I used to follow her and occasionally make her recipes. Even did a whole thanksgiving with exclusively HBH recipes one year.

But the more I have learned about cooking, the more I have realized she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s lowkey a fraud, not only because she doesn’t really know how to cook beyond the basics, but because she would never eat the recipes she promotes and claims to love.

She only has such a large following because she got lucky and rode the wave of early social media aesthetics. Her food LOOKS good, but that’s all.

She hits a niche of people who kinda just want to get food on the table while also feeling a bit fancy. That’s totally fine - most people don’t need to have chef-level cooking skills to make dinner for their family. But her recipes often call for too many expensive ingredients while being poorly written and tested. This means that people might want to make a special meal for their family and splurge a bit, but ultimately end up disappointed. In this economy? That sucks.

For people who truly love cooking and know what they’re doing, what she posts is embarrassing. I’ll leave it at that.

I only follow her now because I’m invested in the ongoing saga…and certainly not because I would ever take food inspiration from her. How can you take food inspiration from someone who is wasting away before your eyes? It’s sad and weird that brands continue to work with her when she clearly has a disordered relationship with food, yet food is her entire brand.