether she does the photography for that too.
Quick and Cozy is the name of the book. Which kind of sums up the style of it all I guess.
Below three sample recipes - the top two of those 2025 recipes and the latest recipe - posted yesterday: One-pot marry me chicken pasta; Creamy Tuscan white bean lemon soup; and the most recent post - yesterday - Doughy tahini chocolate chip cookie bars
They're not very different from thousands of similar recipes, but they are eminently doable, and pretty tasty I would think. In some ways, much like we might all be able to dream up at home. Indeed that first recipe for a chicken based pasta incuded a recipe for an Italian seasoning -
"a mix of dried basil, dried oregano, dried thyme, dried rosemary, and dried sage. Then, I add some smoked paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, and chili flakes for spice."
I might even make some for myself some time as a quick flavour boost to a fridge raid pasta. She also said she used scissors to cut up her chicken which is an interesting thought.
And the familiarity of those recipes is one of the criticisms levelled at her even to the extent of accusing her of plagiarism, and unprofessionalism in that (they say) she does not test, or even taste the recipes. I am in no way saying that these accusations are true - this is one of the reasons I felt ignorant and naive - because I have no idea. I mean yes as I almost always discover there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to recipes. Feed in what you think is an unusual kind of pairing - e.g. pasta and pomegranates - and at least dozens of examples appear. Nevertheless this lady attracts really spiteful comments like this:
"Her recipes are a bunch of photogenic ingredients slopped together and it’s wild to me that this woman has millions of followers when there are actual, good food creators out there." Hansgee/Eat Your Books
Many criticise her for having no official food training, which to me just sounds rather petty, as I'm sure there are many much more famous names with a similarly 'uneducated' background - Delia Smith and Elizabeth David are just two that spring to mind, Nigella Lawson too I think. She herself says:
“I didn’t grow up with a family that loved to cook, so most of what I’ve learned has come from Google… and more importantly, trial and error. I really learn by doing, so the more I cooked and photographed, the more I learned.”
Which surely should be seen as encouraging.
I gather The New York Times wrote a piece about her, which has been seen by many as negative and which raised other issues as well - the most serious of which is whether she has an eating disorder or not. The article described her as:
"an unwilling lightning rod for controversy, entangled in issues that have galvanized the food world in the last decade: cultural appropriation, intellectual property, body shaming, privilege and racism." New York Times
The example I saw of cultural appropriation was of a recipe for Vietnamese pho which was nothing like Vietnamese Pho, or labelling something as Thai because it contained coconut milk. Which I have to say is something you see everywhere from supermarket magazines to Ottolenghi. Many of them will admit to a 'twist' on a classic dish, or fusion of two or more cuisines, but it's common practice and not one to be criticised from my point of view - not unless you are selling Parmigiana Reggiano as the 'real' thing when it isn't. If you're just making your own version of Pizza Margherita - who cares? I'm not sure where the racism comes in but the privilege I think comes from her more recent forays into the fashion world, and publicising and selling various prestige brands. And the money she has made I suppose. All of which could possibly be put down to envy and the tall poppy syndrome.
The body shaming, however is the thing that has provoked the most outrage.
The body shaming in fact is of her own body. I have to say that I agree that it does indeed seem that she suffers from and eating disorder - witness the two photographs below. Always tiny, recent photographs show her as almost skeletal. And so one should feel sorry and sad. Not vindictive surely? Concerned that she receives the help she needs.
However it is not just because she has never admitted to it, but more that a regular emphasis of her recipes is on health - all the usual stuff - fresh, quality, and all the things you should eat, whilst at the same time there are also many complaints about some of the food being distinctly unhealthy - cream, butter, sugar ... And also that she never eats it - well so they say. So -hypocritical I suppose. But then if you are mentally unbalanced enough to be suffering from such a thing, then it's not surprising that you would want to hide it. An eating disorder must be a very complicated thing.
Wholesome, I suppose, is the image that she is trying to project and which her critics say she is not. She emphasises the wholesomeness with the story of the name of the blog, which partly came from her mother:
"She came up with the “half baked” part of our name – because my family is very “half baked”. And by that I mean we’re a little all over the place and crazy! I’ve just always loved the word harvest, so Half Baked Harvest it was!"
And wholesome is definitely not associated with eating disorders. Not that the blog itself or the recipes themselves encourage such thoughts. Some of them in fact would possibly encourage you to the opposite extreme of overeating bad things like cream.
I don't know really who is worse here? She for not admitting to her eating disorder (I should also say - if she has one) and thereby encouraging her followers to become skeleton like as well. Or for the critics who vent their almost hatred on social media forums.
I just flicked through a number of her posts, and I have to say that the majority of them do not look particularly healthy - many not remotely healthy - like this Pumpkin beer pretzels with chipotle queso.
Perhaps the real question is whether the eating disorder was always there, or whether being so absorbed in the world of food - and in America too where it is often so over the top like this example here - that you end up with an eating disorder. Although the inference of all of those commenters seemed to be that the problem became most apparent when she began her foray into the world of fashion - notorious for its body image problems.
Interesting though if marginally disturbing. There's always a story behind all these websites although sometimes you can't find it. And sometimes there are different versions of the story. I'm not sure which one is true here.
Somebody works very hard though at publishing a recipe every day as well as running a business empire. My question might be does she really write the recipes? What does she do and what does her small team of, I think 4 1/2, do?
THE FRIDGE PROJECT
No progress yesterday because I was fasting. So far today I have finished off the pasta, and am about to make 'dirty' chicken curry with curry paste from a jar, most of the rest of the roast chicken, and other things I might find. On the downside I have bought a few things today - mostly for tomorrow night's dinner with my son and his family - well that's my excuse anyway.
YEARS GONE BY
January 10 - double digits already
2025 - Nothing
2021 - Missing
2019 - I made redcurrant jelly
2018 - What's in a name?
2017 - What to eat on a fasting day
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