Quick Wiki
- Full Name Tieghan Gerard
- Occupation Chef, Food photographer, Blogger
- Nationality American
- Birthplace Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
- Birth Date Sep 15, 1993
- Age 31 Years, 2 Months
Tieghan Gerard | Biography
Quit Fashion School And Became Famous As Chef And BloggerSince Gerard came from a big family, she later began to assist in the kitchen to manage some of their mealtime chaos and get dinner on the table at a reasonable hour. She quickly learned how much she enjoyed it, and soon after, she took over full-time cooking duties for her family.
Tieghan Gerard is a chef and blogger best known for her cookbook series, Half Baked Harvest Cookbook.
Who is Tieghan Gerard?
Tieghan Gerard is a food photographer, blogger, self-taught culinary chef, and recipe creator. Gerard is also the author of a cookbook titled Half Baked Harvest Cookbook. She says the books, dishes, and recipes were inspired by the people and places she cared about the most. She talks about her family in her books and mentions that her parents and siblings inspired the recipes in their unique ways.
Gerard also shares her self-created recipes on her social media, with a huge fan following. As of February 2022, her official page, Half Baked Harvest, has over 4 million followers on Instagram, 1.2 million followers on Facebook, and over 295k followers on TikTok.
In 2012, she started her food blog, Half Baked Harvest, in which she uploaded her self-made recipes and their photographs.
Age & Early Bio
Tieghan Gerard was born on 15 September 1993 and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. Gerard comes from a family of ten and is one of seven siblings. She has three elder brothers, two younger brothers, and a younger sister. The Gerard family moved when she was in eighth grade in the snowy mountain area of Breckenridge, Vail, Colorado.
Both of her parents grew up in Cleveland and needed a change of scenery, and since her mother adored the mountains, the family agreed and relocated to the mountain area. In an interview in 2020, she said that she still lived in a “little mountain town in Colorado.” She also mentioned that she was 26 and “nope, I am not married. And no, I don’t live with my family, but we are neighbors. My mom, dad, brother, and two cousins all are a part of the HBH team.”
Since Gerard came from a big family, she later began to assist in the kitchen to manage some of their mealtime chaos and get dinner on the table at a reasonable hour. She quickly learned how much she enjoyed it, and soon after, she took over full-time cooking duties for her family.
Education & Fashion Designing
Later, Gerard took college courses through the community college in Colorado and graduated with an associate’s degree. At the time, she wanted to pursue a professional career in fashion design.
Upon graduating, she even got accepted into a fashion school in Los Angeles and moved there for three months. There, she started working as a talent agent at Barbizon, an acting and modeling agency.
She was just 18 years old at the time. But soon, she became homesick and returned to her hometown without even attending school.
The Story of Half Baked Harvest
After returning to Cleveland, Gerard was still cooking and reading food blogs at the time. Her mother would later advise her to create a food blog. As a result, she began her culinary blog, Half Baked Harvest, in 2012. Her website has various recipes ranging from savory, sweet, and baked items.
Half Baked Harvest was established by photographing the process and documenting her favorite recipes. Since then, there has been no looking back for her.
Gerard has also been featured in reputed networks and magazines like Food Network, The Cooking Channel, HGTV, Crate & Barrel, Self Magazine, Shape Magazine, The Huffington Post, and PopSugar.
Awards & Recognitions
Better Homes & Gardens magazine recognized Half Baked Harvest’s ‘Readers’ Choice Favorite Food Blog’ twice in 2014 and 2016. Her blog also won the ‘Saveur Magazine Award’ for ‘Most Inspired Weeknight Dinners’ and the ‘Bloglovin Awards’ for ‘Best Food Blog Award,’ both in 2016.
Cookbooks by Tieghan Gerard
Gerard photographed her first cookbook in her home—a converted horse barn. She also spent her days experimenting with new recipes, photographing her creations, and hosting family lunches and dinners.
As of August 2021, she has written three cookbooks, namely ‘Half Baked Harvest Cookbook: Recipes from My Barn in the Mountains’ (published 12 September 2017), ‘Half Baked Harvest Super Simple: More Than 125 Recipes for Instant, Overnight, Meal-Prepped, and Easy Comfort Foods: A Cookbook’ (published 1 October 2019), and ‘The PowerXL Grill Air Fryer Combo Cookbook: 550 Affordable, Healthy & Amazingly Easy Recipes for Your Air Fryer’ (published 29 June 2021).
In addition, she has two upcoming cookbooks in the pipeline that are expected to be launched in October 2021 and February 2022, respectively.
Explaining her motivation to write the book ‘Half Baked Harvest Cookbook: Recipes from My Barn in the Mountains,’ Gerard wrote, “My hope for this cookbook is that it becomes a staple in your kitchen. I want it to be the book that has pasta sauce on the cover and chocolate smeared across the dessert pages, that automatically opens to your most favorite recipe because that’s how often you make it. I want this book to be your go-to.”
Controversy
In February 2021, Gerard posted a noodle soup dish called “Weeknight ginger pho ga (Vietnamese chicken soup)” on her blog and Instagram. The recipe included ingredients like caramelized chicken and a “sweet, spicy, tangy sesame chile sauce.”
Soon after she uploaded the recipe, she was accused of whitewashing the classic Vietnamese cuisine ‘Pho’—a fragrant, nutritious, and softly flavored beef and rice noodle soup—and plundering their culture and people.
One user criticized, “I really LOVE so many of your recipes, and I appreciate what you’re doing, but this is not pho. And to call it pho (even chicken pho) is not only appropriation, it’s honestly hurtful.”
Another person added, “This recipe does not reflect the actual ingredients of Vietnam that go into pho, all of the time and work that goes into pho or the actual flavors OR presentation even of pho.”
Responding to the comments, Gerard wrote: “Thank you so much for taking the time to comment. I understand where you are coming from and have decided to change the recipe tittle [sic]. It was never my intention to offend or hurt anyone or the culture.”
She later apologized and renamed her recipe to “sesame chicken and noodles in spicy broth.” However, many Vietnamese Americans believed that the title change was insufficient, and the issue extended far beyond food, particularly in light of the rise in hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
