Half Baked Harvest Cookbook

Whether you need to get dinner on the table for your family tonight or are planning your next get-together with friends, Half Baked Harvest Cookbook has your new favorite recipe. Tieghan Gerard grew up in the Colorado mountains as one of seven children. When her dad took too long to make dinner every night, she started doing the cooking--at age 15. Ever-determined to reign in the chaos of her big family, Tieghan found her place in the kitchen. She had a knack for creating unique dishes, which led her to launch her blog, Half Baked Harvest . Since then, millions of people have fallen in love with her fresh take on comfort food, stunning photography, and charming life in the mountains. While it might be a trek to get to Tieghan’s barn-turned-test kitchen, her creativity shines here: dress up that cheese board with a real honey comb; decorate a standard salad with spicy, crispy sweet potato fries; serve stir fry over forbidden black rice; give French Onion Soup an Irish kick with Guinness and soda bread; bake a secret ingredient into your apple pie (hint: it’s molasses). And a striking photograph accompanies every recipe, making Half Baked Harvest Cookbook a feast your eyes, too.

“Recipes veer from Braised Pork Tamale Burrito Bowls to Crispy Buffalo Quinoa Bites with no logic other than flat-out good taste.”—*Epicurious 

*“Gerard’s gift is making you feel like you’re cooking along with a fun friend.”—*Colorado Homes Magazine

*“Gerard’s collection of recipes is filled with delights for weekday nights and weekend revels.”—BookPage*
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“Very decadent choices as well as very mindful ones all in one place.”—The New Potato

“This colorful and exciting cookbook . . . is a must have.”—The Chalkboard Mag*
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Auteur

Tieghan Gerard

Résumé
125 of your new favorite recipes, featuring maximum flavor, minimum fuss, and the farm to table style that turned Half Baked Harvest from a beloved blog into the megahit cookbook series
 
“Recipes veer from Braised Pork Tamale Burrito Bowls to Crispy Buffalo Quinoa Bites with no logic other than flat-out good taste.”—Epicurious 

Tieghan Gerard grew up in the Colorado mountains as one of seven children. When her dad took too long to make dinner every night, she started doing the cooking—at age fifteen. Ever-determined to reign in the chaos of her big family, Tieghan found her place in the kitchen. She had a knack for creating unique dishes, which led her to launch her blog, Half Baked Harvest. Since then, millions of people have fallen in love with her fresh take on comfort food, stunning photography, and charming life in the mountains.
 
While it might be a trek to get to Tieghan’s barn-turned-test kitchen, her creativity shines here: dress up that cheese board with a real honey comb; decorate a standard salad with spicy, crispy sweet potato fries; serve stir fry over forbidden black rice; give French Onion Soup an Irish kick with Guinness and soda bread; bake a secret ingredient into your apple pie (hint: it’s molasses). From Korean Beef, Sweet Potato, and Quinoa Bibimbap to Healthier Slow-Cooker Butter Chicken to Addictive Salted Caramel–Stuffed Chocolate Cookies, a striking photograph accompanies every recipe, making Half Baked Harvest Cookbook a feast your eyes, too.

Échantillon de lecture
The Beginning

For as long as I can remember, I have loved creating things. When I was little, I would spend countless weekends working on craft projects, making photo collages from magazine cutouts, rearranging my bedroom, or helping my grandma set up for parties. Never was I not doing something. For the longest time, I had always said that I was going to grow up to be a fashion stylist. I loved clothes, but even more than that, I loved putting pieces together to make them pretty. I get this from my nonnie, who taught me all I know about tablescapes, entertaining, and making one heck of a Dutch Baby (page 29). It wasn’t until I was fourteen or fifteen that I started to get into cooking, but once I started, I never stopped . . . clearly. 

Let me back up. I am one of seven kids. Yes, I did say seven, and yes, we all have the same mom and dad. For most of my life, I was the only girl of the bunch—my little sister, Asher, wasn’t born until I was fifteen. This meant my early years were spent as one of the biggest tomboys around. Dirt bikes, snowboarding, swimming in the lake. My mom put me in cute dresses and hats, but I wanted nothing to do with them. When she picked me up from preschool, I’d hop in the van and immediately whip off my pretty clothes (I know, I know, so wild). I’d strip down to the boxers and tee I wore underneath, just like my brothers, and breathe a sigh of relief. 

Growing up in such a big family meant a lot of things. My life was not only fun; it was also never boring. It was hectic, unorganized, and, um, very loud. I am the only person in my family who loves a good routine, loves to be organized, and basically just hates all things chaotic. My mom, on the other hand, thrives on chaos. While I love her to pieces and she is my best friend, we could not be more different. She is an adventure-seeking, go-with-the-flow, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of person. Me, I’m a routine-loving, type A, crazy-focused freak. As a kid, it bugged me greatly that every single day in our house was chaotic. It bugged me even more that our dinners were about five times more frenzied than my friends’. I had this picture in my head of the perfect family dinner. You know, where everyone sits down together at a beautifully set table, at a reasonable hour, and eats like civilized people. I blame this perfectly concocted scene on the TV show 7th Heaven, which I watched religiously (along with Gilmore Girls, which I proudly admit I still watch reruns of). For the most part, 7th Heaven depicted a large family like mine. But they all sat down for dinner at a normal hour, ate a home-cooked meal, and discussed life as if they were actually normal human beings. That’s what I wanted, and I wanted it so bad. 

My dad worked a full-time job as a bond broker, and after work he would head to the gym to play handball. When my mom was pregnant with me, with three crazy little boys in tow, my parents made a deal that Dad could go play handball after work every day if he’d take care of dinner when he got home. The unspoken part of their deal was that if Dad made dinner, Mom made dessert, which most of the time was ready before dinner. 

You see, Dad’s usual hour of arrival home wasn’t until seven thirty or eight, and that was on a good night. Even on school nights we wouldn’t eat until almost nine. (Mom will try to tell you it was earlier, but she’s revised the memory a little bit. It was rarely before nine—ask any of my brothers.) Finally, when I was fourteen or so, I said something along the lines of, “Screw it! You guys are so annoying and I’m over it. I’m making my own freaking dinner!” And that right there is how and why I began cooking. At the time, I was cooking for the sole purpose of helping my dad get dinner on the table before nine p.m. What I soon came to realize is that I really had a lot of fun cooking. I was very much a rule-following kid, but in cooking, I was more carefree and creative. I might have used a recipe as a base, but I never followed it to a T. If I didn’t have something the recipe called for, I used whatever we had on hand and made it work. I was totally comfortable just doing my own thing, never fearful that something wouldn’t turn …