Food blogger Beth Kirby sets up a workspace in her North Chattanooga kitchen to prepare candied rose petals. She describes her online personality as a blend of "honeysuckle nectar and swamp water." To check out her blog, Local Milk, go to localmilkblog.com.Mail Chimp grins at Beth Kirby, who's unsure whether the primate is taunting or reassuring her on the computer screen.
She has prepared Mail Chimp to release thousands of e-vites worldwide for a workshop she's teaching in Japan. She has already taught sold-out workshops in Ireland, Portugal and Italy for fans of her Local Milk blog, "but I'm always scared that no one will buy a ticket or no one will show up," she groans.
On this morning in her North Chattanooga bungalow/studio, she is surrounded by visually sumptuous projects she's already photographed for national clients, including InStyle magazine and GMC. "I created an Appalachian picnic for a photo shoot starring one of their SUVs," she explains.
Despite her trepidation, she finally hits the big red Mail Chimp button. As her e-vites swirl all over Earth to her 100,000 fans, Kirby leaps to her feet and joyfully shouts her new goal:
Kirby's vintage Lacanche oven, imported from France, was a worthwhile investment, she says."I want to eat Martha Stewart's raw, beating, bloody heart and consume her energy and life force!" she exclaims. "I love and adore Martha yet I want to defeat her and rule her queendom."
As her admirers can confirm, Kirby, 31, has the talent and unique personality - which she describes a mix of honeysuckle nectar and swamp water - to be the Martha for the millennials. Kirby's artisan approach to interior design, her bittersweet blog complemented by her distinctive photos and nouvelle Southern recipes have won her a slew of corporate clients.
Saveur magazine, which has 332,000 subscribers, named Local Milk a "site we love" last year. And Kirby won Saveur's 2014 Best Food Photography Award, the only winner in both editors' choice and readers' choice categories.
"Deciding the winners in all the categories is really tough," Saveur assistant digital editor Laura Sant says. "We sift through literally thousands of nominations when choosing finalists - and yes, we look at every single blog that gets submitted.
"Best Photography is definitely one of the most difficult categories to choose a winner; there's just so much competition and so many very talented photographers out there."
Kirby's style resembles shabby chic with a haunting Deep South sensibility which Sant describes as "a definite photographic style - moody, thoughtful, carefully composed without being overly styled or precious."
Kirby, who won Saveur magazine's 2014 Best Food Photography Award, shoots a fall table setting for a client's blog. She says she began to get corporate clients once her blog hit 50,000 loyal viewers."I think it's part of why her blog is such a pleasure to read," Sant says. "It's clear she takes a lot of joy in the process of cooking and gathering around the table, not just a beautiful finished product."
Kirby swears she never knew how to use a camera properly until a few years ago after her family staged an intervention to stop her drug and alcohol abuse.
"I was a worthless, obnoxious drunk who floundered around for years as a college philosophy major spending my parents' money," Kirby says.
She failed what she calls "fancy Knoxville rehab; they had horses there." When her parents threatened to cut her off financially, she succeeded in a different rehab center.
Working 'maniac'
The newly sober Kirby realized she wanted to be a food blogger, finding that the ritual of cooking, baking and experimenting with ingredients was restful and creative. Even during her final 2011 rehab stint, she remembers trying to whip up a gourmet dish from Cheerios, milk, an orange and a cheese-and-cracker packet she was issued for breakfast.
She also loved to write and, thanks to her parents, she had a bungalow in North Chatt with beautiful light. But she did have to learn to shoot photos.
"When I was first taking photos for my blog, I sucked. But fortunately I didn't know how badly I sucked or I might have worried more," she says. "I did what most people don't; I studied the owner's manual for my camera, especially the sections on aperture and shutter speed.
"I work like a maniac. Work keeps me sober, which may be why I can power through so many projects in one day. A year in Addict Life may translate into three years in Normal Person Life."
And she has a healthy, clear view of how her personality differs from her blog persona.
"I have a special blog just for close friends to view; I am not hipster Local Milk lady," she says.
As proof, she mentions that she and her partner Patrick invited Halloween party guests who were not from the impossibly cool crowd but were philosophy and English professors and longtime friends. Kirby costumed herself as the Angel of Death.
Beth Kirby, an award-winning photographer, taught herself to use a camera by studying the owner's manual.Detail oriented
On a recent morning, white candles twinkle on a twisted gray tree limb and ivy hanging from the ceiling shades Kirby's dining room table for a Thanksgiving tablescape. In the kitchen, across from her vintage Lacanche oven, scarlet rose petals sparkled with sugar rest on a snowy marble slab, waiting for their close-up.
Kirby will spend hours styling and perfecting a photo, meticulously rearranging the tiniest elements, whether it's sugar crystals and basil leaves and drizzles of coconut oil for a DIY body scrub or a black-and-white photo of a lavish meal. She frequently tosses cakes that aren't photogenic enough into her "galette graveyard," aka dumpster. She discarded a bevy of pretty cocktails because she didn't like the way the glasses sparkled.
And no worries, photographing booze "doesn't tempt me at all," she says. "I write about my addiction in my blog because I think it's important for people to know that second chances, redemption is possible."
Kirby says she began getting corporate clients once she hit 50,000 loyal viewers which she estimates may have been a year ago.
"Corporations pay huge bucks to find out a blog's traffic and if it's the crowd they want; I haven't really been monitoring that. As her viewers increased, so did her offers. Some corporate human resource directors might raise red flags if they got a resumé that acknowledged an addiction battle as honestly as Kirby discusses hers, but she appreciates the irony that her social media power trumps corporate culture.
Still, she has stuck to her principles and the truth of her life, even if it costs her an occasional assignment. For instance, she turned down work from a fast-food chain because she advocates buying food produced locally in season and making nutritious meals at home.
In her blog, Kirby has listed Dancing Fern cheese, made at Sequatchie Cove Farm and Creamery in Sequatchie County, as a menu item for her Ideal Dinner Party of All Time. Padgett Arnold, sales manager at the farm, says Kirby's mention has returned dividends for Sequatchie Cove.
"Beth has a huge local following, especially at the Farmers Market and Whole Foods," Arnold says. "We love that kind of buzz, even if her blog world seems a little distant from our farm."
Last year, Kirby also was a contestant on the Fox Network's "MasterChef," the "reality" cooking with professional chef and full-time bully Gordon Ramsey. The experience was so unpleasant, she insists she would never appear on reality TV again.
"They allow each contestant only a set number of minutes to call family and a production assistant is always in the room with you when you make the call. You can't use the Internet. The camera is on you constantly," she recalls. "And they coach you about how to react emotionally on screen. The producers wanted me to fake a call with a supplier and yell, "I need it now!' into the phone then do this..." she puts her fingers near her eyes as if concealing tears. "I wouldn't."
She never made it into the finals. Producers wanted her to tape a segment before one elimination round in which she would fake crying as she said, "I just want to be here so much."
Instead, she burst into very real tears and said, "I can't stand being here. I want to go home." So she did.
Not yet foodie
Although Kirby says Chattanooga is not yet a foodie destination, the city is an influence for her nouvelle Southern cooking style. She believes there are excellent restaurants in Chattanooga, but most locals tend to support chain restaurants rather than search out local gems.
Her hometown might seem to make Kirby an odd fit among the many New York- and Los Angeles-based winners of Saveur magazine's annual food blog awards, but Sant says she wasn't surprised "at all."
"One of my favorite things about working at Saveur is that everyone on staff has a real appreciation for food from all over the world and wants to discover and tell stories about places big and small, not just cities that have been dubbed 'foodie destinations' and given a lot of media coverage," she says.
"I've been to Chattanooga and loved it and had some wonderful meals there. I think that bigger cities probably tend to be more represented in blogs that focus on restaurants and bars, for obvious reasons, but there are talented people cooking and eating great food everywhere."
Contact Lynda Edwards at ledwards@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6391.