I have to admit, I do like a lot of her recipes and content, but it has gotten weird over there. I have followed her almost since the beginning, at least as far back as 2103, and while her photography wasn't nearly as good in the early days, her recipes definitely were more imaginative, original, and genuine - like she was really putting effort into doing some cool and unusual stuff. I don't mind if she mixes odd ingredients or the food isn't the healthiest, because I love my cheese and fat, ain't gonna lie. But the whole high fashion obsession in recent years, and somewhat repetitive content now is a let-down - and the crazy comments on the website that go off the rails are just weird. She says her mom proofreads all the content and edits all the posts, yet the typos and poor writing are getting worse. I could understand that when she was just starting out and didn't have much of a budget, but now she's rolling in dough, and has a staff, so it's hard to overlook at this point.
For example, this: https://www.halfbakedharvest.com/jameson-whiskey-blue-cheese-burger-with-guinness-cheese-sauce-crispy-onions/
Is a crazy, mish-mash, weird heart-attack on a plate. Almost sounds gross. Probably is to a lot of people, but it's one of my favorite recipes of hers. Guinness? Whiskey? Cheese? Burger? Knife through the burger and a bottle of Jameson in the picture? Yes please. I loved her content when she was doing crazy shit like this, and I do this burger every summer when BBQ season starts. She also used to do a lot of cool vegetarian burger options like black bean and quinoa options, and they were pretty imaginative. Her old content, while completely bizarre at times, was actually interesting. This was another recipe that was seriously epic: https://www.halfbakedharvest.com/thai-coconut-butter-mussels-with-garlic-lemongrass-toast/
I don't see much of this ingenuity anymore and I miss that. How did we go from bad-ass whiskey burgers, and a mason jar filled with Jameson...to this? https://www.halfbakedharvest.com/negroni-sour/