It can take Rebecca Firth fifteen tries to get a recipe just right. Even if her cake tastes perfect, she wakes up in the early hours of the morning and bakes late into the night to see how she can improve a recipe. Can she cut down on ingredients? What kinds of substitutions could she play with? How can she make this recipe the easiest it can be for her readers?
On this episode of The Experience Podcast, we’re in for a treat: Rebecca shares her experience as a baker, author, photographer, and entrepreneur. Rebecca is the author of two cookbooks (“The Cookie Book” and “The Cake Book”), runs the baking website DisplacedHousewife.com, and commissions recipes for several brands. She puts her good humor to use not only in her writing but also in our conversation. She also dishes up heaping spoonfuls of inspiration.
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a cookbook author, baker, photographer, and blogger, tune into this episode to learn about how Rebecca made her way in this industry.
Want to learn more about Rebecca?
Want to know more about The Experience Podcast?
It can take Rebecca Firth fifteen tries to get a recipe just right. Even if her cake tastes perfect, she wakes up in the early hours of the morning and bakes late into the night to see how she can improve a recipe. Can she cut down on ingredients? What kinds of substitutions could she play with? How can she make this recipe the easiest it can be for her readers?
On this episode of The Experience Podcast, we’re in for a treat: Rebecca shares her experience as a baker, author, photographer, and entrepreneur. Rebecca is the author of two cookbooks (“The Cookie Book” and “The Cake Book”), runs the baking website DisplacedHousewife.com, and commissions recipes for several brands. She puts her good humor to use not only in her writing but also in our conversation. She also dishes up heaping spoonfuls of inspiration.
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a cookbook author, baker, photographer, and blogger, tune into this episode to learn about how Rebecca made her way in this industry.
Want to learn more about Rebecca?
Want to know more about The Experience Podcast?
ELIZABETH PEARSON GARR Hi, Rebecca. Thanks so much for joining me today.
REBECCA FIRTH Hi, thank you for having me.
PEARSON GARR I'm so excited about this. It's near and dear to my heart. I've loved baking since I was a little girl. And I actually wanted to be a food writer. And I went to cooking school after college and did some food writing for a few years, but I never started a blog. It's something I once thought about, and you did it, you did it.
FIRTH You still can!
PEARSON GARR [laughs] Well you've done it so successfully. And I'm wondering what inspired you to start?
FIRTH Well, I was always, like you, interested in food, I always loved baking. And I lived in China for a period of time and when I lived there, baking was like therapy for me. And I became known amongst my group of friends as being the person that would bring homemade ice cream, birthday cakes, cookies, all the kinds of snacks. So I became known…
PEARSON GARR Lucky friends!
FIRTH I know, right? So, they really boosted my confidence, baking-wise. And then it was like a combination of it was my passion, baking, I wanted to do something with writing because I adore writing. And then sort of at the same time, my grandmother had dementia for like, 10 years. And so she couldn't remember any of these incredible recipes that she would make us, which was so disappointing for all of us. And my mom, one day was like, ‘Sunset Magazine is looking for recipes for Christmas, Why don't you send them one?’ And she knew I was kind of soul searching about where I was headed. And then I submitted it, and they purchased it, they bought the recipe, and I was so excited. And I really had a desire, like kind of even before that.
Once I separated from my husband, I wanted to create a life for my kids and I where I could be successful, but like actually be around for them. And there was a period of time where I was working like a nine to five job and trying to raise two little people by myself. And it was so hard. My hat's off to anybody raising kids by themselves. So I really was like, I don't want to miss out on all these important things in their life. I just wanted to recreate my life. Actually, the phrase I kept using was “I want to recreate my reality” and my uncle was like, ‘you sound insane.’ And I was like, I realize that sounds insane, but like I don't want to be on my deathbed and be like, why didn't I try to do something different? Or make my life work the way I want it to work?
PEARSON GARR I think it sounds impressive and inspirational. Not insane. [Laughs] So you submitted to Sunset Magazine. It was successful and then what was the jump between that and the blog?
FIRTH There was about a year period before I submitted that recipe where I was really soul searching, I was like I have to redirect my path in life. I was working a job literally just because it was the job available not because it was anything that I wanted and I'd never actually had a job like that before. They'd always been kind of passion jobs. Somehow I started taking up every writing job possible. On my after hours – so I was working nine to five and then I started taking like some of them were not ideal, maybe like helping write a brochure or helping write online copy or anything and everything and then at the same time I was taking creative writing classes through Stanford's Extension because writing is just something I love so much. And one of my best friends that I grew up with was like, I always thought you were gonna end up being a writer. And I was like, so did I… where am I right now? And, so I just kept going in that direction. And literally had a year where I like, was just grasping and thinking and brainstorming, like I couldn't quite figure out where I was going to go. I had already purchased Displaced Housewife, the URL, and I was just sitting on it, and I didn't know what to do with it. And then as soon as Sunset was like, ‘we love that, we're gonna send you 250 dollars’, I was like, that's what I should be doing. because I love cooking. And I love baking, I was like, I'm gonna do this. And then it'll combine writing and this and I just believed with all my heart, that this was like the path.
PEARSON GARR I love that passion. And I love that you followed where your heart was leading: ‘I love writing so I'm going to pursue that’. And it didn't happen overnight. I mean, I think it will look at it and say, Oh, you're so successful. And it looks like this kind of dream situation, because everything on the site is so delectable, and your writing is so fun and full of energy. But it's not like you just turned on the computer one day and had this super successful blog. I mean, this was a journey.
FIRTH It really– it was a lot of work. And it was hard to get there. I think when you're trying to figure out what you want to do, you're like walking blindly into the night, you're just kind of like trying to feel your way; you can feel like you're headed in the right direction, maybe but you're not quite sure. And I just kept thinking, ‘I'm just going to trust my gut, I'm just going to keep going, I'm going to keep digging, and something's going to pan out in this direction.’ I will say it's very hard – and you probably have maybe experienced this as well, starting a podcast. I think when you start to do something like this, I heard somebody referred at one time is like ‘stay in your lane’, like, is this what you do all day? I remember hearing that a lot. So you're just baking all day? People are like, ‘I don’t understand what’s happening.’ I remember like another mom saying to me one time, ‘well, you don't really work’. And I remember I was like, actually, I really do.
PEARSON GARR It's one of those things that nobody knows how much work is involved, unless they're actually doing the same thing. There's so much behind the scenes work. I mean, starting this podcast has been so much more challenging than I anticipated. It's like I knew certain parts of it, and that part was appealing. And that's why I want to do it. And I want to do it partly for some challenge. But I had no idea how many curveballs were going to be thrown at me. And I'd have to learn about this, and I'd have to learn about that, oh, and now this is going wrong…. you keep pursuing you keep going forward because you do love doing it, but you it's different than what you anticipated at times.
FIRTH Right, and it like keeps changing.
PEARSON GARR Yes, definitely. Definitely. Someone also told me it’s like a marathon…. after a marathon, after a marathon; there's not really an end.
FIRTH Well, it sort of makes me think of, it's not necessarily about “I want to run a marathon,” it's that you want to develop the habits of the type of person that runs a marathon. Otherwise, if the marathon is just your goal, then you're going to not be into it afterwards. So, I've really been thinking about that a lot lately, like who do I want to identify with? What type of habits will that person be doing every day? Instead of thinking of it as this very, like, goal line oriented.
PEARSON GARR It also helps propel you forward and be open to all the possibilities and challenges that are inevitably going to come your way as you grow. Because if you do just stay in your lane, like the person said, that's nice for a little bit. Like I'm sure you got to a place where you were, successful or whatever, whatever that definition– I'd be interested to hear what your definition of that is, maybe it's changed over time. But then the goal posts probably change, right?
FIRTH I will say one thing that I do, and I recommend this to anybody that's starting out something new, or even if you've been doing it for a while, like start it right now is I just keep a Word doc. And every time you reach or you have some accomplishment –and it could be like somebody sending you know, ‘I love these cookies, they're my favorite cookies,’ or whether it's like a Food & Wine reposting something or wanting to include my book or whatever, even like the most minute tiny little thing I date and put it in this thing. Because it's so easy for us to forget all these little things that are happening. And if you track them, it's a great way to keep the tank full of that energy and that drive.
PEARSON GARR I think that's a really brilliant idea. I think human nature we often remember or focus on the hard things or the negative things. And the things that went well, we kind of went like, ‘oh, of course that went well.’ But to you need to mark it and refer to it.
FIRTH And if you start to feel like you're not making progress, you can actually look and go well, actually I am I've done this, this, this. And when you're working by yourself, basically, nobody's sitting there going ‘wow, you did a really good job with that.’
PEARSON GARR That's right. It's just you, and you.
FIRTH Yeah.
PEARSON GARR Can you walk me through kind of a typical day of your life? I'm sure each one is different. But you know, you’re recipe testing and you're recipe developing, and you're writing and you're photographing and videoing… you must be buying a lot of ingredients too! I'm wondering how you do all that?
FIRTH A ton of ingredients. It's actually bananas, how much we go through it, how much storage space, everything I do is just like taking up our entire house. And so a typical day: I've really been trying to work on a workflow. And social media has made it really hard. [Laughs] So like, back when I first started, it was like, you'd write a blog post, and you could get like three good photos, and you would be able to post those out. And you'd be like, great, awesome, I did a cool job. And then now it's like, we have Instagram Stories, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube if you want to do YouTube, you have videos that you need to put on your website, because [if] you want to make money on your website, you make good money on the video part of your website. And then TikTok, whatever, you get the idea.
PEARSON GARR There's a lot.
FIRTH So what used to take, I mean, a couple of three days to do a blog post – usually about five days for like recipe testing, and then photographing and then writing it– is now taking me two weeks. And I'm really trying to like see if I can fix that. But right now, I can't seem to work faster than that which isn't …something needs to give I'm not sure what. So I've been trying to work on like buckets of days of the week. So Mondays are admin days, Tuesdays are recipe testing and then I usually reserve Thursday Friday for photography and video stuff. And I'm really trying hard to take the weekends off and I would say I'm like 50 percent successful
PEARSON GARR I find that so hard since I've started this podcast, I feel like it's almost like being in school there's always work to be done. And I can't just turn it off. If I have a little free time on a Saturday I just start working and so that's really a good tip you have to force yourself to take the weekend.
FIRTH I'm trying so hard but it's not easy because there's always work to be done because I have the blog which is a great source of income and whatever I love the blog, but then I have brand work and then you also have promoting my books which are in to book clubs right now which is awesome, like online book clubs, and… trying to like balance all that stuff and still be a good parent, you know, and then also, like, try to make sure I go for a walk every day. And feed people in the house and stuff.
PEARSON GARR Feed them other than 15 varieties of lemon cake that you've been testing all day.
FIRTH Exactly.
PEARSON GARR Do you ever get sick of testing your recipes, tasting them, eating sweets?
FIRTH Yeah. And I have like a really big sweet tooth. But I do feel like for my kids, and I, this is actually tempered it a little bit. I feel like when they were younger, we all like had such a strong sweet tooth and would just go after things. And now I think there's such an abundance of it it’s like, ‘oh I’ll get the next round.’
PEARSON GARR So do you just come up with an idea? I saw you have this lemon cake recently on that website. Did you just think I feel like doing something with lemons? Or do you do a lot with chocolate because you personally love chocolate or you know that chocolate is something that readers respond to really well? Or how do you decide what direction to go with a new recipe?
FIRTH I really love chocolate. [Laughs] So personal, personal choice. This lemon cake was, you know, it’s citrus season, which is so fun, I love citrus season. And I really started out for that one with the idea of doing like an upside down cake. And I was like, Oh, I'm going to candy the citrus slices and I couldn't decide if it was going to be lemon or whatever so I had like all this citrus here. And then the more I did this sort of upside down citrus cake, the more I realized I don't really like that type of cake. And so it's like, I want to create something super simple and beautiful. And I just wanted it to be like the most painless, but like straight to a super citrus craving cake. So then I went off on that tangent. I probably spent at least two weeks or more on that one, anybody that's like crunching the numbers on that it's going to be like ‘girl, that is not financially viable.’
PEARSON GARR One thing I love about your recipes is that they're beautiful and elegant, but they're very accessible. You don't have to spend– I mean, you might spend many hours making them– but we don't have to. It's not like ten hours for a beautiful birthday cake or something, you know, you're not asking us to make all these fondants and rose colored …. you can make a birthday cake and make it beautiful, but in a reasonable amount of time.
FIRTH I feel like that's maybe a little bit of a newer development for me, because I would say the pandemic really influenced that, before my premise was like, I want people to bake beautiful things and have fun while they do it. And then when I started baking in the pandemic, I'm working on the cake book, I was like, I just want people not to be stressed out and have a beautiful cake or a beautiful whatever. We all need to celebrate birthdays and special occasions or just have something delicious at the end of the meal. And I wanted to make it as easy and painless as possible. Like if they could be substitutions, I want to put substitutions down. If they can be one bowl, then I want it to be one bowl. So I really try to think about stuff like that more than I used to.
PEARSON GARR I know you interact with your readers quite a bit; comments at the bottom and you were mentioning Instagram and other things. Is that something that you spend a lot of time on or you feel like it's important for your business is to be connected to your readers?
FIRTH Yeah, I will say… So first, that is so time consuming. I don't know if anyone knows that or realizes how time consuming it is. One of the cookbook clubs they do like last day of the month they bake something from my book, which is so nice to go through and look at everybody's beautiful photos and read what they have to say about it. And I couldn't even finish going through and like commenting on their posts and then reposting it and then sometimes they would include me in a story so then it's in my DMs and then I want to send them a DM as well. Because I sort of look at it like this: if they take the time to come to my space, I think of it almost like my house, I want to be hospitable. I'm not as good as they used to be responding to every comment but I try to respond to comments. I'm not perfect, but I think it's important.
PEARSON GARR But you have a lot of followers, that could be your full time job I would imagine– of responding to people because it's very popular, your blog and your Instagram. I think goal is getting harder and harder to reach, the more the more popular you're becoming,
FIRTH Especially with just one person doing it. I was talking with somebody yesterday, who has double the followers that I do, and she does the same thing. And I was like, this isn't a one person job anymore. And she's like, it's definitely not, although most of the people I know, or are typically just one person and maybe like outsourcing certain parts of it. But for the most part, we're all doing the bulk of the work.
PEARSON GARR So how did the cookbooks come to be? Did you go searching out someone say I have an idea for a cookbook or did somebody come to you and say, ‘hey, displaced housewife? I love your recipes can I publish a book for you?’
FIRTH They came to me. I was working on my own book proposal and then I was nominated for a Saveur award. And then like that week, they reached out to me and they were like, we want to talk to you about writing a book, which for me is like a bucket list dream, something I knew I had to do before I died. I always thought it would be fiction, but as I got deeper into baking and the baking world, I was beyond excited. And then that's how the cookie book came.
So they were like, ‘we were thinking a cookie book.’ And I was like, I flippin love that idea. So the cookie book – I did that one, it was great. And then I immediately thought the cake book would be such a fun follow up, but I was like, I can't even think about that. And then the lovely pandemic hit, and literally right at the very, very, very, very beginning they were like, do you want to do this? And I was like, gosh, I don't know. And then my agent was like, ‘I think you should do it.’ I was like, ‘okay.’ [Laughs] And then I was like, they go– And then my editor was like, ‘well, what do you want to do?’ I go, ‘I think the cake book would be a scream, you know?’ And then she was like, ‘great, write up the table of contents and send me three recipes that you could see in it.’ And you know, and then I got that to them within like, a couple weeks and then they said ‘okay, we'll work on the contract.’ It was like that which is kind of obnoxious, because if I wanted to write–
PEARSON GARR Kind of dreamy.
FIRTH –Get my proposals, my proposals haven't even been floated around to anyone. But if I went down that path, I guarantee you, it would not be like that, and it would be hard and I'd have to shop it around and like basically beg publish my book. For whatever reason, this took a much easier path.
PEARSON GARR Yeah, but now you have established credibility, you’re a two time cookbook author and so it’s probably easier to get the next ones done.
FIRTH I mean, I don't know, I feel like publishing is a closed game. I still think it's even though I may have two books and I still think it's hard to get in. I would not even want to start another book until my son graduates from high school and he's a sophomore right now. So I'm like in a book-free zone for the next couple of years, which sounds kind of nice.
So that implies to me that it's a lot a lot of work to do the books?
FIRTH It's insane. It's actually bananas, and especially from a financial perspective. You know, my blog is way more lucrative than a book is. Yes. but the amount of work that you have to do… and I photographed it, and just making sure like, at the end of the day, even though there's like copy editors, line editors, and then you also have the editor– at the end of the day, if there's an ingredient wrong, a quantity and it’s on you, you're the one that's going to hear from it. So like that pressure to make sure … and it's like a needle in a haystack as you like, the farther and farther along that you get in the process. And then, when it comes time for the book to come out, really, ultimately, the marketing is up to the author, unless you're huge, I'm sure Ina Garten is not working on her marketing plan. [Laughs] But I have to work on my marketing plan and figure out how I'm gonna hustle and move books. So it's a very time consuming, all consuming process.
PEARSON GARR Did you feel like the second book was easier to write in any way because you had the experience from the first one? Or was it the same kind of arduous process starting from ground zero?
FIRTH It was a little easier, because, when I wrote the cookie book. My editor is very, hands off,. So I was like, ‘do you want to see the first three chapters, by this date or anything?’ And she's like, ‘no, this is your due date for the whole manuscript.’ And as somebody that had never written a cookbook before, I was sort of like, that's a lot, okay, but sure. And so I was really focused on making sure the recipes were really good and not really thinking about things like chapter intros, the frontmatter, even my author bio, like all that stuff that's due. And so when I submitted my manuscript – this is so funny I can't even believe I'm admitting this – I turned it in without chapter intros. And I go, ‘do we really need those anyway, like, who reads chapter intros?’ She's like–
They want to get just straight to the recipes!
FIRTH She goes, ‘I'm gonna need chapter intros from you.’ I was like, okay, sorry. And so this time, I was super organized with all that, like, I brainstormed and kind of wrote the intro. And then as I was writing the book, I'd be like, oh, this should be in the intro, this should be in the intro, as I did each chapter, I wrote the chapter intro. And each recipe needs a recipe head, that was another thing with the cookie book I went in after to write them, not as I was doing it. So when I finished the book, I needed to go through and just edit it and read it once more and then I could hit submit. So from that perspective, I was way more efficient.
But I will say, at the same time, we were in the middle of a bananas pandemic and nobody knew what was going on. My kids were suddenly home from school, and my daughter was applying to college. And it was so hard to stay focused. And, not honestly just want to sit and watch the news and be like, what is happening in the world? That's how I felt. So, I had to use, like a tremendous amount of willpower to like, go in the kitchen and recipe test. I will say it was harder for me to get the job done even though I was more organized whereas with the cookie book, I was getting up at like four in the morning and working until like 11 o'clock at night. And I was like–
PEARSON GARR Oh, my goodness.
FIRTH This book has to be perfect. And with the cake book, I was like, I'm having a hard time working at 10am. [Laughs]
PEARSON GARR Well, the whole mood of everybody had changed during the pandemic. So that's understandable.
FIRTH So I would say that was the biggest hurdle. But like, obviously, if times were like, great, it would have been so much easier, you know?
PEARSON GARR Do you repurpose recipes that you had already created for the blog? Or would you always make new recipes for the cookie book and the cake book?
FIRTH Those are new. I think each one only has – I'm pretty sure – it's only three recipes were allowed to bring over from the blog. And then the rest is all new. And even if they look similar, it's a completely different recipe. So it's all brand new stuff. And then I get really stuck in… like right now I'm doing a blueberry Dutch baby recipe.
PEARSON GARR Sounds so good. Blueberries are my favorite food.
FIRTH It's super, super yummy. And so, yesterday, I got so bogged down and wanting to get like this very specific consistency to what I was looking for, like the recipe I had the way it looked, and what I got was like, it would be fine, but I'm like, it can be better. So I made six blueberry dutch babies yesterday. And I'm still like, no, I need to do this. So I get like super stuck on like one thing and so I'll end up testing something like twelve, fifteen times because I just wanted to see if …and I'll get it perfect and then I'll be like, ‘well what if this cake instead of using milk, what if we just use water? And then that's one less ingredient?’ And will this work? And then I'll do that.
PEARSON GARR And you're always just relying on yourself? Or do you ever pull in a neighbor or some friends or something and say, I don't know, Dutch Baby one, two or three? What do you think?
FIRTH I, like for the book, I have other people test the recipes. And I often give stuff out to people, but I feel like I don't often give it out until I think that it's where it should be.
PEARSON GARR Yeah. I think you have very high standards. You want it to be just right.
FIRTH Yeah, if I think something's subpar, and like, I don't want to give it to somebody to taste, because then they'll be like, yeah, that lemon cake wasn't great, even though it was like five tests earlier. That sounds super insane, doesn't it? [Laughs]
PEARSON GARR No but this is your job, this is your business. And so it's part of the reason you're so successful is because you're putting it through five or twelve rounds to get it to that high level. You're not just putting out the second cake you made.
FIRTH No.
PEARSON GARR So I loved learning that you have this writing background because your writing stands out so much to me. You know, I think some bloggers, maybe just say, ‘oh, I like to bake’ and then they'll write a few things there. And it just sort of sits on the page. I mean, your writing really pops. It has so much personality and so much energy– I'm wondering if you've purposely cultivated a certain voice for your blog, or is it just kind of who you are because I find it very, natural, it's almost like, you're one of my close friends and you're kind of talking me through this recipe and why I’ll like it.
FIRTH I wanted it to seem like I'm right there with you in the kitchen. My recipes, the actual recipes used to be much more conversational. I would say more along the vein of like Nigella Lawson, who I adore.
PEARSON GARR Me too.
FIRTH And so in my recipe instructions, I would be more like I was having a conversation. And I stopped doing that, because I did find out some people would see the length of the instructions and be like, ‘well, this is super complicated I don't want to do it.’ So I am not as chummy in the recipe instructions. I try to focus more on the recipe and just try and do it in like an engaging way. I always try to picture who I was when I was working nine to five and I had two little kids. And I would come home and I would have to like bake something for a bake sale, or bake something for a birthday party, and you're so tired. And I feel like so many of us. That's how we're living our lives day in and day out. And I wanted it to feel like an enjoyable experience. Like I'm tired, my back aches, but at least this broad is kind of making me laugh. Is kind of what I was thinking [Laughs]
PEARSON GARR How have you grown the business? Has it been kind of word of mouth? Do you think people just find you? Or have you had to aggressively… have you had a marketing plan that you've pursued to grow from step one to two to three to where you are today?
FIRTH I think that consistency … I like quality and consistency. Every year I– this is gonna sound super nerdy– but I'd love to stay home on New Year's Eve. And I like to set like, basically my goals for the year. From like a business perspective, where do I want to see my website? What brands do I want to work with? What special thing do I want to have happen? Like the year I got a book offer, I was like, I want to win a Saveur award. I just think like setting up… I'm not going to talk about like, you know, intentions or whatever. But I do think if you set out a path, and then every month I revisit my goals. And then I sort of write monthly goals based on those. And then every week like on Sunday, I look at my monthly goals and then try and figure out how to integrate it into that week. So when you talk about like growing and that kind of thing, I want to be the first person that I'm not the fastest growing baking blog out there. There are other people that are killing it and doing amazing, but I feel like I'm slow and steady.
PEARSON GARR Yeah.
FIRTH I'm just kind of, like, chugging away at it. And I feel like just staying focused like that I haven't had super fast growth and I definitely would say it hasn't been easy, but I really appreciate everyone who's jumped on the journey and like stuck around.
PEARSON GARR Another thing that really stands out to me is the beautiful photography. And I just assumed you had a professional photographer. And then I learned it was you! I just know some from my background. I mean, that's an entire industry –food styling and food photography, that's not just taking your camera and saying, ‘oh, I'm going to take a picture of this plate of cookies or something.’ And we've all done that, and it looks kind of blah– yours do not look blah. And so how did you learn how to do that? And can you give us some tips on food photography?
FIRTH Well, for the longest time, I just used my iPhone, which people would be like ‘you're using your iPhone?’ I was like, ‘yes.’ With Displaced Housewife, I was like, it has to earn everything. I was like, I am not going to be that person that just goes hog wild and spends a ton of money. So that's why I used my iPhone forever. And then I bought kind of a fine but not great camera in 2017, I think, and my photos did improve from using a digital camera. But the real jump was when I got my book deal, I wasn't even sure I wanted to do the photos. It actually gave me anxiety because I don't think of myself as a photographer, I might a little more now but still. And then I sent in the three recipes with the bibliography, right? And then I sent photos so they could see what they look like. And then they were like, ‘we want you to do the photos as well.’ And then I was like, ‘oh…’
PEARSON GARR Oh, that's a huge compliment, though, rather than ‘we’ll hire a photographer here, Rebecca.’
FIRTH Well, it so then I was like I gotta step up my game. And I just knew I needed… because before it was editing my photos in Photoshop and so then I learned Lightroom and I bought the Canon five D, which is like, a gorgeous…. the five D mark four is such a beautiful camera. It was like my pictures instantly looked better. And so that and just really using natural light and then trying to create my own style. For a while there, my style became I just tried to do what Instagram wanted, which is make everything super bright and light. And I feel like now I'm trying to go back to I like things to be like rich tones. I like light bright, but I also want like more contrast and I like some shadows. I like to see the direction that the sun's coming in.
PEARSON GARR But it is mostly natural light.
FIRTH It's all natural light. I don't even know how to use artificial light. [Laughs]
PEARSON GARR Then you have nice things set up, maybe napkins or plates or lemons or things you know in the background and things so you have to give a lot of thought into… Do you have a whole bunch of plates and cookware and things that you use for your photography?
FIRTH Yes. Now I do. I've gone through some like spending benders especially with the books like when it comes to like the book, I'm like, I think about what do I want the vibe to be and then when I'm writing it, I start acquiring pieces, which is great for the blog, because then I still get to use everything. So I do have a ton of…I find the best way for me to make a photoshoot successful is if I pre-think about it. And I think what kind of elements can I pull into it. Whenever I'm, like, rushing and I maybe you've made something really beautiful and I just throw it on a white background and maybe throw like a napkin and take some photos, it just never does as well. It's when I give it some thought and really think about like the tones. And is it like giving you an impression, is it making you see a life beyond the food or like a glimpse into something else? Does that make sense?
PEARSON GARR Yeah, a picture's worth a thousand words cliche. Yeah, and it really can be, it can give you a much bigger sense than just… here sits a cake on a cake stand. You can give a whole environment and life to it.
FIRTH Yeah. So I actually adore photography and it's probably one of my favorite parts of putting everything together. Because it's honestly so creative. And also so relaxing. When I write I don't like to like listen to music or have anything else on but when I'm photographing things I love to listen to music, and it's just, feels very free and relaxed. Video, on the other hand, is like my nemesis. And now I require like a completely additional day to get video. That's a whole new program. Like I'm brand new to it. I should have started video… well but I was working on the cake book, but and I feel a little behind– actually quite a bit behind– the curve and putting video together but it is a lot.
PEARSON GARR So the point of doing video you said it's just you get a lot more hits hits on it, or Google likes video or what is the point of video?
FIRTH Honestly, I can… Google would be okay, if I didn't do video I think right now. But the demands from brands that I work with, and the demands of social media are like videos now prioritized. And it's very frustrating, I have to say it's the most frustrating part of what I do right now.
PEARSON GARR Particularly, because you're one person, it's a little hard to do video. And be the demonstrator.
FIRTH And also, we can only be good at so many things. And I do think I'm a good writer, I do think I'm doing pretty good with my photography, I feel confident in my recipe concepts and in my recipe testing and writing. Video feels like my tipping point. [Laughs] I just don't know that I can make it there. So I've been trying to see where it fits in what I do, and how I can maybe minimize its importance without being left behind, you know.
PEARSON GARR And then to add to those things, you know, all the creative things, the writing, the recipe development, the photography, and everything. Having this business requires a whole other set of skills, like we kind of touched on earlier, you need have technical skills, if stuff could go wrong with your computer go down, and you need to have your marketing skills, you need to have your business skills, and it's a whole wide range of things that you'd actually need to not only be good at, but excel at.
FIRTH It’s bananas.
PEARSON GARR No one person can wear so many hats so successfully. You've mentioned a few times the brands that you work with. Can you talk about that? What does that mean?
FIRTH I work with a bunch of different brands in different capacities. So California Grown, which is the agricultural arm of California that promotes California agriculture. Maybe like California prunes has a thing coming up and they'll say, Okay, we want you to develop three recipes, photos –I actually work with California prunes a lot because I love them– and then I'll have it on my blog. And then they'll also have parts of it are directed to it from their website, I mean, it's actually a big part of my business is working with brands. C&H I have like a long term partnership with them, like right now we're working on brown sugar, which I love brown sugar, so I'm creating recipes… they're actually who I'm making the Dutch babies for.
PEARSON GARR Oh, yeah.
FIRTH I love working with brands that I genuinely like C&H sugar is the only sugar I've ever used, it’d the sugar I grew up having, you know, living in California especially. Yeah, Domino’s on the East Coast. And California Olive Ranch, I've worked a lot with them, Lucini Olive Oil. And it can be different things. So I have a couple of brands that will have me just create recipes using their products and they want them for their websites. And I'll do photos and everything for them. I've had some people that will have me do photos for ad campaigns, like for print. And they'll also maybe want me to do recipes for them. I love that part of my business, when somebody’s like, this is the product, we want you to come up with recipes, these are some of the things we have in mind, and then I get to recipe test and photograph.
PEARSON GARR So after you've been baking all day, is it hard to make dinner?
FIRTH Yeah.
PEARSON GARR Just, regular stuff.
FIRTH It's really, really, really hard. I have to be organized because my son is fifteen and he's hungry, right?
PEARSON GARR Yeah.
FIRTH And he does jujitsu every night. So I have to have that prepped. So I've become a slow cooker fanatic. Because then I can just shove everything in it and it's like cooking all day. And then I might put rice in the rice cooker and then I don't even have to think about it. So I feel like I've gotten a little bit better about it because I don't like to serve my kids frozen food or packaged food –and I'm not judging people that do. I think probably it's because I wasn't raised that way. My mom always cooked dinner from scratch. Sometimes I'm like, why am I making it so hard though?
PEARSON GARR I feel the same way. I'm always peeling and chopping and like, why does it take me so long? But I like good food. I like to eat it, I like to serve it to my family. Sometimes this shouldn't take quite so long.
FIRTH I know.
PEARSON GARR Well maybe next is a slow cooker cookbook. Do you have any little tips for somebody that might want to become a food writer or a food photographer or somehow enter this field?
FIRTH I think you should just jump in and start doing it and not second guessing yourself and just learning as much as you can and believing in yourself. I mean everybody starts somewhere. Career shifts and changing direction, I just feel like we need to support people more. Why not? You only live once! Don't wait for an invitation, just do it.
PEARSON GARR I'm totally with you. And I think it's so easy to second guess yourself and so easy to think, well I don't know I …. but with whatever it is that you really care about it's never gonna happen unless you make it happen.
FIRTH Right.
PEARSON GARR If you don't try, it's definitely not going to happen. And so, like you said, just jump in.
FIRTH My dad has the saying which I thought of a lot when I started the food blog. He would always say there's an ass for every seat. So, I think about that all the time and when I started the blog, I was like, there are people out there that are gonna think I'm funny, that are gonna like my recipes and like my photos, I need to not compare myself to anyone, not worry what anyone says, and just trust my gut and damn it, it's gonna work out.
PEARSON GARR And it has worked out. I think that's another good point, though, is not only the not comparing yourself to anyone, but not trying to be someone else.
FIRTH Right.
PEARSON GARR Because you are the only one of you. You're one of one. And only you have your voice. The Ina Garten lane, that is taken, and you're never gonna be her, we don't want another her. Or I have a friend who started a podcast and she said, ‘for a while I was kind of trying to be Terry Gross.’ And a friend of mine said, ‘don't try to be Terry Gross, you need to share your wisdom and who you are on that.’ And then in the end, you kind of go with, I gotta be me.
FIRTH You do. Well A) it's really exhausting to try to be somebody else, [laughs] it's really time consuming. But also, I do truly believe that the more honest and authentic you are, the more people will respond to that. But there is like huge vulnerability in putting the real you out there because people are going to make fun of you, people are going to not like what you do. You have to not think about that. It's literally like focus on your list of positives, your accomplishments, what people have sent you, and just steer the course. You really have to, like, get rid of the noise, and just be like, this is who I am. That sounds funny and cheesy, actually. But I mean it.
PEARSON GARR I like it. I think it's great. Like I said earlier, I think that that's inspirational. I think it's so easy for us to kind of get in little ruts and to start doubting ourselves. And sometimes I think, what do I tell my kids? I say such encouraging things to my kids, and I am so affirming to them and that they can do it and all that and then I think, what's the voice in my own head? Why am I doubting my own self? Like I would never say that to my kids or my best friends or really anybody else. So why would I say to myself?
FIRTH I know that voice in the head is brutal. Yeah.
PEARSON GARR Well, thanks so much for doing this Rebecca. Really appreciate it
FIRTH Thanks for having me.