About Kalyn’s Kitchen (How I Lost 42 Pounds and Became a Food Blogger)
Photo by Derek Smith |
What is This Blog About?
My name is Kalyn Denny and Kalyn’s Kitchen is the home-cooking blog I started in 2005 when I’d lost over 40 pounds on the original South Beach Diet (affiliate link) and wanted to share my recipes with the world. Now fast forward over 15 years later, and I’m still focused on healthy cooking and have transitioned from teaching elementary school to life as a full-time food blogger. My blog is focused on Easy Carb-Conscious Recipes, and you may want to read this post about different diet types and this blog to see how Kalyn’s Kitchen has evolved through the years.
What hasn’t change is the focus on carb-conscious eating and most recipes you’ll find here are low-carb and gluten-free, many are original South Beach Diet friendly and some are Keto, dairy-free, Paleo, Whole 30, and vegetarian or vegan. (If you’re following a certain way of eating you can use the Diet Type Index to see what recipes I have for your particular way of eating. There are also orange diet-type tags at the top of each recipe showing which diets I feel that recipe is suitable for.)
The carb-conscious recipes I like to create are often suitable for weight-loss or controlling blood sugar, even though I am not advocating one specific eating plan. And I’m not a low-carb fanatic and not every single recipe here is ultra low carb, but all the recipes on the site are geared towards carb-conscious eating and many thousands of people per day use this site as a source for the deliciously healthy low-carb recipes that I love to create.
Information That May Be Helpful:
Have questions? Check out the Frequently Asked Questions which might answer them. And if not, here’s How to Contact Kalyn.
Support for the South Beach Diet:
Because The original South Beach Diet was so life-changing for me, I tried to make this site a resource for other people who are following it. You can read more about that on the page for Low Carb Diet / South Beach Diet Information and Resources.
What Other Diets are My Recipes Suitable For?
I try to make my blog useful for people following many types of carb-conscious diets. You can use photo-index pages for the following diet types:
Low Carb Recipes that are low in carbs and suitable for any type of Low-Carbohydrate Diet.
Can Be Keto The lowest carb/highest fat recipes on the site, suitable for Ketogenic diets.
(The site also has plenty of low-glycemic recipes, which are Carb-conscious recipes suitable for Low-Glycemic Diets. These are recipes that might not be strictly low in carbs, but have ingredients that don’t raise blood sugar.)
The Original South Beach Diet Recipes for Phase One, Two, and Three of the original South Beach Diet.
Dairy Free Recipes with no dairy products.
Gluten Free Gluten-Free recipes.
Vegetarian Both Vegetarian and Vegan recipes..
How Kalyn’s Kitchen Got Started
Often people ask me how I started the blog, and Kalyn’s Kitchen actually began with an offhand remark made by my brother Rand. One day in early 2005 I was complaining about how hard it was to keep up with friends asking for recipes, and he said, “Maybe you should just put your recipes on a blog.” At that time I had no idea there were people on the internet writing about food, and certainly could never have imagined how food blogging would ultimately change my life.
My Family is the Greatest
My talented brother Rand still does graphics for the blog and creates beautiful pins and Facebook videos, and Kalyn’s Kitchen certainly wouldn’t be the same without him. (Thanks Rand!) He’s also a willing taste tester whenever he makes a visit to Utah.
I also have eight more brothers and sisters who do a lot to enrich my life. Thanks to my sisters, brothers, sister-in-laws, and brother in laws Sandee, Clayton, Pam, Kelly, Mark, Lisa, Janet, Dave, Amy, Laurel, Carl, Vida, Dan, Val, and Jon for all they do for me. There are also 39 nieces and nephews and more than 75 great-nieces and nephews who occasionally make an appearance on the blog, including my nephew Jake and my niece Kara, who are my cooking assistants on a regular basis.
My Life Before Blogging
In my previous life I had a business organizing catered houseboat trips at Utah’s Lake Powell. That was a lot of trips to Lake Powell, but for my day job, I was an elementary school teacher for 30 years, and it’s always fun when former students find me through the blog. During my teaching career I served as President of the Davis Education Association, and was also a board member of the Utah Education Association and the National Education Association. I retired from teaching in 2009 to become a full-time food blogger.
Other Blogging Adventures
In addition to working on Kalyn’s Kitchen I also feature from-scratch slow cooker recipes from food bloggers all around the web for my other blog Slow Cooker or Pressure Cooker.
For years I was also writing about food at BlogHer.com, and even though I have now “retired” from that position, I’m still a big fan of the BlogHer/SheMedia organization and am proud of my association with them.
I’ve been lucky enough to speak about blogging at a few conferences. I was the moderator of a panel on The Art of Food Blogging at BlogHer Conference 2007 and participated in a panel about Food Blogging Best Practices at BlogHerFood 2009. I was also on a panel about Secrets of Successful Food Blogging at SXSW Interactive 2009, a panel about Food Blogging: Beyond the Basics at the IACP Conference in 2011, a panel on Building Blog Traffic Through Social Media at BlogHerFood 2012, and a panel on Pinterest at BlogHerFood 2015.
Kalyn’s Kitchen has received some nice mentions in print media and other places on the web, and I appreciate all the publications and sites who have featured my work (although for quite a few years now I haven’t been doing a good job at all of adding things to that page!)
Kalyn’s Kitchen Through the Years:
(These are the anniversary posts I’ve made each year on the birthday of my blog.)
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns One
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Two
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Three
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Four
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Five
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Six
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Seven
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Eight
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Nine
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Ten
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Eleven
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Twelve
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Thirteen
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns 14 (and Kalyn Examines her Bucket List)
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns 15 (and Three Questions for Readers)
Kalyn’s Kitchen is Sweet Sixteen!
212 Comments on “About Kalyn’s Kitchen (How I Lost 42 Pounds and Became a Food Blogger)”
Just stumbled across your site while looking for SBD recipes. I don't really like to cook and hate "planning" meals especially when they are specific to a particular way of eating. It looks like I found the jackpot with your site/recipes. Thanks so much for sharing all of this!!
Hi Chrissee,
Hope it will be helpful for you!
Hello Kalyn, Such great recipes and bravo for your organizational skills and hard work. Somewhat like you, I lost 30 pounds on low carbing (started with SBD and switched to Atkins) and I attribute much of it to being able to cook and make my own meals. On another note, I love legumes and miss them so one idea is to use canned black soybeans. To soften the texture, I drain, rinse and freeze in a Ziplock bag. I pull out a couple tablespoons when I need them and add to salads, taco mix, etc. Some of my local supermarkets carry them but sometimes, I need to go to a health food store. The brand I use is Eden. Thanks again for all your hard work and your great recipes.
Thanks Teresa. I still eat dried beans in small amounts and this sounds like a good way to help with portion control. Thanks for sharing!
Kalyn,
Is there any way to turn off the Blogher pop-up that comes up at the bottom of every page. It is so annoying and dissuades me from visiting your site. I can understand if it pops up on the home page, but to have it pop up on every page you navigate to on this site is just not very friendly. If there's a way to stop it, please let me know.
I'm sorry it bothers you, but I have no plans to get rid of that ad. If I didn't have ads on the blog I'd have to accept money to promote products, and that's something I'm just not willing to do.
Hi there! I enjoy your blog and would like to ask you a question about it over email, could you let me know where to reach you?
If you click the link in this post that says "How to Contact Kalyn" it takes you to a page with my e-mail address.
Hi Kalyn, what a great website and amazing recipes!! My husband loves the Broccoli, Ham, and Mozzarella Baked with Eggs recipe that I cooked last weekend :)))
Thanks Melissa; glad you are enjoying the recipes.
I just recently discovered the K. Kitchen blog and signed up for the daily e-mails. Great recipes! I saw your "Shop Amazon And Support This Site" phrase on the r.h. side of the page, but didn't see a clickable link. I'll be placing an order with them soon and wanted to start via your site. Other sites that I support each have links to Amazon that I've actually bookmarked, so that whenever I start an order I just review my list, select one bookmark and off we go to shop!
Thanks – also just signed up for your slow cooker blog!
Steve
Thanks Steve! If you enter something into the search bar on the right and hit search, that will take you to Amazon.com, and anything you buy there will support my site.
Hi Kalyn…I go to your every week for new ideas. I'm not sure if I'd written you before but I just wanted to say AGAIN how much I love your site. I love the recipes, the pictures, the humor in the writing AND most of all (I think) is all the links you post to help with the references. So glad you created this site…and so glad I found it!!! Keep up the GREAT work, it's really appreciated!!
PS…I don't like to cook…but your recipes are SO easy!!! <3
Thanks Suzanne, so glad you are enjoying the site! Thanks for taking time to tell me; that always makes my day.
I love this blog so much and it's been a great resource. I was wondering if you were ever considering making some of the recipes into a e-cookbook (or if you already have one and I just have failed to find it)?
Renee Claire, thanks for the nice feedback. I've turned down a few offers to do a paper cookbook, because I figured why would people buy it when they can get the recipes for free on the blog. But I have been giving serious thought to doing a "Best of Kalyn's Kitchen" type e-book. Maybe if I could find a good person to help with the project because I can barely keep up with my blogs right now as it is.
I just found your site searching summer soups. It all looks fantastic. Looking forward to digging deeper.
Welcome Julia, hope you enjoy!
I'm really glad I found your site! I made your Spicy Sauteed Chickpeas Recipe with Ground Beef and Cilantro tonight. It turned out great! I added sun-dried tomatoes and lime to put my own twist on it. I found a few more recipes of yours I want to start out with and I can only imagine how many more I will make. Thank you for sharing your journey!
Hi Kalyn, I used to put your recipes in my zip list recipe box and I had a little bookmark on my tool bar. I understand we can now use epicurious recipe box-which I have also-but I don't know what icon to use for automatically transfering it/=. Is there one?
Thanks
Hi Tobie,
All I know about Epicurious is in this post. I'm not going to add a special button for them (kind of frustrated with the idea of that after what a pain it was to promote Ziplist for a few years and have them shut it down) but I know that if you use Evernote, it can be accessed through the last button (green one) in my row of social media buttons.
BTW, I will check and see if Epicurious can be added to the options there, but I'm doubtful.
Okay, just checked on that and Epicurious is not an option there, sorry!
I just wanted to thank you for sharing your recipes. I got recent doctor's orders to cut down on carbs, and your blog has been a wonderful resource!
You feature a lot of my favorite ingredients. But you also a lot of ingredients I wouldn't normally cook, but packaged in interesting ways that I'm definitely going to try. (For instance, the mashed cauliflower with cheese and dill was a definite success tonight.)
I look forward to cooking my way through all of the recipes I've bookmarked so far 🙂
Kalyn, just stumbled upon your blog after a bunch of clicks on Pintrest! Glad I found it! I recently lost 15 pounds on Weight Watchers, and while it's not the South Beach Diet, they are very similar in the way the plan is followed. (if you are familiar with WW I am on the Simply Filling Plan) I'm always looking for new recipe ideas, and after reading your blog, you need to know I just got back from the supermarket purchasing a ton of ingredients featured in your recipes! I tweak them a bit to fit in with my WW lifestyle and my husband already asked me "who is the Kalyn and why is her website now programmed as our home page every time I use the computer?" !! Need I say more? Thank you!
Sincerely,
Lori Dateno – a new fan
Elaine, obviously you can use any ingredients you'd like, but the cookies won't be sugar free if you use brown sugar or cane sugar. I've made those cookies with both Splenda and Stevia in the raw granulated and both worked well, but I haven't made with other types of sweeteners so I can't say how it will work. I imagine it would be fine though.
Hello Kalyn, I fell upon your site last week and have since printed out a few recipes to try. The one Im most excited to try are you flour free sugar free chocolate peanut butter cookies. I showed it to my boyfriend and he is not thrilled at al with the idea of usinf any substite sugars! sheesh! lol..Can I add more brown sugar? How much?Or can I use Cane Brown Sugar?
Please get back asap Im dying to make tese. Thank you Elaine
Mom~ster, †hanks so much!
Kalyn,
So many of your recipes are in our go to recipe box. My kiddos are getting older now and they are starting to enjoy them too. After a busy and somewhat sedentary fall/winter we are renewing our pursuit of healthier eating so I'm back to get more ideas. Always love your recipes and recommend them to people all the time…you have a knack of making healthy food taste better than junk food…which I love. Just wanted to wish you a great new year.
Kalyn,
So many of your recipes are in our go to recipe box. My kiddos are getting older now and they are starting to enjoy them too. After a busy and somewhat sedentary fall/winter we are renewing our pursuit of healthier eating so I'm back to get more ideas. Always love your recipes and recommend them to people all the time…you have a knack of making healthy food taste better than junk food…which I love. Just wanted to wish you a great new year.
Thanks Catherine; glad you have been enjoying the vegetarian recipes! I am not a vegetarian, but I am trying to eat mostly vegetables myself (and enjoying it!)
I've tried several of your recipes, and they have been perfect for my husband and me as we transition to vegetarianism! It seems like every time I see a link to a recipe that looks good, I end up getting shunted over to your blog. I think it's a sign that I just go ahead and subscribe already! Added you to my reader!
–Catherine