Dishing Podcast: Recent Episodes
Elaine Benoit: Food Blogger, Podcaster
Dishing Podcast: This once a month podcast from host Elaine Benoit features successful food bloggers who share their stories of success and failure and their advice to others on how best grow their food blog into a thriving business. Elaine also interviews experts in this competitive field to help bloggers fine-tune their websites, grow their audiences and uncover ways to take their food blogs to the next level. Elaine is dedicated to inspire, educate and help bloggers realize their dreams of owning a successful online business.
Vanessa Mota is the founder of My Dominican Kitchen, a bilingual platform that helps busy parents put together tasty, traditional Dominican and Latin-inspired meals.
Vanessa is passionate about creating quick and easy versions of the recipes she grew up eating. She loves to share them with those who want to cook meals filled with Latin flavors but that don’t take a ton of time to prepare.
It is her mission to show you how to make great, flavorful dishes at home without spending the entire day in the kitchen.
Husband and wife Eric and Shanna Jones are the creative team behind the Dude That Cookz food blog.
Eric Jones is a Louisiana native and self-taught home cook. He shares Southern and home style recipes using simple, and approachable ingredients.
Shanna was born and raised in Houston. She focuses on her passion for baking and food photography.
The couple's first cookbook, Healthier Southern Cooking, is scheduled for release on February 15, 2022.
JinJoo Lee is a passionate advocate and resource for Korean cooking through her food blog, Kimchimari.
JinJoo has a PhD in Computer Science and was a computer engineer for 15 years before starting her Korean recipe site Kimchimari in 2011.
JinJoo has been blogging full time since 2015. She started blogging at the encouragement of her only daughter when she was going off to college and wanted her mom to share recipes of Korean food she knew she would be missing at school.
JinJoo has always loved cooking and learning. She has taken a Culinary Techniques class from the French Culinary Institute, a class in Kimchi and Fermentation, and a two-month Korean dessert class from SookMyung Women's University Korean Food Institute, where she is also a Food Stylist Program graduate.
JinJoo helps people get acquainted with Korean cooking by providing extra information on her website such as how-to's on making Gochujang, how to ripen Kimchi properly, the differences between Korean and US cuts of beef and pork, and more. It is her dream to write a Korean cookbook that will not only curate good recipes, but will also serve as a solid foundation for anyone who wants to learn about Korean cooking.
Maria Doss is the recipe creator, photographer, and writer behind Kitchen at Hoskins.
Maria began her food blog Kitchen At Hoskins in 2016 to share easy baking, gluten free, air fryer, and instant pot recipes that are family friendly and loaded with flavor.
Born and raised in southern India, today she lives in California with her husband, two kids, and a dog.
Maria loves to create fusion recipes with innovative techniques. She is obsessed with eating healthy but loves to indulge in the occasional decadent treat.
Amy Estes is the owner of Pinch Me Good, a food blog where she shares easy, healthy-inspired, feel good recipes that anyone can make and everyone will love and want to eat.
Amy is an experienced home cook who is obsessed with eating healthy food but who also loves a good brownie. As she says on her site, "life without dessert does not work for me"!
She started her blog, Pinch Me Good, in 2017. Its primary recipes are focused on produce-inspired meals, snacks, desserts, and more. Amy's goal is to bring readers delicious yet very easy and simple recipes that they can make to feel their best everyday.
Amy is also a certified nutrition coach.
Pina Bresciani began her eponymous food and culture blog in 2015, focusing on authentic Italian cooking with a west coast contemporary twist. Since then, she has steadily grown her following and her audience engagement each year.
Pina was born in Canada, but grew up in Canada and Italy, where she spent childhood summers in her mom's hometown of Sperlonga. Deeply steeped in Italian food, language, and culture, Pina's philosophy is centered around creating content that comes from the heart, with an aim to inspire her followers to try her recipes and share them with their friends and family.
In addition to her growing recipe and lifestyle site, Pina has a well-established Instagram presence. She provides her followers with amazing food ideas intertwined with a personal touch through sharing background stories about her recipes, her family, and her favorite spots in Italy.
Pina has been featured in major publications such as Buzzfeed and Popsugar. Many of her followers have written her to express gratitude that they could connect with her recipes and learn more about Italian cooking.
Pina lives with her husband, Ben, in Vancouver.
Jeff Hawley is founder of HashtagJeff, where he and his team share a passion for developing tools to make SEO, digital content creation, and digital content management more successful for online publishers.
Jeff has always been a free spirit. He realized early in life that he didn’t like to be told what to do without understanding why. That didn’t always go over well with a father in the military.
As a kid, Jeff’s self-determination translated to an entrepreneurial mindset. He liked working for himself, and he was always looking for different ways to make money. By the time he went to college, he still didn’t know what he wanted to do, but he knew he wanted to own his own business. During his final year, he decided to learn as much as he could about digital marketing because he felt it would serve him no matter what business he pursued.
Little did he know his future business would be digital marketing itself.
Following college, Jeff worked for himself almost exclusively. He founded a small SEO agency that was acquired by a much larger agency, where he continued working for a few years to get experience with big businesses. In order to become as much of an expert in digital marketing as possible, he also joined a large auto dealership for a short time to gain experience with the paid side of search engine marketing.
When Jeff started working with bloggers between 2016 and 2017, he quickly realized they were his tribe. Within a few months of auditing a number of lifestyle and food blogs, he began making plans to go out on his own again.
Today, Jeff focuses 100% on digital publishers who primarily monetize from online traffic. They consist of food, DIY, travel, finance, and general lifestyle websites. Jeff performs site audits and teaches site owners and their teams how to incorporate SEO into their processes to increase site visibility and revenue.
Jeff prides himself on making SEO more approachable for his clients.
Mirlene and AJ love to create delicious Haitian foods and international dishes they’ve enjoyed from other parts of the world. Their two-fold goals are to introduce their followers to Haitian recipes and to show how Haitian dishes can be used as part of other international cuisines.
Both were born in Haiti, and they completed all of their schooling in the United States, where they have been blessed with careers that allow them stability and growth. But Mirlene’s dream and passion is to be at home in the kitchen, in her “own world,” sharing her creativity.
This works out well for AJ, who loves to eat!
Mirlene and AJ are avid coffee drinkers and foodies. They are also proud parents to four beautiful souls (one of whom is four-legged).
Christina Shoemaker is the creator of The Whole Cook, a food blog that focuses on quick easy meals for busy weeknights.
Christina’s obsession with food started from the moment she was born. Or so she imagines. She never misses a meal and spends an inordinate amount of time fantasizing about the next one. As a mom of two, she understands the desire to feed your family well without spending hours in the kitchen. It’s her mission to show that it can be done.
Christina originally started sharing her family’s meals on Instagram without knowing whether there was an audience for them. Turns out there was! She then launched the website thewholecook.com as a place to publish her recipes. This food journey has since turned into a full-time job that she is immensely grateful for. Every day she is honored to share her passion for cooking with her community.
At The Whole Cook you’ll find lots of healthy recipes for the whole family. Christina's recipes feature whole foods which means you’ll see fresh ingredients, no ingredients you can’t pronounce or that aren’t actually real food, and very little sugar.
Christina is also the author of the Clean Paleo One-Pot Meals cookbook, which includes 100 one pot/pan meals that can be made in about 30 minutes.
Monica Lensink is the founder, recipe writer, and photographer behind Nourish and Fete, a website with fresh, fast, everyday recipes tailored for home cooks and busy families.
Monica is a former diplomat and intelligence analyst who began blogging as a hobby in 2016. As her career evolved and her family grew, Monica transitioned her website from a casual "mom blog" to its present focus on food -- and got more serious about making it a professional source of income.
The recipes at Nourish and Fete are designed for home cooks who value convenience and time, yet still want to create high-quality meals and love making things from scratch. One of Monica's core beliefs is that home cooking can be easy and rewarding, despite or even because of the crazy pace of modern life. Her goal for Nourish and Fete is to be a resource and inspiration for readers to eat well and celebrate the everyday.
Born and raised near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Monica currently lives outside of Washington, DC, with her husband, two young children, and their beloved dog, Cookie. Her two grown step-children live nearby and are pescatarians, which explains the growing collection of plant-based and seafood recipes on her site.
Candice Walker is the creator of Proportional Plate, a food and lifestyle blog that encourages readers to educate themselves about their food, learn what foods feel good for them, and to feel proud of the food choices they make.
Proportional Plate doesn’t tell you what you should or shouldn’t eat: it tells you to listen to your body and learn what food choices are right for you.
Author of the blog, Candice Walker, creates recipes for a nutritious and sustainable diet that inspires excitement, rather than guilt. Candice prioritizes fresh, locally sourced ingredients, seasonal produce, and cooking methods that anyone, regardless of skill level, will find accessible.
Candice started Proportional Plate because she wants people to stop feeling guilty about their food choices. She began writing about food as a way to help her busy friends plan their meals, experiment with new recipes, and share knowledge about eating sustainably. Over time, she learned how to create and enjoy nourishing, delicious, seasonal, balanced meals that make her body and her self feel good.
Proportional plate recipes are influenced by international and fusion cuisine. This is partly because travel has always been a big part of Candice's life, including a year traveling the world with her husband.
It's also due to her heritage.
Candice's mother's side of the family are Persian, and her father is Israeli, but his parents grew up in Eastern Europe and Cuba. Candice grew up with incredible culinary role models, blending traditional Persian dishes with Jewish and Eastern European recipes and fostering a love of experimenting and creating new things!
Jenna Passaro is on a mission to help foodies cook up their wildest dreams — in and out of the kitchen.
Years ago, Jenna ditched a predictable career path with very few vacation days to pursue a life of fun, food and travel.
Along the way, she started Sip Bite Go and wrote The Home Chef’s Sous Vide Cookbook. Jenna also hosts the podcast, My Weird Food Obsession, which explores the fascinating stories behind people who pursue careers in peculiar food niches.
Jenna is based in Portland, OR and is always in the mood for pizza.
Lauren Vavala shares a variety of recipes on her blog, Delicious Little Bites, to help families navigate a multi-diet home.
Lauren is a former dental hygienist turned full time food blogger. She is currently attending culinary arts school.
Lauren specializes in low carb and keto recipes, gluten free recipes and vegetarian recipes, but still loves to bake and indulge in a well-deserved treat every now and then. She also takes as many courses as possible in food photography with the hopes to eventually start to shoot food photos for local restaurants.
She has been published in Delaware Today magazine, has appeared on local news segments and has been featured on many other online publications.
After several years living in Utah and Colorado, Lauren is now back in Delaware, where she resides with her fiancé and two sons.
Kevin O'Leary wanted to dedicate a blog that encompasses the food he loves but didn't quite fit in his popular blog Kevin is Cooking. His new blog Silk Road Recipes covers all the cuisine that can be found along the Silk Road.
New blog, new lease on life
Kevin O'Leary was bitten by the cooking bug as a teenager. He went on to work in restaurants and the catering industry but although life intervened, he never really stepped away from the stove.
Now, Kevin lives the cooking life every day, inspired by his international pantry and by his ongoing effort to put a fresh spin on classic recipes.
Kevin founded his first food blog, Kevin Is Cooking, in 2014 to share his inspiration and help busy people get that meal on the table.
After Kevin realized that he was cooking and publishing recipes he wanted to instead of what his readers were gravitating to, which is Tex-Mex, Mexican, grilling and BBQ, he changed gears to give them what they wanted.
But that left out a part of Kevin's culinary experience that he still wanted to express. So, after tossing around the idea for many years, Kevin decided to start his second blog in October of 2020. Silk Road Recipes focuses on recipes that he has always loved and has been making and perfecting for many years.
Kevin got his inspiration from his many trips to a lot of the countries along the Silk Road and wants to excite others to enjoy the meals that he has come to love.
From condiments, to spice blends, to appetizers, to full meals, Silk Road Recipes has it all. He's focused on expanding the content and helping his new readers find that cooking doesn't have to be difficult and life is too short to be bland.
Tanya Harris is a former attorney who started her food blog, My Forking Life, as a hobby in 2016. Her goal is to provide her readers with quick and easy meals that are full of flavor. She wants everyone, even busy people, to be able to cook more often at home.
Tanya posts a lot of gadget recipes, pressure cooker and air fryer recipes, because these have helped her get dinner on the table quickly. She has increased her blog traffic to over 100,000 page views in just a few months by providing her readers with content they need and enjoy.
After her interview two years ago, she quit her full time job as an attorney in late 2019 and has grown her blog to over a million views per month.
So, in this episode will discuss the growth with Tanya Harris.
This episode is to relay what I learned while I was on hiatus. It is my introductory episode that kicks off the new season which will begin on January 13th, 2021, so stay tuned.
Hello everyone, it's Elaine and I am back at the mic. When I first announced that I was going on hiatus, I was feeling like all I did was toil away and didn't have a good work/life balance. So, when I announced my decision to 'go on hiatus', I actually didn't think I'd get back into podcasting.
I thought that was it for me.
Well, I was wrong.
My last episode was published on December 20th in 2019 so, it has almost been a full year since I hung up my microphone and headphones.
During that time, I learned many things.
Let me start with what I learned regarding the podcast, which I found very interesting.
After I pressed publish on that last episode, I danced around the house, feeling free and happy that I didn't have to reach out, schedule or sit down and perform those interviews.
But even more exciting to me was I didn't have to edit the episodes. Because as I've mentioned before, it was extremely hard for me to let those "umms", false starts, sometimes-hard-to-follow sentences, and deep pauses just 'be'.
My training as an actress, performer, and recovering perfectionist reared its ugly head and made me spend hours editing each episode. I tried to make both myself and my guest sound as good as I possibly could.
But in the process, I sucked the fun out of podcasting.
I loved chatting with my guests, but I was starting to dread the interviews. Not because I didn't want to talk to them, I just didn't want to edit the episodes. And I wasn't ready to hire someone to edit them for me since the show didn’t make me any money.
So, after that last episode and my freedom dance party, I enjoyed the holidays and even enjoyed the first few months of the new year. We all know that the pandemic has been a big part of our lives, but I don't think it had anything to do with why I started to get the feeling that I should get back into interviewing other bloggers and experts.
Those niggling thoughts
By the time May rolled around. I was thinking daily about getting back into podcasting. But then I'd talk myself out of it by reminding myself how I felt the last few months of 2019.
Then it occurred to me, "What if I don't publish episodes every week?" "What if I published twice a month or even better, ONCE a month?"
I struggled with those questions because I've heard from many of my awesome listeners that though they understood why I stopped; they did miss the show. So, if I only published one episode a month, would people still want to hear the content?
I asked a few bloggers their opinion and it ended up being a resounding yes.
That made me happy.
So here I am.
I have rebranded the podcast from Dishing with Delishes to the Dishing podcast because, let's face it, I was trying to connect it to my food blog Dishes Delish and play on the word dishing as in chatting or better yet, gossiping (because I am nosy) and delishes to represent other food bloggers. But try saying that over and over and over. It's a mouthful.
Those that helped me
So, the podcast is now the Dishing Podcast. You can still get to the website through the old dishingwithdelishes url. Charles Smith from WPOpt.net has happily and efficiently redirected the site to the new url which is dishing.co.
I also had Vladi of the husband and wife team from LIL Creative Digital Agency design both the artwork for apple podcasts and the logo for the website.
The format for the show will stay the same - interviews with food bloggers and an expert or two, but I need your help. I’ll still ask the questions I’ve been asking my guests all along, but I’d also love to know what YOU want me to ask them.
Please share your questions for food bloggers and food blogging experts with me at elaine @ Dishes Delish dot com. I can’t wait to hear from you.
Blogging thoughts and ideas
Now, to talk about what I've learned about blogging.
When you first start out, everyone will tell you that you need lots of content. But I’ve learned that’s not always smartest move. What you need is quality, not quantity.
And even though that’s what I was learning as a member of Food Blogger Pro, I still decided to pump out as much content as I could because I was excited; I knew one of the recipes was bound to go viral and I’d start making money.
I do wish I hadn’t gone that route and had been more selective with what I published. But I was on learning and on a mission.
When I first started, I published 2 food posts a week. A month or two later I made one of the smartest moves for the blog by adding a cocktail post to the weeks publishing schedule. Once I did that, I started to see growth on the blog.
So, I published 3 posts a week for three plus years.
Then in year 2, I started a podcast called Maturepreneurial to help individuals over 40 to either start or succeed in their businesses. During that time, I made my mistakes and learned what I needed to learn in order to feel comfortable enough to launch the Dishing with Delishes podcast in year 3, which was the podcast I really wanted to do.
As you can see, I love piling more things on my plate.
After I started the Dishing with Delishes podcast, I decided to stop the first podcast, which I eventually sold to a lovely woman who has integrated it with her own podcast.
But even with one less podcast, it was still a lot of work – three recipes a week on the blog and one episode on the podcast.
For at least a year, but probably more, I kept saying I was going to go down to two recipes a week – one food and one cocktail. But I was afraid that my growth would stagnate. I was also nervous about taking time off and in a day or two here and there or a two week vacation where I didn’t do anything for the blog. I felt if I did, my traffic would plummet.
I finally asked friends, guests on the show and members of Food Bloggers Central whether any of them who cut back on publishing new content saw an adverse result on their blog. Surprisingly, the majority said no. If anything, they saw an increase in their traffic when they stopped posting as often. Or took time off.
Everyone needs time off
And sure enough, that’s what happened to me.
You need the time and space to rejuvenate, reflect, to have ideas germinate without the constant thought, “I’ve got to publish a post.” And even if your traffic went down a smidge - though I did not see that on my site - it will bounce back when you either start publishing again or your audience settles in with your new schedule. And isn’t doing some self-care worth the risk of a small impact, if any?
So, after 3 ½ years, I went down to two posts a week.
Before I reduced my schedule, I had my audit with Casey Markee and Casey’s advice was to work on either shooting and re-writing the recipes or culling them by no-indexing or downright deleting them.
I had created close to 425 recipes in those 3 ½ years. That’s a lot. Too many, in my opinion.
Now, I understand why people tell you to pump out the content, but just know that it might not be the best thing for you.
You have to work within the limits of the time you have in a day, in a week and in a month and so on. You also have to consider all the things you have to do around the post, like social sharing, while maintaining quality content and having the time to enjoy living your life.
The appeal of touching a unicorn
One other thing I’d like to relay, and this might be a little controversial - although experts are experts and know more than we do, we still have to trust our own intuition. I remember reaching out to someone about a post that was a unicorn because I wanted to insert some process shots. I already knew what this expert would say, which was “do not touch a unicorn.”
But I wanted to touch that unicorn, horn and all because sometimes you have to buck the system and see if your intuition is right. So, I decided to do some testing, even though I realized it could impact that post.
So, when I republished this post with new photos including process shots and updated the copy, I watched it very carefully on Google.
I actually tested this with two posts. Both posts had been in the search results carousel and week by week, they remained in the carousel, even after I touched them.
I’m not saying experts are wrong and we shouldn’t listen to them. What I’m saying is, my instinct was telling me to update these posts with process shots because it would be better user experience. And thankfully, I was right. They are still in the carousel and haven’t budged. In fact, the original unicorn moved from #3 in the carousel to #1.
I have since found out about the Limit Modify Date plugin which allows you to update a post without a change in the modified date. Now whether this stops the powers that be from knowing you made updates, I don’t know. I’m thinking their crawling bots can see the changes anyway. But for whatever reason, my test posts weren’t affected.
Back to my publishing schedule
After seeing that reducing the schedule didn’t affect my growth, I decided to reduce it even further.
Now I’m publishing one post per week and that has given me the time and mental space to do other projects. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating for you to go down to one post a week: I’m advocating figuring out (and doing) what’s right for you.
I’m excited for the coming year and can’t wait to see how it plays out. It feels like it’s going to be an expansive year.
Here’s to a fabulous new year with incredible growth for everyone.
What's next
Thank you for listening and stay tuned for my next episode on January 13th when I re-interview Tanya Harris from My Forking Life.
I decided to interview Tanya again because she has had explosive growth in the two years between my first interview and the new one.
She went from 100k pageviews a month to over 1 million. How’s that for growth?
Tune in on January 13th to hear how she did it.
Until the next time, this is Elaine Benoit signing off.
I wanted to publish this episode to let you all know that, after long and careful consideration, I have decided to take an extended hiatus from the podcast.
Here are my reasons:
This has been a passion project for me and, although I thought I might someday make money from it, I realize now that probably won’t happen. So, it’s time for me to focus my attention on my true money maker, which is my Dishes Delish food blog.
Dishes Delish has grown leaps and bounds since I started this podcast. I attribute that growth to a few things.
The first was my audit in June of 2018 with Casey Markee. That was the catalyst. I had interviewed Casey before that but at the time I decided to move forward with my audit, the blog had only five thousand sessions a month. Mind you, I had been blogging for almost 3 years.
Casey helped focus me. He taught me to not pick keywords like “dark chocolate caramel marshmallow cashew butter cups” Yes, I actually used those keywords in a post. As you can imagine, it gets 0 monthly searches. But I’m the reigning champ of that keyword. I am in the carousal and #1 in Google search results. And that’s only one of my really long keywords.
Casey also got me to write for my readers and help solve problems. That was a game changer for sure.
Another game changer was the viral moment I had in September of 2018. The HBO show Camping mentioned a jelly donut shot in one of its episodes and at that time, the monthly viewfor those keywords was only 330. But here’s why I had that viral moment. My Jelly Donut shot was already #1 in search results, so everyone and their brother who watched that episode of Camping clicked through to my website.
That shot is still #1 and now has a monthly search volume of 4400. That shows you how something can grow just by having exposure.
And that exposure was also a growth catalyst because, as with all such exposure, having people look at my jelly donut shot brought them back to the site to see other content, which gave me even more sessions.
By October of 2018 – and remember: in June of the same year, I had only 5k sessions a month – I qualified for Mediavine and in November their ads went live on my site.
Fast forward 6 months, when I was lucky to have another viral moment. My pistachio cookie recipe became my top post, toppling my Cadillac Margarita from 1st place. The popularity of this cookie post allowed me to apply for (and join) AdThrive. Now remember, to join MediaVine, you need 25k monthly sessions. AdThrive requires 100k pageviews.
Now, I tell you all this for two reasons, first to explain why I’m placing the podcast on hiatus. I need to focus on the blog to make it even more successful by adding various income streams.
Secondly, I am hoping to inspire you by letting you know that you can do it too. Don’t get me wrong, it takes a lot of work and sometimes a little luck. But you don’t have to have a viral moment to succeed. Many of my guests didn’t have one, and yet they are successful; it just takes years and hard work.
So, keep at it and don’t give up. Write for your readers, help them solve a problem and create quality content.
I also want to say that it is not always necessary to pick keywords that have a high monthly search volume. Some of my more popular posts have under 1000 monthly searches on Google but they do really well on Pinterest.
So I would have missed out on this if I’d listened to the experts and neglected to follow my gut. Experts are great and can be a big help but you also can rely on yourself by doing what you think is best.
You can also help yourself by joining Facebook groups like Food Bloggers Central. Ask questions, learn from other bloggers mistakes and if you’re wanting some inspiration, visit Dishing with Delishes and re-listen to interviews with food bloggers who forged their way before us. You can also listen to experts like Casey Markee, Andrew Wilder, Matt Molen and Grayson Bell just to
name a few.
Now you’re probably wondering if I’ll be returning to the podcast. My first instinct is to say no, because I need the break without having to think about the show, interview future guests or edit episodes. Last year, I started publishing the podcast in seasons thinking it would give me a break but, I never really felt like I had any time off and believe me, I need that time for blog growth endeavors.
But you never know. I will miss chatting with other bloggers and learning more about their journeys.
Don’t be a stranger! If you see me on social media, say ‘hi’ or drop me a line at Elaine @ Dishes Delish dot com. Because, as you know I love chatting with bloggers and would love to hear from you.
Okay, it's time for me to sign off. This is Elaine Benoit from Dishing with Delishes and Dishes Delish. I enjoyed this fun ride and thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening in.
Happy New Year, everyone!
I wish you a prosperous 2020.
Marye Audet-White is a long-time food writer whose work and expertise are featured in cookbooks, websites, magazines, TV programs and her food blog, Restless Chipotle.
With a 40 year focus on the importance of family and a passion for southern comfort food, Marye Audet-White has become an expert in melding the two together effortlessly. She's a NY Times Bestselling author with 10 cookbooks under her belt and her recipes have been featured in Good Housekeeping, Country Living, Today, House Beautiful, Texas Living, Food & Wine, and many more.
Marye also works to help other women learn the craft of blogging through courses, coaching, and mentorship programs. Her ultimate goal is for women to be able to provide for themselves and their families while being able to work from home.
Dennis Littley is a retired chef, live stream show host and producer, social media consultant, and speaker who can be found at his food and travel blog, Ask Chef Dennis.
Dennis is a retired chef and culinary instructor who enjoys life by traveling and eating his way around the world, sharing his recipes and adventures along the way. A native Texan who spent most of his life in greater Philadelphia, Chef Dennis now resides in Kissimmee, Florida with his wife Lisa.
During the newest phase of his culinary journey as a food and travel blogger, Chef Dennis has amassed an impressive following, including 950K+ social media followers and 80+ million impressions monthly.
Suzy Karadsheh (ka-RAH-chee) is a true daughter of the Mediterranean. She was born and raised only two blocks from the Mediterranean shore in Port Said, Egypt; a quick boat ride from places like Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, and Italy.
Proximity to the sea’s riches, combined with her family’s fondness for big gatherings, turned Suzy into a passionate cook who lives by the values of the Mediterranean diet. She is all about easy, wholesome recipes with big Mediterranean flavors!
To fully leverage her delicious heritage and big Mediterranean personality, Suzy established The Mediterranean Dish, a leading food blog and online resource dedicated to Mediterranean recipes, diet and lifestyle.
What started as a hobby in 2014, has become a multi-faceted business including an e-commerce site that offers quality Greek olive oils, all-natural and organic spices, and more!
For people seeking a healthier lifestyle and a taste of the Mediterranean, there is no better place than The Mediterranean Dish.
Melissa Riker is founder, recipe developer, and photographer behind The Happier Homemaker, a lifestyle blog focused on everyday recipes and home management for busy families.
Melissa is a former cancer researcher who left her career in the laboratory after having the first of three sons. She started her first blog in 2007 to keep in touch with family as a military spouse living far from home. The blog evolved to DIY and decorating as she and her husband undertook projects in the houses they bought, rented or built each time they relocated.
Melissa absolutely knows the stress that comes from managing a home: school, lunches, jobs, spouse, children. She founded The Happier Homemaker in 2011 with the hope of inspiring families to find joy in their homes again. Over the years, Melissa has grown her food blog into a six-figure business while moving four times in eight years, including a year spent abroad in the United Kingdom.
She and her husband Randy launched Riker Media, a lifestyle media company, in early 2019 and recently purchased a second, established food blog, Shaken Together Life, to add to their portfolio of websites.
When not behind the camera or laptop, Melissa travels extensively. She also enjoys her pets, gardening, bird watching and time behind her easel, painting.
Aneesha Gupta is a lifetime cook and author of the Spice Cravings food blog, where she shares fast, easy recipes that produce consistent results, even for new cooks.
Aneesh is a foodie by birth and the mind, body and soul behind Spice Cravings. She shares quick, easy and healthy global recipes that are LOW in effort and BIG on taste or, what she calls, "Everyday Gourmet"!
Aneesha's recipes are inspired by her love for spices, her north Indian roots, her global travels and most importantly, her life as a working mom. A recipe doesn't make it to the blog until it is tested multiple times and rates a thumbs-up from her taster-in-chief husband and her teen-chef twin girls!
Manali Singh is the author, recipe developer and photographer behind the Cook With Manali food blog, where she shares easy vegetarian meals. Her debut cookbook, Indian Vegetarian Cooking With Your Instant Pot®, was released in the fall of 2018.
Born and raised in India, Manali Singh started her food blog in 2013 when she moved to the US on a visa that didn’t allow her to work. But what started as a way to kill time, quickly became a full-time gig. Her work has been featured on BuzzFeed, MSN, Yahoo and other influential websites.
Manali lives with her husband in beautiful Seattle. She enjoys watching Bollywood movies in her free time.
Mike and Patty Hultquist are the power couple behind the spicy food paradise, Chili Pepper Madness, where bold, vibrant flavors of all types come to life.
Mike is the cook and crazy wild chilihead, and Patty is the photographer and official taste tester for the Chili Pepper Madness food blog. Together they are the team that brings you zesty fare from around the world.
Mike is the author of The Spicy Food Lovers’ Cookbook and The Spicy Dehydrator Cookbook. He considers himself a “gourmet chilihead,” cooking up a range of foods from zesty Cajun cuisine to hot and spicy Thai and American cuisine to the hottest of the hot and anywhere in between. He has a deep passion for sauces and hot sauces and anything with big flavor.
Patty is a "converted chilihead," who gained a passion for spicy foods over the years and now can’t get enough of them. Together, the Hultquists offer a perfect balance of fiery and flavor.
Bethany Kramer is the recipe developer, food stylist, and photographer behind A Simple Palate - a food blog dedicated to creating wholesome, easy to make recipes that are abundant in flavor.
Bethany grew up in a family with a love for Italian food and learned to cook at a young age. She founded her blog, A Simple Palate, in 2014 after marrying her husband Drew and finding her passion for cooking food for the people she loves. Drew is the other half of the brains for A Simple Palate and handles the technical side of the blog, including design and development.
A Simple Palate not only reflects Bethany's love for healthy and seasonal cooking, but also pays homage to her Jersey roots and love for Italian food.
Bethany and Drew currently live in sunny Los Angeles with their English Springer Spaniel puppy, Hudson.
In her former working life, Sue Ringsdorf worked as a budget analyst for Southwest Airlines. She left the corporate world to be a stay-at-home to her two sons.
After her sons were grown and Sue saw the empty nest approaching, she contemplated what the "next phase" in her life would be. She had always loved being in the kitchen trying new recipes and cooking the tried-and-true favorites passed down from her family, so on her 50th birthday, she decided to start her food blog, SueBee Homemaker.
When she’s not in the kitchen, Sue and her husband, Mike, are exploring as many bike paths as possible. They are on a mission to bike ride in every state in the U.S. Sue documents some of their adventures on her blog, under the Life is Good page.
Sue has dedicated her blog to her mother, who was an excellent cook and baker, and who passed away from Alzheimer’s in April of 2019. She shares many of of her mom’s recipes, which can be found on her blog under Norma Jean’s Kitchen.
Grayson Bell is the founder/CEO of iMark Interactive, a WordPress support company offering businesses and bloggers assistance with technical issues and site development based around WordPress. He's been using WordPress since 2003 and found a passion helping others with issues on their blogs and sites.
When he isn't working on WordPress related issues, Grayson loves spending time with his family and traveling around the world to soak in different cultures and lifestyles.
After making over $150,000 in only her third year of blogging, Kate Kordsmeier launched The Six-Figure Blog Academy to help other creative entrepreneurs make money doing what they love, while keeping their souls intact.
For almost ten years prior to founding her blog, Kate Kordsmeier worked as a full-time freelance food and travel writer and recipe developer. Her content has been published in over 125 magazines, newspapers and websites, including USA Today, EatingWell, Cooking Light, Travel + Leisure, Shape, FITNESS, Women’s Health, The Washington Post, Clean Eating, Vegetarian Times, Wine Enthusiast, SELF and Real Simple.
Today, Root + Revel is a full time business, where Kate publishes articles and recipes that inform and encourage natural, mindful living, without sacrifice. Root + Revel provides a wealth of guidance and content covering everything from nourishing food to science-based self care; safe, non-toxic and effective green beauty; creating a healthy home environment; and holistic wellness. Kate is also a senior manager with Beautycounter, on a mission to get safer products in the hands of everyone.
A self-described "entrepreneur down to her bones," Kate has expanded her business to help other online entrepreneurs benefit from her success through such offerings as one on one coaching and DIY resources, including how to start a food blog, how to grow an audience, how to turn blogging into a successful business, how to pitch an e-book, and the Six-Figure Blog Academy.
Kate lives in Atlanta with her husband, Matt, their son, Jackson, their two cats, Scout and Boo, and their puppy, Finch.
Cheryl Malik is the food blogger behind 40 Aprons, where she creates and shares healthy recipes and wellness lifestyle content for real people.
In addition to running her food blog, Cheryl Malik is the cofounder and CEO of 40A., a food blogger virtual assistant agency, and Layer Cake, a design agency for food bloggers focused on better user experience and brand development.
Cheryl also works one-on-one with food bloggers in a food blogging and photography coaching program, helping bloggers upgrade their platforms and increase their traffic and revenue.
In her spare time, Cheryl also runs Quattro Mama, an apparel shop for new mamas, as well as Real Good, a skincare and wellness line for busy, real women. She’s also the Editor in Chief at Easy Healthy Recipes.
Cassie Heilbron is the recipe creator and food photographer behind Cook It Real Good - a food blog that focuses on quick, easy and healthy recipes, with a bit of indulgence mixed in between for good measure.
Cassie Heilbron started her first blog – Be Forever Healthier – in early 2017. The blog focused on healthy recipes, health tips and life hacks. But after a few short months Cassie realized she was really only interested in food, so she narrowed down her focus to healthy recipes.
As the years went by, this no longer felt like the right fit for Cassie, who’s food philosophy is everything in moderation, including moderation. So earlier this year she rebranded to Cook It Real Good and opened up her niche to include not just foods that are good for you but also foods that are good for the soul
Cassie also hosts the Cook It Real Good podcast, where she shares cooking hacks and tips with home cooks.
Meet Laura Tobin, your Guardian Angel in the kitchen. With 200 recipes and over 50 videos showing how to make traditional Mediterranean dishes, she can motivate even the most reluctant cooks!
Laura is an Italian national growing up in Rome and vacationing in Southern Italy, Laura's passion for food and cooking began as a child, when she accompanied her mother to Cordon Bleu cooking classes. Those early experiences fueled an ongoing love of food and launched her inspiring culinary journey.
As an adult, Laura has traveled the world, whether for pleasure or to relocate to foreign countries. With each new culture came a new and intriguing cuisine to discover and master.
Eventually settling in the Côte d’Azur, married and with two young boys, Laura started an English-language food blog to share her favorite Mediterranean recipes with friends. She named it Your Guardian Chef.
Little did she know then, that what began as an impassioned hobby would one day become her own 'guardian angel', helping her to find focus and heal following the sudden loss of her husband in 2018.
In the wake of tragedy, Laura took a step back to adjust to her new life as a single mother of two teenage boys. She found comfort in cooking and before long, found herself in front of her laptop, intent on re-energizing her hobby. In the space of just five months, her renewed attention to the blog has seen it grow by fifty percent, her Facebook followers double and her videos explode with views and shares.
With a new puppy by her side, and a burgeoning blog in her lap, we are delighted to invite Laura to share her story and her passion with the Dishing with Delishes audience.
Jess Hoffman is writer, photographer and recipe developer behind Choosing Chia, a food blog dedicated to delicious vegetarian recipes.
Based in Montreal Canada, Jess Hoffman began helping out in the kitchen at a young age. She founded her blog, Choosing Chia, after a spontaneous trip to India where she studied yoga and Ayurveda, a wellness practice that focuses on creating a healthy body through diet, exercise and mindfulness. Upon returning home, Jess found a new passion for healthy, plant-based cooking.
Jess loves sharing recipes that focus on wholesome, plant-based ingredients and are easy to make. Choosing Chia reflects her beliefs on diet and a healthy lifestyle, featuring delicious, easy to make vegetarian recipes that focus on fresh ingredients.
Jess's recipes have been featured in publications like the New York Post, People magazine, Buzzfeed, Well & Good, Country Living, Mind Body Green and other trusted sites and magazines.
Elizabeth Lindemann is the food blogger behind Bowl of Delicious, where she shares easy recipes that are made with wholesome ingredients and that cater to people with busy lifestyles.
Elizabeth started her food blog, Bowl of Delicious, as a side hustle and a hobby on nights and weekends when she was a high school art teacher. The blog has since grown into a full-time business. A former New Englander, Elizabeth lives near Austin, TX with her husband, Zach, and two young daughters, Zoey and Eleanor.
Elizabeth has always had a voracious appreciation of food, cooking, and eating. Maybe it’s because she grew up in a Greek family that cooked - and ate - a LOT of delicious food. She honed her own cooking skills in college and grad school, and she quickly discovered that cooking was more than just a casual hobby to her.
But teaching at a Title 1 school serving primarily low-income students had its challenges, and it was easy to fall off the cooking bandwagon and opt for take-out. Elizabeth quickly learned that when she took the time to cook healthy food at home on a regular basis, she had more energy, less stress, and was able to handle the demands of her job better.
Along the way, she picked up on tricks and shortcuts to make home cooking doable even with a very busy lifestyle, while still using wholesome ingredients. So, she started Bowl of Delicious to share her recipes and tricks, and the rest is history!
Bowl of Delicious specializes in "real food for busy people." Elizabeth's goal is to get more people to enjoy the countless benefits of cooking at home even if they think they don't have enough time or money, because these limitations often go hand-in-hand. She believes that cooking at home should help relieve stress, not cause it.
Elizabeth's recipes are quick and easy, made in one-pot or pan, are Instant Pot or Slow Cooker friendly, or easy to make ahead or freeze in bulk. They're usually budget-conscious and family friendly, and don't ever use unhealthy, processed ingredients as a shortcut. In her personal life, she tries to stick to the 80-20 rule when it comes to eating healthy, whole foods, because she couldn't live without the occasional Reese's Peanut Butter Cup or cheap pizza take-out!
While Elizabeth doesn't teach high school anymore, she's still busy in a different kind of way, with being a mom and running a business. She loves that the blog enables her to continue to "teach" and help other people who struggle with cooking at home find success and joy in it!
Anjali Shah is creator of The Picky Eater food blog, where she shares her passion for delicious food and her desire to make healthy eating easy, tasty and fun.
Anjali is a food writer, published author, board certified health coach, nutritionist, mom of two, and an advocate for healthy, clean eating for individuals and families.
Her work has garnered nationwide attention and has been featured on Oprah.com, Women’s Health, Cooking Light, Reader’s Digest, CNN, Food Network, SELF, Glamour, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Ladies’ Home Journal, Whole Foods, SHAPE, and at Kaiser Permanente.
Anjali grew up a “whole wheat” girl, but married a “white bread” kind of guy. Hoping to prove that nutritious food could in fact be delicious and desirable, she taught herself how to cook and successfully transformed her husband’s eating habits from a diet of frozen pizzas and Taco Bell to her healthy, yet flavorful recipes made with simple, wholesome ingredients.
Anjali’s programs are focused on teaching individuals and families how to make healthy choices and pick the right foods at the grocery store for either weight loss or overall wellness and maintenance.
After becoming a mom, Anjali expanded her programs to include strategies and techniques to combat picky eating in kids of all ages. Anjali started The Picky Eater in 2012 to make healthy food accessible, tasty, easy to make at home, and picky-eater proof.
Meeta Arora is the author, recipe developer and food photographer behind the Piping Pot Curry blog, where she shares quick and easy recipes made using the instant pot and other gadgets in the modern kitchen.
Meeta is a former product specialist by profession and a foodie at heart. She strongly believes that each one of us has a chef inside us; we just need some inspiration to explore the ingredients and create great food.
Meeta grew up in Mumbai, a melting pot for people from all over India and a place where food defines culture. There she learned to cook from her mom, a wonderful cook who made the effort to pass down her love for cooking to her daughter.
Meeta shares recipes for a variety of cuisines from all around the world but Indian food has always been closest to her heart.Meeta currently lives in California with her husband and beautiful daughter.
Chandice Probst is the bubbly personality behind This Vivacious Life.
Chandice is a food and entertaining blogger and the co-author of Gluten-Free on a Budget.
Chandice’s work has been featured in print and online industry publications, most notably Mingle Magazine, Women’s World, and Kara’s Party Ideas.
As someone with celiac disease and a degree in health science, she has led the charge in hosting celiac awareness nights with MLB and NBA teams around the nation, raising money for research.
While she loves to cook and entertain, Chandice loves being a wife and mother most. Learn more about Chandice at This Vivacious Life.
Sam Merritt is the creator behind the food blog Sugar Spun Run, where she specializes in sharing sweet and simple dessert recipes from scratch, with the occasional savory comfort food mixed in.
Although Sam has been baking as far back as she can remember, she works hard to ensure that bakers of all skill levels will find success when they bake a Sugar Spun Run recipe. Each recipe is carefully tested and perfected before Sam shares them on her website.
Sugar Spun Run desserts have been featured on a number of websites including TLC, Better Homes & Gardens, and People. Sam has also contributed to online magazines such as Country Living, Woman's Day, and Parade.
Before she became a full time food blogger, Sam worked as a research coordinator at a hospital. She currently lives in Maryland with her husband and their three dogs.
Leah Hall and her husband, Jay, are co-creators of Gastronom.com, where they blog about "libations and spirited travel."
Jay and Leah started the Gastronom in 2012 and soon found their niche by focusing on spirits and mixology. The Halls love cooking at home, swimming in their pool, travel and of course, cocktails!
Jay and Leah love to entertain and believe that food and drink not only nourish us but feed our souls, as well! They are all about local culinary scenes, unique cocktail ingredients and spirited travel.
Gastronom's recipes have been featured on liquor.com, feedfeed and Drizly.
The Halls have grown their blog to be Leah's full time job since 2016. They love to share their cocktail recipes and hope people use them to make an ordinary day a special day!
Jay and Leah Hall have been married almost 14 years and live in Omaha, Nebraska with their two boys.
Isabel Orozco-Moore is the recipe developer, photographer and content creator at Isabel Eats, a food blog all about easy Mexican recipes for home cooks.
Isabel inspires others with her real life experiences in the kitchen and gives tips and tutorials so others can enjoy a little more Mexican spice in their lives, too! She started her blog as a hobby and personal outlet in 2015 and grew it into a full-time business in October 2017.
Isabel’s recipes and photos have been featured on sites like The Kitchn, Good Housekeeping, Buzzfeed, Delish, Self, The Huffington Post and MSN.
Isabel is 31 years old, lives in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma with her husband and two cats and is a proud first-generation Mexican-American.
Loreto and Nicoletta Nardelli are the creative couple behind Sugar Love Spices, the blog where they celebrate their Italian heritage and share their love of food, photography and travel.
Loreto is Canadian of Italian descent and Nicoletta, born and raised in Rome, Italy, is now Canadian by marriage. Sugar Love Spices is the diary of a bustling kitchen where Loreto and Nicoletta combine their passions for savory, sweet and a bit of spice.
The couple shares recipes from their favorite cookbooks and blogs, along with original creations and techniques from their kitchen that include musings on ingredients, ethical farming, beautiful people, great utensils and their experiences with restaurants and travel.
Their love of local organic producers is what defines the couple's way of life and a respect for the treatment of plants and animals. They also believe in the energy you put into your cooking.
While not professional chefs or photographers, Loreto and Nicoletta love food and photography (and travel), very very much.
Nora Taylor is the author, recipe developer and food photographer behind the Nora Cooks food blog.
Nora went vegan in 2010 and soon developed a passion for vegan cooking and baking. Before going vegan, she hated to cook! She experimented with recipes for years before starting her food blog.
In 2017, Nora started her vegan food blog to share simple, everyday vegan recipes that would appeal to families and even meat-eaters.
Nora lives in beautiful Oregon with her husband, three kids and three cats.
Joy Shull is the the content creator and recipe developer behind Build Your Bite, a food blog that focuses on vegetarian and vegan recipes.
In 2014, Joy dropped out of college one semester short of a degree to pursue her dream job – food blogging. Looking back today, she does not regret her decision. She has turned her blog from a part time hobby to a business that supports her family.
Joy is very passionate about doing what you love for a living and loves to encourage other entrepreneurs to find a way to make it work.
Joy taught herself to cook at 15, a necessity when living most of the time with a dad and three older brothers. Her dad’s idea of a home cooked meal was a frozen dinner with three rounds of salt and pepper, so she spent many nights learning new recipes to cook for her family.
Joy is married to Robbie and has a two year old son named Crosby, who is her biggest motivator.
Helena Bohdanovych and Volodymyr (Vladi) Vasylenkov are husband and wife who, among other things, happen to be in love with everything digital. They believe every business is about people first, and stand behind that principle in everything they do.
Most of all, they enjoy creating meaningful content, helping their clients grow and contributing to the development of the digital future.
Working with the amazing people from around the world, the two have spent a big part of their lives in the USA and Australia. They are now based in Portugal.
Helena and Vladi find inspiration in waves, because they are a great representation of life, and in good coffee, for no particular reason.
Born and raised in Wisconsin, Kylie Lato grew up eating a traditional Midwestern "meat and potatoes" diet. Her fondest childhood memories include spending most weekends in the kitchen with her grandma measuring flour, mixing batter and making messes. As she grew up and moved out on her own, her love for food, cooking and photography continued to grow and develop until friends and family convinced her to start a blog.
These days, you'll still find Kylie in the kitchen on the weekends. Only now, it's her toddler helping her make all the messes! Kylie's daughter and husband are her official taste testers and all Midwest Foodie recipes are approved by them before they make it onto the blog.
As a working mom and busy blogger, Kylie understands how difficult it can be to get a wholesome dinner on the table at the end of the day. Through her blog, Midwest Foodie, she hopes to make your life easier by sharing simple, family-friendly recipes that are made with seasonal (mostly healthy) and accessible ingredients.
Gary White likes food. He really, really likes food. In third grade, he remembers taking Jiffy cornbread to school for show-and-tell. Who does that? When he was in middle school, he could cook dinner for the whole family and he often did. One of his specialties? Lasagna. So by the time he left for college, he could hold his own more than most 18-year-old guys.
Over the years, Gary worked in some fantastic restaurants with great chefs, who exposed him to new worlds of food, ingredients and cuisines. What he learned at work, he often tried to duplicate at home. He also went through seasons of eating different diets – everything from vegan to low carb – and that involved lots and lots of cooking.
Along with that, cooking shows have always been one of his favorite forms of television. From Gordon Ramsey to Vivian Howard, Gary learned quite a bit from cooking shows. When he had an opportunity to audition for season 8 of MasterChef in 2016, his cooking went to a whole other level. On the day of the first audition, he was completely shocked when he made the first cut. And the second. And the third. And then when they asked him to come back the next day. And it just kept going. With each cut, they just kept calling him back. Before he knew it, he was on his way to Los Angeles.
Matt Molen is also the CEO of Personalized Paths. He is the creator of Email on Autopilot (www.emailonautopilot.com) and teaches Email Jump Start!
Matt provides marketing consulting and personal coaching services to some of the world’s top bloggers. He is also a public speaker.
While chief marketing officer to one of the fastest growing Internet companies, Matt implemented practices that brought in more than $10 million in annual email e-commerce sales.
Molly Kumar shares light and healthy versions of Indian and family-favorite recipes from all over the world on her food blog, Easy Cooking with Molly.
Molly has been at home in the kitchen since she was three years old, toddling after her mother to touch all the utensils and taste all the spices she could get her hands on. She baked her first cake at five, which was when she fell in love with cooking and baking.
Molly says, "Even on the days when I’m most stressed, making a simple dish puts me in a zen state of mind."
Raised in New Delhi, Molly and her husband now live in California, where they moved after getting married.
Today, Molly blogs about recipes inspired by her travels around the world. She strives to make delicious, everyday meals that are easy to prepare, a feast for the eyes, and easy on the budget.
Sophia DeSantis is the author of Veggies Don’t Bite, a food blog featuring plant-based and mostly gluten and refined-sugar free recipes targeted to all types of eaters.
Sophia is a former elementary school teacher turned food magician. She lives in sunny southern California where she referees three beautiful boys, one husband and an old, sweet cat.
Sophia's super power is using whole food ingredients to create plant-based recipes that will change the way the world views healthy food. From comfort food classics to veggie-filled meals, with the occasional sweet indulgence, she creates a place where all types of eaters unite.
Sophia has been featured on many websites including Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Women’s Health and Red Tricycle to name a few. She has also contributed guest posts to a variety of other sites and print magazines, including Parent’s Magazine. Her first cookbook, Vegan Burgers and Burritos, was released in November 2017.
Through Veggies Don't Bite, Sophia hopes to reach anybody interested in making a positive health change in their life. Her motto is: eat, play, relax, repeat.
Learnings and Leanings
I decided to do a special edition episode for a few reasons.
First, I've been thinking for a while that I'd like to share what I have learned, which feels like a lot: what I've learned from doing this podcast; what I've learned from my guests; what I think and how I feel about all of it.
Second, I want to tell you about some changes that are coming. I'll explain more in a bit, but basically the podcast continues to evolve and these changes will reflect that.
Thirdly, I want to talk about some of the services I use that I find beneficial for my food blog, Dishes Delish, and think would be helpful for other bloggers. None of my recommendations are sponsored.
Snafu and the Lesson Learned
The catalyst for this special edition episode was a problem I encountered last Tuesday, March 5th, when I uploaded Elizabeth Falcigno's interview. It was supposed to be published today, March 13th, but actually came out the day I uploaded it.
I had scheduled the episode for the correct date and time, but there was a glitch that overrode my settings and Libsyn published it immediately. I noticed what had happened within a few minutes but even though I quickly tried to reschedule it, iTunes had already pulled the feed and people had already started to listen to the episode. To get downloads so quickly was amazing to me, but still, it wasn't what I'd planned.
Since this snafu left a hole in my publishing calendar, once I calmed down, I realized it was my chance to record and publish this update instead of an interview. So here we are.
One of the things I learned from this snafu is not to freak out about problems that come up, especially if you can't fix them. And believe me, I tried. Was I upset? Yes. Did hubby have to talk me off the figurative "ledge"? You betcha! But basically, what I realized is the only thing that really upset the order of my world was that Elizabeth's episode came out the day before Chris Collins'. Did that hurt anything? No. It just changed something.
I feel grateful and protective towards my guests. I want each person to get their time in the spotlight and I was worried that Chris would lose the spotlight because of Elizabeth's episode. Well, that didn't happen. Both episodes have gotten great download numbers even though they came out on consecutive days.
So, instead of pulling out my hair and wailing at the technology, I accepted it and I'm happy for the lesson I learned.
Letting Stuff Go - Like Plugins
Mostly, I have a love/hate relationship with change. I love it in some ways and hate it in other ways. Hubby and I used to change our furniture around a lot because both of us or one of us - usually me - needed the change. The weird thing is I would more often than not feel kind of lost after we plunked the last piece of furniture down. Because of the change. Not that we undid anything, but it used to make me cry a little.
The reason I tell you this is because it sort of explains why I hung on as long as I did to using the social sharing plugin called Social Warfare after I learned it was a problem. I'd read comments on Facebook. A lot of people complained the plugin broke their site once they updated it. BROKE THEIR SITE! Can you imagine? The way I dealt with it, was to not update it, which we all know is not a good practice.
When I interviewed Andrew Wilder and he raved about Social Pug, the social sharing plugin developed by Mihai Iova from devpups.com, it still took me a few months to decide to actually switch. Even though Andrew mentioned that Social Pug did exactly what Social Warfare did, I still clung to what was 'known'.
Well, today I'm really glad I jumped on the Social Pug bandwagon. Not only does it do everything the old plugin did, but when I had some questions and reached out to Mihai to ask them, not only has he responded quickly but he answered my questions and really cared that I understood his answers. So, if you are like me and want to cling to what you know, I'm here to tell you that I don't regret for one moment making the switch to Social Pug! Change might be challenging, but that doesn't mean it's not good.
Now, I'm eyeing Mihai's Optin Hound plugin, since I really need to change my current one, which I'm not going to renew.
Services I Rely On
I've mentioned before on the show the support I get from my virtual assistants, Helena and Vladi. Together they manage different aspects of the website, social sharing, and SEO for me.
I've often said that one of the best things I have done for the blog was to get a site audit by Casey Markee, (you can hear his episodes here and here). But the other best thing I have done was to hire Lil Creative Digital Agency, which is Helena and Vladi's company.
I've been working with them for almost 2 years and am here to say that their help has done so much for our business. Not only are they efficient and communicative, but they go the extra mile and are always positive. They answer my questions readily and take time out of their lives to send me feedback or brainstorm ideas with me. I consider them my friends.
I will be interviewing Helena and Vladi in the coming months, which I'm really looking forward to. Stay tuned for their episode.
One of the services I was most excited to hand off to them was the maintenance of the Dishes Delish website. Even though I'm technology savvy, it's hard to keep up with all the changes and frankly, I don't have the time or desire to do it anymore.
So, I subscribe to their maintenance package and couldn't be happier. No more staring at the settings for WP Rocket (or some other plug-in) and guessing if I got them set up correctly. I can rest assured that they will get it done and I don't have to worry! As Toni Dash advises, hire someone who has the expertise you don't so you can focus on creating the content only you can create.
Changes to the Podcast
Okay, here's what I'm planning for the Dishing with Delishes podcast. Don't worry, I'm still going to be producing episodes for the show.
Since the podcast is still growing, I'm not actively looking for ways to make money on the show, so my main source of revenue comes from my food blog, Dishes Delish. I'm imagining that as the show grows, I will do some sponsored ads that I'll insert into each episode, but I keep putting it off because I want my listeners to have a great listening experience and being clobbered over the head with an ad takes people out of the experience. When/if I do sponsored ads, I will only promote companies that I think will be beneficial to you, my audience.
Just so everyone understands where I'm coming from, each episode takes me a long time to produce.
First comes the pre-interview communications. It takes time to reach out to people, ask if they want to be on the show, respond to their questions and then send them next steps, if they do. So, let's say I spend two hours a week doing that.
Next, comes the actual interview, which runs anywhere between 35 minutes to an hour.
Then, comes the editing, because I'm not sure everyone knows that I edit every single episode.
A 30 minute episode takes me, on average, anywhere between 2 1/2 hours and 4 hours to edit. Why does it take me so long? Because I'm a perfectionist. I take out as many "umms", false starts, pauses, and other types of language that I feel detract from the listening experience as I can.
When we are in front of someone and speaking, we hardly notice the "umms', the starting of a sentence and then stopping mid-way to say something else. We just accept it as normal. But when you have headphones on and you're listening to the show, they are glaringly obvious. At least to me. They've got to go!
Next up is the show notes page. Thankfully, Christopher (hubby) takes some of the writing out of my hands, like editing and inserting the bio we receive from guests. But I compile and add everything else on that page and that takes me around a 1/2 hour per episode.
Uploading and configuring each episode for my media host, Libsyn, takes me between 15 minutes and 1/2 hour.
After the episode goes live, I write to the guest, providing them links to share their episode with their social media networks (for which I'm eternally grateful, when they do).
The last thing I have to do is share the episode to all of my own social media networks.
Do you see how much work that is? Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to do it. I love talking to my guests and hearing their stories. I love learning from them about their journeys and their businesses and want to continue producing this podcast for many years.
But in order to do that, I've decided I have to limit how many episodes I produce.
So instead of 52 episodes a year, I will be producing the podcast in seasons - think television seasons. I will have two seasons a year - 20 episodes per season. The first season will start in early January and run to mid May. And the second season will start early July and end before Thanksgiving.
I feel very positive about this change. I think it will give me the time I need to focus on the money making activities for my blog while still reaping the benefits of producing the podcast.
What I've learned
One of the things I've learned after talking with over 70 food bloggers and experts is that we all have different approaches and journeys. Some of us started blogging so family members and friends could access our recipes without us having to provide them over and over via email. Some of us started because we love food and have a deep desire to share it. Some of us started because we learned how easy, fun or beneficial cooking is and wanted to inspire and help others to learn, too. And some of us started blogging as a business opportunity.
One of the things I really enjoyed was when Kate Kordsmeier stated loud and clear that she started her blog as a business. It was refreshing to hear that because that's why I started mine. I felt funny saying that to people because it felt shameful on some level. But after hearing Kate say it and knowing other guests did it, now I say it proudly.
Another thing I've learned is no matter if you have an expensive full framed camera, a starter DSLR or a smartphone, the more you take photos, the better your photography will be. Like the old saying, practice makes perfect. So keep plugging away and if you get discouraged, go back to your old photos to see how far you've come.
Another thing I've learned is to celebrate every win you've accomplished. This is something Christopher and I both try to do whenever possible. Too often we don't take the time to celebrate and that makes us lose an opportunity, because we all know that blogging is hard work. Like, really hard. Why not look at what you've accomplished and celebrate it? The work will always be there.
We put in long hours. Unless we are super lucky, it can take years to see results. So I say, stick with it and don't quit, but in the meantime work to improve your writing, your photography or anything else related to your business. It will pay off in the end and bring you satisfaction along the way.
That's what I think. What do you think? If you've been listening to the show for a while and/or have a blog of your own, I would love to hear what you've learned, either from Dishing with Delishes guests or from your own journey, in a comment on this page. It doesn't have to be long or include a narrative. Short and sweet is fine. You can also shoot me an email if that's easier. Send it to Elaine at Dishing With Delishes dot com.
Also, if I'm not covering the questions you want to hear me asks my guests, please either use the comment section below or email to tell me so.
That is all. :)
Thank you for listening to my podcast. I appreciate each and every one of you!
Elizabeth Falcigno started her website The Clean Eating Couple in 2013 as a way to chronicle her journey with health and wellness. After quitting her corporate marketing job in January of 2018, Liz now works for herself full time and focuses on creating healthy, delicious recipes that are easy to make.
Liz also helps brands in the food space with recipe development and images for their websites.
Chris Collins' blog, Don't Go Bacon My Heart, is all about making food fun.
Chris Collins believes that home cooking should be enjoyable and the food you cook should always bring a smile to your face. He's also a firm believer that you can lead a perfectly healthy life and still put a whole cup of cream in your pasta.
Chris began his blog merely as a way to document the recipes he was creating in his spare time.
After moving to Australia for two years, his blog grew and so did his passion for food. When he returned to the UK, Chris made the decision to pursue blogging as a career and has never looked back!
In his spare time, Chris is either thinking about food, eating food or wondering how he can justify eating something that 'Serves 4'.
Born in Florida and raised in New Jersey, Julie Maestre is a twenty-something who is obsessed with food and shares a passion for cooking on her food blog Cooked by Julie.
Julie Maestre attended the Kosher Culinary Arts Center in New York City, worked in several restaurants and bakeries, and finally started her cooking channel on YouTube in late 2012. She started her blog, Cooked by Julie, to share her passion for food and cooking with others.
Julie also enjoys surfing, traveling, reading, poker (she won a ladies poker tournament in Atlantic City not too long ago), skiing, and lying on the beach until the sun goes down, preferably with some sushi and white wine.
Liz Berg is the founder, recipe developer, and photographer behind That Skinny Chick Can Bake food blog.
Liz is a skinny chick with a penchant for baking and three grown, yet still always hungry kids, a chocoholic hubby, plus an energetic pup who excels at crumb removal. As a confident, self-taught baker, she offers a plethora of knowledge, along with plenty of recipes for bakers and wannabes to peruse and enjoy.
Liz's love of baking started in her teens with the tattered Better Homes and Gardens cookbook from her childhood kitchen. When she married that chocoholic many years later, she began to perfect her baking skills by creating decadent desserts and dabbling with food styling.
Liz launched her food blog in 2010 to share recipes and tips with friends and fellow foodies across the world.
Maria Vannelli is a self-taught baker, cook, writer and photographer sharing simple, family-friendly recipes at She Loves Biscotti food blog.
Maria likes to say she does not have a professional background as baker, cook, writer or photographer. She’s just a gal, living in Montreal, married (same amazing guy for 33 years!), mother of two awesome kids (no longer kids but still awesome) and most recently a grandmother. When she’s not talking about food, she’s either making it, eating it, sharing it or thinking about it.
By training, Maria is a professional dietitian. She also had the privilege of being born to Italian immigrants, so you knowfood is important to her!
You might say that her obsession with food is what motivated her to obtain a degree from McGill University. She graduated all the way back in 1987 with a Science Degree and a specialization in Dietetics. But that's not all! As a registered dietitian, Maria wanted to specialize in geriatric nutrition and in 1992, she completed a Certificate in Gerontology from Université de Montréal.
Throughout her career as a registered dietitian, Maria has worked in different geriatric institutions. She just recently retired as food service manager of an acute care hospital and four geriatric centers.
Maria’s mom was her inspiration and the reason she cooks and bakes. Following the sudden loss of her mother, Maria created the blog to document her mom's recipes. Along the way, she began to share some of her own favorites. She Loves Biscottiis about sharing simple, well balanced, family-friendly recipes that range from the traditional Italian dishes of Maria’s youth to modern twists on the classics, all using fresh, seasonal ingredients.
Maria's daughter, Sara, has helped with editing and proofreading posts since the blog's conception in 2014. Sara's ideas and insights about recipes, as well as her ongoing support and encouragement, have greatly contributed to the blog's success.
Maria hopes the simplicity of her recipes and the use of quality ingredients will inspire you to bring your loved ones closer together at meal times and empower you to create memorable moments around great food.
Lindsay Moe is a freelance food photographer, video editor, and blogger at The Live-In Kitchen.
Lindsay started blogging in 2011 as a stay-at-home mom looking for something to do. She has since turned it into a business that is able to help support her family.
Lindsay taught herself how to cook by experimenting with recipes she found in cookbooks and food blogs. After becoming a flexible vegetarian in 2012, she became passionate about creating meatless meals that were fun and delicious using every day ingredients.
When Lindsay isn’t in the kitchen you can find her homeschooling her four children or hiking the bluffs of the Driftless Region.
Andrew Wilder is founder and owner of Nerd Press (formerly Blog Tutor), a full service website support platform for food bloggers and entrepreneurs.
Since 1998, Andrew Wilder has successfully combined his passions for food and technology by helping professional food bloggers and entrepreneurs build, repair and maintain their websites.
Andrew is also founder and creator of the popular food blog Eating Rules and the annual October Unprocessed challenge, which has helped more than 30,000 people change their lives by cutting out processed food.
Andrew is a noted expert in both the culinary and technical fields, having spoken on a variety of topics for conferences such as WordCamp LAX, the International Association of Culinary Professionals, Food & Wine, Techmunch, BlogHer, and BlogHer Food. He has been profiled in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Eating Well Magazine.
Though he geeks out on technology (and has even contributed to WordPress Core), Andrew’s clients love that he communicates using “real people” language, not confusing jargon and tech-speak.
Andrew is a proud Eagle Scout, and lives in Santa Monica, California with his husband Matty.
Danielle Wolter loves to learn about new cuisines and flavors and to incorporate them into her cooking. She and her boyfriend share a passion for traveling (when she has time) both internationally and domestically in search of new dishes. She is always learning new techniques, using new products and trying new ingredients in the service of creating new recipes from scratch or inspired by ideas from reading cookbooks.
Danielle has a bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance, an MBA and is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). She manages the accounting and finance departments at a private company during the day, and works on her blog during evenings and weekends.
In her free time, Danielle loves to binge Netflix, nap and take long road trips in the country.
Emily Kemp shares her passion for Italian cooking on her food blog, Inside the Rustic Kitchen. She loves cooking authentic and traditional recipes as well as putting her own spin on the old classics. Emily's goal is to make her blog a ‘go to’ index of those glorious Italian recipes you can always trust to taste delicious and truly work.
Emily and Nathan lived in Italy for five years, steeped in Italian culture, history, language, (fabulous!) weather and of course, FOOD.
Emily also works as a food photographer creating beautiful images for other food blogs and a virtual assistant helping bloggers create SEO-friendly content.
The focus of Toni Dash's blog, Boulder Locavore, is easy recipes that are achievable regardless of one’s experience in the kitchen. Whether for busy moms or busy single professionals, she believes good food should not have to take hours to make.
Being an intrepid traveler with a serious case of wanderlust, much of Toni’s food inspiration comes from her experiences on the road, which she loves to bring home and share with her readers in freshly developed recipes. Toni also loves sharing tips, tricks and shortcuts from her kitchen.
All the recipes on Boulder Locavore gluten-free, whether naturally so or integrating favorite gluten-free products Toni uses herself. Not liking to turn anyone away from her table, the recipes which are not naturally gluten-free include a gluten-free option.
Boulder Locavore began out of Toni's experiment to see if she could exist over a Colorado winter, sourcing all her protein and produce from within a 100-mile radius. She succeeded and, in the process, discovered surprising local resources for obtaining winter food, as well as new ways of keeping food she would not have found without her dedicated quest. After many requests to share her findings, Toni started Boulder Locavore as a repository for information and resources.
As part of the early days of Boulder Locavore Toni began sharing seasonal recipes. When eating seasonally, the ingredients are the star attraction and the recipe follows. Readers all over the United States and the world began to follow those recipes which shaped the direction of Boulder Locavore to what it is today.
Toni lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband, two kids and Clementine, her English Bulldog.
After getting married in the summer of 2012, Dina Polyashov took a three-month break from college, which gave her a lot of time to learn and experiment with cooking. She dove deep into cook books and food blogs and discovered how fun cooking could be. It amazed her how only a few ingredients could come together and become such delicious food!
Shortly after giving birth to her first baby, she published her first blog post. From there Dina continued developing recipes and photos for her blog despite all the challenges that came with her second pregnancy, and having her energetic toddler running around while she worked.
With her easy to follow step-by-step photo recipes, Dina hopes she can inspire other new cooks to discover how simple and rewarding cooking can be.
Nicknamed by her older brother before she could walk and, a few moons later, still called “Binky" for better or for worse, Beth "Binky" Neels loves to cook. Any kind of cooking! From baking to canning to back yard parties, you name it! She styled her blog a Carnivalbecause the name reflects an appropriate conglomeration of treats.
Beth received her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in ornamental horticulture and she uses her knowledge of plants to grow a plethora of great fruits and vegetables. She starts her plants in January and February so that by planting time in May, she has huge plants that produce fruits within their first month in the ground. This gives her a tremendous jump on the season, which you can see for yourself in her blog's “Farm To Table” section.
Beth's "boys" - her husband and 2 sons - love to hunt and the whole family loves to fish. (Beth can out fish the guys on a good day! ) Beth devotes an entire section of her blog to “Field To Table” recipes that are made with the fresh ingredients for which the family hunts and fishes.
Beth answers the age old question, “What’s for dinner?” with unique and fresh recipes, many of them old favorites with a healthier spin and lots of them Beth's original creations.
Tanya Harris is an attorney who started her food blog, My Forking Life, as a hobby in 2016. Her goal is to provide her readers with quick and easy meals that are full of flavor. She wants everyone, even busy people, to be able to cook more often at home.
Tanya posts a lot of gadget recipes, pressure cooker and air fryer recipes, because these have helped her get dinner on the table quickly. She has increased her blog traffic to over 100,000 page views in just a few months by providing her readers with content they need and enjoy.
In her (limited!) free time, Tanya enjoys watching old episodes of Julia Child and Jacques Pepin.
Dawn Coombsis a girl that hearts food, aka the blogger behind Girl Heart Food. There’s always something delicious cooking in her home because she and her husband love to cook and eat. As soon as one meal is over, Dawn is thinking about what the next meal will be. The philosophy behind her blog is simple– ‘Eat Well. Cook with Love. Make your Belly Happy.’
Most of the recipes you’ll find on Girl Heart Food are healthy, while others are indulgent (because she LOVES cheese). But the main thing is that the recipes are easy and delicious!
Dawn loves using simple ingredients, that are easily accessible and relatively budget friendly so that people can prepare fuss-free meals that their families will love. In her kitchen, you’ll always find cheese, butter, garlic, onions and pantry staples like beans and lentils. One of her favorite quotes by Julia Child is, "If you’re afraid of butter, use cream." That one always puts a smile on her face.
Cooking is such a passion for Dawn and being in the kitchen is a happy place. She loves how there’s always something new to learn and try...and having fun along the way!
Dawn enjoys all types of cuisine, but one of her hands down favorite meals is her mother’s turkey dinner with buttery mash, dressing, gravy and all the delicious sides. There’s something so special about that meal and no one can make it like her mother. Her husband makes a mean Bolognese with homemade pasta that she absolutely loves too. Give her pasta with a glass of wine and a hunk of crusty bread and she’s one happy lady!
When Dawn is not testing and preparing recipes for Girl Heart Food, she loves to bake bread just for the pure joy of it. Her grandfather was a baker and she has fond memories of visiting his bakery after school when she was quite young. The smell of freshly baked bread takes her back to those happy times.
When she isn’t cooking you can find her working out, spending time with her family and reading mystery novels.
Born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, Michelle Lettrich stumbled across a food blog for the first time in February of 2007. Living at a distance from friends and family and feeling cabin fever that winter, starting a blog of her own seemed like a perfect outlet for combining her love of baking and her love of writing. Before she became a full-time blogger, Michelle worked as a marketing analyst.
Michelle is entirely self-taught when it comes to the kitchen, learning as she goes through cookbooks, magazines, television shows, the Internet, and a tremendous amount of trial and error. When she's in the kitchen, she tries to channel the confidence of her grandma, who baked by feel; her hands knew when dough was ready and she never second-guessed herself.
Michelle strives to pass that confidence along to her followers, too!
Michelle loves chocolate, cheesecake, and cheesy dips. When she's not in the kitchen covered in flour, she loves watching sports, lacing up her ice hockey skates, obsessing over my fantasy football team, playing a rousing game of 500 Bid, or spending time with her husband and three kids.
Kankana Saxena's craving for food started while she was traveling a lot for her job and so, at a much later stage in life than most bloggers. Visiting those many different places, meeting new people, eating together with them and sharing stories worked some kind of magic on her appetite. Eventually, she surprised herself and her family when she realized that cooking was the stress-buster she was looking for!
Kankana's Playful Cooking blog came into existence eight years ago. She had moved to US after marrying the love of her life. Back then, her visa didn’t allow her to work. But this turned out to be a blessing in disguise because that’s how the blog started. Since then, the blog has been featured on several websites including Saveur, Huffington Post Taste, BuzzFeed Food, The Kitchn and eHow.
Kankana also collaborates with different food brands to create recipes and photograph their products.
Kankana’s blog covers a mix of cuisines from all around the world but her native Bengali cuisine has always been closest to her heart. Through her cookbook, Taste of Eastern India, she shares various Bengali dishes, from street food to daily meals and from the most popular to some long-lost dishes. She hopes to bring more awareness to this vibrant cuisine through her book!
Sonja Overhiser is a dreamer and a doer, and author of the cookbook Pretty Simple Cooking, named one of the “best vegetarian cookbooks” by Epicurious. A professional writer and recipe developer, her vegetable forward recipes are inspired by seasonal produce and adventures traveling the globe everywhere from Mexico to the Mediterranean. Fueled by her passion for connecting people with recipes and information on how to learn to cook, she and her husband Alex founded the popular food blog A Couple Cooks, where they advocate for a healthy approach to cooking, celebrate creativity and connection, and champion the power of gatherings to bring us together.
Sonja also hosts the A Couple Cooks Podcast, featuring interviews with leading authors, chefs, entrepreneurs, and food personalities.
Sonja has developed recipes and acted as on screen host for videos for a long list of national brands including ALDI, Stonyfield, and Kroger. Featured everywhere from the TODAY Show to Oprah to Bon Appetit, Sonja seeks to inspire adventurous eating to make the world a better place one bite at a time.
Sonja is passionate about community, unity, and empowering women entrepreneurs. She speaks at events empowering women in business and is co-founder of Indy Women in Food, an organization to support women working in the food industry in Indianapolis. You’ll find her also geeking out about mentorship, creativity, sustainability, food access, and social justice.
Mama to an adventurous and food loving toddler Larson, Sonja lives in Indianapolis with her husband Alex. Her obsessions include craft coffee, farmer’s markets, B Corps, rosé, the Mediterranean, good conversation, and making the world a better place. Her favorite phrase is, "Pitch me your good idea, and let’s make it happen."
Katie Webster is a free-lance recipe developer, food photographer and blogger at Healthy Seasonal Recipes, where she specializes in healthy, locally sourced cuisine. She is a culinary school graduate, studied art and photography at Skidmore College and is a contributing editor at EatingWell Magazine.
Katie is also the author and photographer of the cookbook Maple, 100 Sweet and Savory Recipes Featuring Pure Maple Syrup,by Quirk Books. She lives in Vermont with her husband and two sassy daughters.
In her free time, Katie attempts to maintain an ambitiously large garden and teaches fitness classes.
Dr. Karen S Lee's journey to healthy cooking, eating and living began with the birth of her first child. As a mom, Dr. Lee found herself paying much closer attention to the foods she prepared and fed to her family, as well as the many ways her lifestyle was affecting her family's health. Years of positive experiences with her chiropractor and the tangible benefits of those treatments led Dr. Lee to enter the field herself to make a difference in the health and happiness of others.
As a holistic practitioner with a Doctor of Chiropractic degree, Dr. Lee treated patients and their various ailments with standard chiropractic care, acupuncture, nutrition therapy and general wellness coaching. Dr. Lee believes many illnesses can be reversed through proper diet, supplements, and stress management protocols.
Eventually, Dr. Lee left her successful practice to be a full time support to her family, but her learning journey continued as she pursued a healthier lifestyle and confronted her children's increasing health challenges. Today, she shares her knowledge on her website and works to build a community among like-minded people who would rather focus on prevention than sickness.
Dr. Lee is retired and an Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Fellow. You can find her blogging about holistic health, real food recipes (mostly allergy friendly), and natural living tips on her website Dr Karen S Lee
Dr. Lee's first cookbook, Paleo Cooking with Your Air Fryer: 80+ Recipes for Healthier Fried Food in Less Time, was released in October of 2018. Her next cookbook, Keto Cooking with Your Instant Pot,is scheduled to be published in January of 2019.
Elaine Benoit started blogging in the summer of 2015, shortly before she turned 53 years old. (It's never too late too succeed!)She is a firm believer in marching to the beat of her own drum and letting life be what it will be.
Elaine launched the Dishing with Delishes podcast in the fall of 2017 to help her fellow food bloggers feel a sense of community and grow their businesses. The podcast features successful food bloggers and business people with expertise relevant to food and lifestyle blogging.
Elaine loves to cook, loves to eat and loves a good cocktail, preferably a Grey Goose, dirty martini!
Katie Trant is a university-trained nutritionist with a Bachelor of Science in Food, Nutrition, and Health and Master of Science in Nutrition. She's passionate about real food, a champion of body positivity and intuitive eating, and a meal-planning, lunch-packing whiz. Hey Nutrition Lady is where Katie leans in on her science background and uses critical thinking to help sift through the enormous amount of misinformation and pseudoscience when it comes to nutrition. Her mission is to help people make informed decisions about what to eat in order to become their healthiest, happiest selves, all the while providing easy and delicious vegetarian recipes for everyone. A native of Vancouver, Canada, Katie currently lives in Stockholm, Sweden with her husband and two boys.
Annie Chesson loves one pot meals, photography, healthy food that tastes unhealthy, Sunday mornings, jeans and t-shirts, and her German Shepherd/Lab, Boone. In love with Fall and Christmas she is in constant bliss from mid September to December 26th.
Annie says she could spend all day watching Ree Drummond and The Kitchen rather than doing anything remotely productive. She is (maybe more than) slightly addicted to cooking. Her brain is constantly thinking of new recipes, how to lighten up existing recipes, and images of melty (which apparently isn’t a word, but it should be) cheese and creamy pasta.
You could probably find Annie right now at her home in Manhattan, Kansas hangin’ out with her baby, whipping up something for dinner, or thinking of random recipe ideas and scrawling them into a note on her iPhone before she forgets.
Annie is mom to an adorable baby boy - with a second little guy scheduled to arrive in early December, 2018 - and wife to her all time favorite taste tester.
Rizwan Asad is a self-taught baker, expert eater, and sometimes writer currently living in Toronto, Canada. You’ll relate to him if you value a good home cooked meal. For him, the kitchen is a place for warm memories, a place to make new stories.
Riz has been a student of many things and a resident of many places. Ask him where he’s from to hear him weave a story of a mischievous childhood, delectable food, and exotic places.
All you really need to know is that he studied at Hogwarts. No, seriously!
Riz's blog, Chocolates & Chai, is for lovers of comfort food, dessert, and brunch. Inspired by international cuisine, the blog is all about finding the love and the story behind every meal.
Initially created to share recipes with friends and family living around the world, the blog quickly grew a following—a devoted crowd of besties, and even got its own mascot—Hootie, the grumpy, ever-sleepy owl!
Natasha Bull grew up in a home where her Czech mom cooked everything from scratch. She developed a keen interest in cooking by watching her mom, but strangely enough, that same childhood experience did not rub off on her younger sister. Natasha picked up enough tips and tricks from her mom that she felt prepared to feed herself after moving out on her own when she finished university. Other domestic tasks? Not so much. In the years since, Natasha has been honing her cooking and recipe development skills.
Natasha regularly read food blogs for a couple of years prior to starting Salt & Lavender in 2015. One day she decided that if others can do it, so could she! She had always dreamed of starting her own business, and this was the perfect opportunity. The thought of having to learn how to photograph food well held her back for quite some time, but now it’s one of her favorite things about food blogging.
Natasha’s blog is all about wholesome recipes that are (mostly) made from scratch and simple to prepare. Juggling the blog, a full-time job, a husband, and two cats has helped Natasha narrow her focus to easy recipes that can be made on a weeknight.
You can almost always find garlic, Kalamata olives, butter leaf lettuce, lemons, fresh herbs, and Greek yogurt in Natasha’s kitchen. She wishes you could also always find steak there.
When Natasha isn’t testing a recipe or photographing food, you can find her exploring warmer places (she calls Edmonton, Canada home) or thinking about what she’s going to eat for her next meal.
Betty Davies's blog, Slow the Cook Down, is about taking life down a notch—stopping to enjoy the smell wafting from the roast chicken you just pulled from the oven. Here, there’s no reason to hurry or stress; dinner will get done and it will be delicious! Instead, pour a glass of wine and settle in to try something new.
Raised in a traditional English home, Betty grew up with a weekly Sunday lunch of roasted meat and potatoes and all the trimmings. It was a time when the family sat down together, caught up on the week and had a glass of wine. (Well, her parents did anyway!)
Now, all grown up, Betty does Sunday (and every day) her own way; taking it slow, cooking up something delicious, glass of wine in hand. She cooks for the pleasure of it, the chance to experiment, and the opportunity to try something new. There’s nothing subtle about her food. It’s big-flavor cooking with real personality. A lot like Betty!
Now living in Toronto with her husband and cat, Rufus, Betty loves discovering all the tastes that Canada has to offer, whilst bringing that bit of British tradition into the mix. Slow The Cook Down is a destination for cooks who truly love to cook. From the easy, everyday meals with added flare to the pull-out-all-the-stops Sunday suppers.
Amanda Batcher firmly believes life is all about balance: eat a salad, but enjoy some bacon along with it! A lifelong Midwest resident, she knows down-home, comfort food. Her recipes usually include a touch of decadence, and she is fond of incorporating bourbon or beer in her recipes as well!
When she’s not in the kitchen, you’ll find Amanda behind a camera, reading, and spending quality time with her husband and two children.
Sarah Newman's wide variety of experiences - from building and selling her own food blog to project management to copywriting to digital marketing - all set the stage for her to now be the business manager for the successful, healthy living site Root + Revel.
Sarah's newest passion project, Radically Radiant Life, is a podcast and community dedicated to supporting women in living their most authentic lives through self love and embracing their unique gifts.
Sarah's favorite things include the beach, cats, traveling the world and anything related to personal development and healthy living.
Links to Root + Revel posts mentioned in this interview:
- Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers: 10 Strategies to Increase Your Income
- Income Report: How I Made $75,000 Blogging in Year 2
Shadi HasanzadeNemati is a food writer, photographer and recipe developer who has an endless love for good food and sharing it with everyone. Through cooking and sharing recipes, Shadi tries to cherish the rich history of her culture's cuisine and memories she made before immigrating to the US.
Being a former English teacher and IT engineer, Shadi always had a strong passion for cooking and baking from a very young age and used to spend a lot of time in the Kitchen with her mother as she worked her magic through rose and saffron aromas. She was born and raised in Tehran, Iran and lived in Turkey for three years, then moved to the USA in 2015 after marrying her husband and now resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Shadi started her business, Unicorns in the Kitchen to share her enthusiasm for food with the world and introduce homemade Persian, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisines to people who are interested in trying new cuisines and flavors.
In her free time, Shadi usually reads cookbooks, takes a long walk and watches movies. She enjoys spending time with her family and friends and trying new and interesting restaurants.
Shadi published her first cookbook, The Enchantingly Easy Persian Cookbook, in December 2016. She is also featured in different publications such as Allrecipes Magazine (June/July 2018) and writes regularly for Food52. She has also held a cooking demonstration and a dinner party at Harvard University.
Casey Markee believes that good SEO rankings are all about one word: content. Through his company Media Wyse, Casey helps food bloggers and site owners optimize content and find the best sites to strengthen backlink profiles. Casey helps generate blog content that attracts substantial traffic, as demonstrated by his dozens of link bait and infographic content pieces ranking at the top of Google organic search results in many different niches.
Casey's main specialty is conducting site audits, with an eye towards unraveling Google algorithmic penalty triggers, specifically: Usability, Panda, Penguin, and unnatural link identification and pruning issues. He has done hundreds of penalty site audits and has as many satisfied clients.
Casey is also an accomplished, industry-recognized public speaker with conference credits including: MN Search Summit, SearchFest, SMX Advanced, Pubcon, Food Bloggers Canada, State of Search, and others.
His true love lies in the professional SEO & Social Media training he provides through SearchEngineNews.com that has allowed him to personally train hundreds of individual digital marketers and dozens of in-house SEO teams on five different continents.
SEO Myth Buster In this episode, Casey busts the following SEO Myths: 1. Everyone should do video or they won't stay relevant 2. If a big blogger is implementing something, then I should too 3. The more I publish, the better off I am and Google will love me 4. Having my site redesigned will boost my readership 5. 404s are bad for my site 6. Everyone should have an AMP version of their site 7. Domain authority is crucial in algorithmic calculations 8. Bounce rate and dwell time are important to Google 9. Google ranks for exact keyword matching and focus keywords 10. When I republish a post, I should change my URLs to match the new title 11. Structured date is a factor that Google ranks for 12. Don't use Jump to Recipeor Print to Recipebecause they lower revenue 13. The more words you use in your post, the better Google likes it 14. Sliders are user friendly and Google loves them
Jas Brechtl is a Bosnian expat who has been living in Northern Indiana since the summer of 1998, following a six-year exile in Germany. She is writer, cook, photographer, and an avid cheesecake lover.
Jas grew up in a traditional European family, the kind of family that sits together for big weekend lunches. Those lunches always began with some kind of soup. It isn’t a big lunch unless you begin it with a spoon.
Based on her blog now, you’d never know that as a child Jas barely ate. Food didn’t interest her in the least and actually disgusted her. She would eat enough just to survive, and even then it would be just a few things such as bread and soup….rather, broth. And there better not be anything floating in it or she wouldn’t touch it.
Jas suffered from anorexia throughout her childhood, but not because she had issues with her weight. It wasn't that she didn’t WANT to eat food, she just physically couldn’t. She never actually felt hungry.
This promptly changed when Jas became pregnant with her daughter. Today she believes that pregnancy hormones changed something within her body, which in turn affected her metabolism. Suddenly, she found herself ravenously hungry and loving everything. Soon after that, the war in Bosnia started, and now that she wanted to eat, there was no food. Everything was scarce, and meatless bean soup (grah) would be the family's only meal for many days in a row.
Still, Jas was changed. She vowed that once her family escaped the war, food would be her medicine. She started experimenting with flavors; her daughter was her guinea pig for many new creations.
The seed was planted and Jas's American Dream realized once she was able to pursue blogging full-time from home. Now her family finds Jas in the kitchen most of the day. It's her happy place and her escape.
There are so many dishes in other countries you would never try if you didn't travel. Traveling somewhere new opens your eyes and your taste buds to a whole new range of authentic flavor profiles and foods that you wouldn’t otherwise experience.
Jas believes the kitchen is a place where you can travel to any country without ever having to leave your house.
Gloria Duggan comes from a Ukrainian background, where the women of the house spent many hours cooking to feed their families. Growing up in a large family, get-togethers meant even more food. And of course all of it was homemade!! Everyone had her specialty dish and the combination of those dishes made yummy meals.
Constantly having such wonderful foods to eat fueled Gloria's enthusiasm for cooking and today she takes pleasure in cooking wonderful, pleasing meals for family and friends.
Over time Gloria created her own style, founded her own kitchen traditions and developed recipes that her family asks for again and again. She is not a trained chef, but rather an inspired and passionate home cook who isn’t afraid of trying new things. Experimenting with new flavors and spices, different wines and cheeses, exotic fruits and vegetables is very exciting to her and her family.
Gloria hopes to inspire those who fear the kitchen to relax and try something new. Cooking doesn’t have to be difficult or complicated. In fact sometimes simple is best. You might even surprise yourself and find you really like a food you wouldn’t even consider trying before.
Gloria's philosophy is: Food doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does have to taste good!
Brian Jones is from Birmingham, England. In 2008, he and his wife moved to rural Hungary with designs of growing food, brewing wine and living the good life. Krumpli is just one manifestation of that journey.
After becoming disillusioned with commercial photography, Brian launched Krumpli in 2015 as a way to combine two passions: food and taking pictures.
Brian's site is the representation of his love of food from around the globe, largely grown on his own two and a half acres. Dedicated to food with no restrictions, he is a firm believer that food should make you happy in the belly. If that means more butter, goose fat or cream, then so be it!
Don’t expect too many desserts though! Brian's dessert recipes come along maybe two or three times a year!
Brian describes himself as a reluctant blogger because, for him, writing and promotion are secondary to the food and the photography. However, he recognizes that all of these components are necessary for a food blog to be successful.
Sarah Trenalone created Champagne Tastes as a resource for anyone wants to use/eat fewer processed foods, explore fermentation, and/or eat outdoors. Her recipes support a healthier, greener, more homegrown lifestyle. Expect to see lots of vegetables and seafood, along with a little bourbon.
Champagne Tastes recently expanded from a recipes-only site to include tutorials on bourbon, fermentation, glamping (glamour camping), and even hiking the Grand Canyon. Some of Sarah's most popular guides include "How to Make Kombucha," "How to Drink Bourbon," and "Honeysuckle Simple Syrup."
Sarah and her husband live near the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, and together they enjoy bourbon tasting, hiking in the National Parks, and wine tasting in Italy.
Sarah's kitchen is always overflowing with fermentation science experiments and her windowsills house her ever-growing orchid collection.
Erin Parker has been blogging since May of 2011. Being in the kitchen makes her so happy that she turns to it whenever she finds herself stressed. Erin believes that from-scratch recipes are the best kind of recipes and strives to develop dishes that are friendly to folks who don’t have all day to spend in the kitchen but who also don’t mind taking the time to make a delicious, homemade meal.
A few of Erin's favorite things:
- Fresh, seasonal ingredients because they simply taste better.
- Not only that, but they’re more affordable!
- Simple entertaining.
- Hosting friends to watch a game or to hang out over dinner totally counts as entertaining and should be done more often.
- Enjoying good food.
- Her blog strives to strike a balance between the sweet and savory, decadent and healthy, and a little bit of everything in between.
- Spinning classic recipes into something a little more interesting.
- No offense to the classics—they’re classics for a reason, obviously, but Erin loves to make them new and exciting, while still reminding us why we adore that recipe.
- Cooking and baking, her language of love.
- Erin has no qualms about inviting friends over for dinner on a random Tuesday two hours before the food hits the table. In fact, it makes her exceedingly happy.
- Developing and finding recipes that everyone, including friends with dietary restrictions, can enjoy without worry.
The Speckled Palate is named after the family dog, Lucy, and her actual speckled palate. It is a nod to everything Erin loves in the culinary space, including eclectic recipes that highlight her favorite fresh flavors and that can easily feed a crowd.
Like any good Southerner, Erin Parker likes meals with a heaping side of conversation. Gather 'round her table, and talk tasty, whole food dishes!
Years of juggling a full-time job, commuting, kiddos, and caring for her disabled mother taught Sarah Cook some Jedi-like multi-tasking skills. She started blogging in 2010 under the name Frugal by Choice, Cheap by Necessityto share her love of healthy cooking, gardening, and DIY with the masses.
Over the years Sarah has made it her mission to help busy people and families find room in their lives for cooking real food. Sarah believes in meeting people where they are and encouraging baby steps to a healthier and more sustainable life. She hopes each post gives readers the confidence to think, "Hey, I can do that!"
Sarah believes few things can't be fixed with delicious food, an authentic voice, and plenty of snark.
Kate Hackworthy founded her website, Veggie Desserts, as a place to share recipes for desserts created with vegetables (Hello, Kale and Apple Cake!). Her work quickly gained international press attention and a year after she started, she began winning awards. This led to a monthly national magazine column and in 2017 she released her debut cookbook, Veggie Desserts and Cakes. The blog has since branched out to include vegetarian and vegan meals.
Kate was born in Canada and moved to the UK in her late teens. Her previous career was in marketing and project management for a media company; releasing operas, ballets and documentaries on DVD. She also co-authored a travel book about London, wrote freelance bar and restaurant reviews for magazines and lived in a narrowboat.
Kate is a mum to two small children. She tries to give them healthy, fresh food. Her love of vegetable desserts started with the cake she made for her son’s first birthday. It was to be his first taste of chocolate, and although she wasn’t going to begrudge him that, she wanted it to be a bit better for him. After a few trials, his birthday vegetable cake was ready: one layer of chocolate beetroot and one layer of chocolate butternut squash. It wasn’t exactly healthy, but it was a big step up from a shop-bought cake.
Thus began Kate's love of vegetable cakes!
Since then, she's had ups (parsnip and lavender cupcakes) and downs (beetroot custard… shudder), but there is one certainty: no vegetables ever rot in her fridge. If they don’t make it to the main course, they will make it to dessert. Kate buys organic and local as often as she can. She'd to grow more of her own beloved vegetables but her attempts have been rather poor so far: she spends a lot of time growing slug buffets.
Today Kate lives in a house on land in Somerset where most mornings she scrapes weetabix off the floor. Oh! And she bakes, bakes, bakes all sorts of vegetable cake. While her little ones play, Kate clatters about the kitchen divining new concoctions.
Kimberly and Johnathan Vargo met in 2001 while working at a restaurant in Northwest Arkansas. From day one, the couple dreamed about a future together working with food. They married in August 2002 and within a few years they both left the food service industry. In 2009, the family moved to Miami and for the next nine years, lived in various locations throughout Florida.
In November 2015, Kim started Berly’s Kitchen as a backup plan. She and John were both facing health issues and wanted to have an alternative source of income should one of them become unable to work at a traditional job. One year later, in November 2016, John became too ill to work his day job and left to join Kim at Berly’s Kitchen. In late 2017, the couple expanded Berly’s Kitchen from a food and recipe blog to a photography and videography service for other bloggers.
In January 2018, Kim also left her job to pursue blogging full time and in March, the family returned to Northwest Arkansas.
When they aren’t working on the blog, you’ll find John and Kim playing video games, working out at the gym, and spending time with their 14-yr. old son, Kale.
Husband and wife, Chris and Nicky Corbishley founded popular food blog Kitchen Sanctuary and business blogger resource Living the Blog to share with others their love of food and their success in business.
Nicky After Nicky Corbishley took her college degree in computer science, she went straight into the corporate world, where she spent the next 14 years, most recently as a disaster recovery manager in the IT department of a pharma company.
During that time, she met Chris (at work), they dated, got married, and had two children. As they advanced in their careers, the Corbishleys found it more and more difficult to juggle their professional responsibilities and spend time together as a family. Nicky also wanted to do something more creative with her life.
That opportunity came at the end of 2013, when Nicky took a voluntary layoff package that allowed her to figure out another career without worrying about money for a while. By this time, she had already started tinkering in creative writing and blogging. When she left her job in June 2014, she'd decided she was going to focus her energies on turning Kitchen Sanctuary into a business.
Nicky chose to blog about food because it was (and still is!) her passion. She’d been cooking family dinners since the age of 11, and she always found pleasure in cooking and eating. Her kitchen is her sanctuary (hence the blog's name). Cooking and baking were her way to de-stress after a long day.
Nicky's first blog earnings came in September 2014 – £25.14 from ad revenue. It took until March 2015 to get her first piece of freelance work ($50 per recipe)! From there, her momentum and income continued to build to the point that, in June 2017, Chris was also able to leave his corporate job and join her.
Chris Like Nicky, Chris went straight into IT after college; technical support initially (which Nik has always taken full advantage of for Kitchen Sanctuary!), moving up until his last role as programme manager of a global team.
Always a bit of a tech geek, Chris first taught Nik how to use his digital camera for her food, and then, when time allowed, he started doing some photography. When Nik decided to move into food videos, Chris took on the videography and editing.
Around this time, Chris was growing restless at work and looking for a new challenge. The demand for video was increasing, and Nik was getting crazy busy (especially after winning the Neff cookaholics competition). She'd been badgering him to come and work with her and it had been fun working on the videos. So, after much discussion and planning, Chris finally took the plunge and left his corporate job.
Chris says it's been a huge change for him to go from a senior management role with a global team to self employment. He's still getting used to it, but he loves the many perks, like:
- Being able to work in sweatpants
- Getting to watch you-tube videos and calling it research
- Playing with cameras
- Getting the barbecue going on a Tuesday lunchtime, just because
- Oh, and getting to spend all day with his beautiful wife!
Tina Dawson is the creator behind the newly-vegan-food-blog, Love Is in My Tummy: a collection of recipes, visual storytelling and memories for those who desire unique inspiration in the kitchen(thinkBaked Churro Eclairs, Fried Gingerbread Cookies, Herbal Chocolate Tea, Truffle Lentil Curry). Her community views food as more than just sustenance; it's a bridge that connects civilizations and cultures throughout time and and it shapes all life.
Tina was born and raised in a close-knit Indo-Burmese home where all conversations revolved around food. Incredibly, everyone in her family cooks, watches cooking shows most of the day, collects cookbooks and spends every four hours plotting their next meal. In 2017, Tina transitioned to a vegan diet and this year, she's working hard on a reduced waste lifestyle.
Having fallen irrevocably in love with photography and styling of the particularly dark and moody persuasion, she is now re-branding herself as a creative director of visual storytelling.
Tina enjoys creating elevated dining experiences around food. On weekends, you'll find her either lugging a backpack full of food to the North Georgia mountains, sourcing vintage props or working in her new garden.
Zainab Storms is a baker, home chef, neuroscientist, world traveler, and mom.
Born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Zainab didn’t grow up baking with her mother or grandmother. In fact, she had never baked before 2012 when she decided to bake a heart-shaped cake for her then-fiancé on Valentine’s Day. (Romantic right?)
She says, "It was an organized disaster!"
For Zainab, baking began as a grad-school hobby, a way to de-stress and express her creativity while earning a Ph.D. in neuroscience. She enjoyed experimenting with new recipes and techniques and quickly realized that, with a bit of experience and background knowledge, putting her unique spin on the recipes she loved was simple and rewarding.
Now, there’s nothing she enjoys more than being spontaneous in the kitchen, guided by instincts and curiosity.
Zainab loves sharing recipes inspired by her travels and her favorite flavors and showing her readers how to relax and tune into their own intuition in the kitchen.
Nora Schlesinger life shifted drastically after a series of digestive ailments forced her to completely change the way she cooks and eats. Eliminating staples foods like gluten (wheat), dairy, processed foods, and refined sugars was the easy part. The hard part was figuring out what was still on the menu, particularly when it came to dessert.
Nora packs a major sweet tooth and was not willing to give up her beloved treats entirely. She searched the internet for recipes and tips, but since her diet didn’t cleanly align with anything already established, it was impossible to find recipes that didn’t require heavy adaptation, if the right recipe existed at all.
That's when she started creating her own.
After sharing her sweet and savory “clean” creations with friends and family to glowing reviews, Nora realized how many others out there could benefit from her recipes.
Nora knows firsthand how alienating it is to be the only person at the table not eating the same food as your friends and family, or, worse: sitting in front of an empty plate at dessert! So she launched A Clean Baketo save others with food allergies and intolerances from that experience.
Every recipe on Nora's site, sweet or savory, has been meticulously tested and signed off on by friends and family with and without dietary restrictions and is intended to be shared and enjoyed by everyone at the table, regardless of what they can or can’t eat!
Nora lives, bakes, and eats in Chicago with her husband and son.
Laurie Buckle has more than three decades of experience in food publishing. She held key positions at Bon Appétit, Better Homes & Gardens, and Kitchn. As editor in chief of Fine Cookingmagazine, she successfully redesigned and relaunched the brand. Her passion for storytelling and deep experience in content development inform every project CookIt takes on, from helping an influencer find their true north to helping a brand truly win at social.
Laurie launched CookIt Media in 2014 with the goal of helping influencers create a unique brand strategy — a story that would resonate with a defined audience and set them apart in a saturated market. Wanting to provide those influencers with brand partnerships that fit their specified goals and vision, as well as ongoing brand consulting, CookIt added brand management to their offerings in 2015.
CookIt’s collective expertise in content production led to the creation of the content studio in 2016, which works directly with brands and influencers to create smart, engaging content that elevates their brand and grows their businesses.
Kevin O'Leary was bitten by the cooking bug as a teenager. He went on to work in restaurants and the catering industry but although Life intervened, he never really stepped away from the stove.
Now Kevin lives the cooking life every day, inspired by his international pantry and by his ongoing effort to put a fresh spin on classic recipes.
Kevin founded his food blog, Kevin Is Cooking, in 2014 to share his inspiration and help busy people get that meal on the table. Thrown into the mix are recipes to make health a priority when indulgence calls. At those times when he caves in to his sweet tooth, Kevin shares with neighbors and friends.
In the end, Kevin's story is about one couple’s efforts to eat together despite their different diets. Occasionally, he shares a behind‑the‑scenes view of what it’s like to cook for two people with different dietary needs; one a “big, bold flavors” kind of guy with a sweet tooth (Kevin!) and the other a “big, bold flavors" kind of Type II diabetic (Kevin's partner, Dave).
Kevin is passionate about delicious meals that are sometimes health conscious and sometimes indulgent - because life’s too short to be bland!
Bintu Hardy's diverse taste in food and recipes reflects her adventurous life. A native of Sierra Leone, where she grew up, she received her PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and traveled to remote locations in Africa, working as part of a team to help eliminate river blindness.
Her love of food won out, however, and when she moved with her family to a farm in rural Sussex, she started cooking more and more. Of course, the influences on her life are reflected in her cooking – she moves from the pure West African dishes of her childhood through the diversity of recipes she discovered living in London to recipes utilizing fresh produce from the local English countryside
A self-taught photographer and food stylist, Bintu's work has been featured on various food and lifestyle sites including Superfood Magazine, At Home Magazine, The Guardian Online, Psychologies Magazine and BuzzFeed. She has enjoyed recognition of her work as a runner-up for the Best of Pinterest UK Food Awards and the UK National Blog Awards.
In addition, she was shortlisted for the Red Online African Cookbook Competition.
Bintu’s blog mission is twofold:
- to encourage readers to create exciting dishes from whatever ingredients they can find in their pantries and
- to inspire people to cook both traditional and fusion African recipes.
Inspired by her grandmother, Bintu wants to inspire others in the same way. African cooking can be easy and delicious!
Carrie Forrest is the creator of the Clean Eating Kitchen food blog, where she shares gluten- and dairy-free recipes and resources.
Carrie is also the host of the Clean Eating for Women podcast, designed to inspire women to take control over their health, with a focus on holistic health.
Carrie has masters degrees in both business administration (University of Southern California) and public health nutrition (University of Massachusetts, Amherst). More importantly, she is a woman who has used real food and a balanced lifestyle to manage a variety of health conditions, including PCOS, autoimmune disease, eating disorders, panic attacks, chronic migraines, IBS, and depression. Carrie is also a survivor of thyroid cancer since 2012.
After a journey of many years, today Carrie feels healthy, strong, and vibrant as a result of her intentional food choices. She has put to rest her disordered eating patterns and gained control over a host of health issues. She hopes her struggle and her story inspires others to take control over their health and realize that they have the power to heal themselves and feel better.
Joanie Simon teaches people about food photography through her online platform The Bite Shot, which includes a rapidly growing YouTube channel and a Facebook community. She shares lessons from her kitchen studio, along with wild and crazy glimpses of life with two little boys and her college sweetheart on their “Ranchito” in Arizona.
Among her greatest joys in life is coaching people through the growing pains of learning food photography and seeing them create images they're eager to share with the world.
Joanie left a high-stress job in technology sales to pursue her creative passions in food and photography and can’t wait to help others do the same.
Maya Krampf was born in Russia and moved to the United States when she was five years old. At her day job, she is a senior software engineer. But at home, Maya loves cooking because it satisfies both her inner scientist and her inner creative. She does all her own recipe development, photography, and content creation.
Maya believes that what we put into our bodies plays a huge role in our well-being. Once she started eating unprocessed, low carb food, she noticed a big improvement in her energy levels, mood, mental clarity, and body composition. Since 2010, she has been addicted to experimenting with healthy recipes. She's discovered that they can be just as (if not more) delicious than their decadent counterparts, with the added bonus of improving well-being.
Maya also believes that healthy eating doesn’t have to be boring or time-consuming. Wholesome Yum's 10-ingredient theme plays a large role in demonstrating that.
Wholesome Yum recipes are keto-friendly, paleo-inspired (but do include dairy), low in carbs (especially sugar), free of gluten and preservatives, and packed with simple, natural ingredients. This is how her whole family eats, including her young children.
She offers a FREE low carb recipes e-book on her website.
Maya lives in Minnesota with her husband and two little girls. When she's not busy with work and family, she loves to travel.
There are two things Beth Moncel will readily admit: "I am broke and I love to eat."
- She's not a professional chef... although she's worked in several commercial kitchens.
- She's not a super-mommy homemaker... but gives mad props to all of them out there. (It’s hard enough just taking care of herself!)
- She's not a financial expert... she just happens to be obsessed with numbers.
Beth like to cook because it’s the perfect combination of her two favorite subjects: art and science. She's a former microbiologist with degrees in both Clinical Laboratory Science and Nutritional Science from Louisiana State University.
Beth is not “cheap” because she does appreciate quality; she just likes to be able to have her cake, eat it, AND pay her bills on time.
In short, Beth doesn't believe that eating for pennies a day has to mean eating Ramen Noodles 100 different ways. She created her blog, Budget Bytes, in 2009 in response to her own financial crisis and to document her attempts to cook delicious and (mostly) nutritious food on a small budget.
Beth's mission is twofold: to give confidence to new cooks and to inspire people to learn how to cook and thereby reduce their dependence on the prepared food industry.
Helen Best-Shaw founded her food blog, Fuss Free Flavours in January of 2007 after food shopping one Saturday.
Walking back to her West London flat weighed down with her bargain bounty of fresh fruit and vegetables from the local market - herbs, lentils, pulses and flatbreads from the local Middle Eastern shop - Helen was struck by the number of people carrying bags from the cheap supermarket.
She could see the cheap ready meals and unhealthy food through the thin carrier bags. This led her to consider the definitions of cheap and value, bargains and promotions. She realized that there is a huge difference between eating well cheaply and eating cheap food.
Helen's insight that day was the catalyst for starting her blog. She wanted to share simple recipes for delicious meals that are achievable and affordable. For Helen, the fuss free approach to cooking works best. She does not have a large or grand kitchen and will often write about the effort-to-glory ratio; that is, dishes that are impressive but, when you know a few tricks, are very easy to prepare.
Her simple mantra for fuss free food and healthy eating is, “Eat a generous portion of (raw) vegetables with every meal whenever you can.”
If you can follow that rule 80% of the time, as well as the wise words of Michael Pollan, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” you cannot go too far wrong.
Helen loves great quality meat, fish and dairy as well as cakes, puddings and other treats. She simply prefers to eat and enjoy them in moderation.
Since its early days, Helen has grown and developed Fuss Free Flavours to include recipe development; reviews of books, equipment, events, restaurants and more; and food travel.
As Suzi Grant says in her Maturepreneurial podcast episode, "I just want to inspire women to be the best that they can be." She founded her blog in 2014 at the urging of her two godsons who thought she should be blogging, neither of whom knew the other!
Suzi has a particular love for vintage fashion and she frequently blogs about her many travels, including regular trips to Australia's Byron Bay, and recent trips to Ibiza and India. She is a talented photographer who takes all her own food and travel photos. She is also an experienced model and has been the subject of many a fashion shoot. She has been featured by Instagram and by The New York Times.
Early Career For most of her working life, Suzi was a chain smoking, hard drinking reporter/presenter in television and radio. Among other media companies, she has worked with TVam, Sky News, and BBC Radio 4. But when her mother died of a heart attack at the age of 63, Suzi took stock of her own health and decided to train as a nutritionist.
Apart from treating hundreds of patients over the last 15 years, Suzi has also written three books, including Alternative Ageing (note British spelling); completed an M.A. Degree in The Body: Eastern/Western Perspectives; and continues to write, broadcast and speak at conferences as an aging expert.
Alternative Ageing that will be republished later this year.
Current Hijinx Suzi lives in Brighton-By-The-Sea, England with her fur baby, Jack, a naughty poodle/jack russell cross. She loves music, festivals, dressing up, shopping, writing, good food, travel, and photography.
She is convinced that her blog, her social media outreach, and all of her activities above will help to prevent her brain from deteriorating.
Suzi used to have bright red/orange hair! Because it’s become fashionable to be gray and over 60, she has gone back to her roots. She no longer feel invisible, as she did at 50.
Jasmine has starred in over 30 TV commercials for major brands including Coca Cola, CVS, Pillsbury, Pringles, Hillshire Farms, Smuckers and many more. Her recent television credits include parts on Super Girl, iZombie and Haters Back Off, Frequency and Second Chance.
A multi-dimensional creative, Jasmine has founded and/or contributes to a numbers of businesses:
- In 2014, Jasmine founded The Blenderist as a single-contributor food blog. Two years later, she started The Black Food Bloggers Club, which she has grown into a lively and focused community. In 2017, she was inspired to promote diversity in food blogging by building out the Black Food Bloggers Club and converting The Blenderist into a multi-contributor site featuring the contributions of BFBC members.
- Jasmine is a proud teammate of Bjork Ostrom's at Food Blogger Pro, where she heads up the affiliate program and designs graphics for the FBP blog and podcast.
- Jasmine helps clients solve design and marketing problems, collaborating on branding and design projects with her artist partner Chris through their creative agency, RXVP.
- A passionate lover of chocolate, Jasmine has a certificate in Chocolate making from Ecole Chocolat. She co-founded Chocolate Codex, an informational resource for consumers looking to expand their chocolate knowledge and appreciation. Chocolate Codex features "tasting notes and commentary on chocolate from around the world" and offers "(totally unscientific) tasting guidelines to serve as a prompt to help tasters and readers develop their own tasting vocabularies."
Jasmine lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with Chris and her grumpy chihuahua. She enjoys spending her free time discovering new wines, listening to podcasts and baking mind-blowing desserts (often featuring chocolate)!
Kate Kordsmeier has been a full-time freelance food and travel writer and recipe developer since 2010. Today, you can find her work in over 100 magazines, newspapers and websites, including USA Today, Travel + Leisure, Wine Enthusiast, Real Simple and Cooking Light.
In October 2015, after being diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), Leaky Gut Syndrome, insulin resistance and hypothyroidism, and subsequently healing her symptoms naturally, Kate created Root + Revel.
Although Kate is a food writer - it’s literally her job to eat and report on the world’s most delicious foods - and a food lover who believes strongly that life is not worth living without fried chicken, cheese and wine, she has also seen firsthand the power of nutrition and how much the food we eat affects the way we feel.
After her diagnosis, Kate was blown away by the rapid transformation she saw in her body from simple, natural and holistic lifestyle changes. The food she ate and the natural products she used (and the toxic products she tossed!) have helped her live a near symptom-free life.
Root + Revel is a site for people who care about the quality of their food, where it comes from, how it tastes and, ultimately, how it makes them, and the planet, feel. It’s a site that promotes real, whole foods that are as delicious as they are nutritious, foods that are always short on chemicals and artificial ingredients, but never on flavor. It’s a site bursting with advice for people ready to celebrate life and explore the world, nourishing their bodies and souls along the way.
Kate lives in Atlanta with her husband, Matt, and their two cats, Scout and Boo.
Growing up, the meals Emilie Raffa's family enjoyed were centered around fresh ingredients and little to no processed food. They bought local. Cooked from scratch. Ate good bread with every meal. The Clever Carrot is a blog about finding balance in what you eat and how you cook.
And if there’s a way to make your life easier, Emilie has found (and shares) the shortcut!
In 2006, Emilie graduated from the International Culinary Center (formerly known as the French Culinary Institute) where she earned a degree in Classic Culinary Arts. She loved every minute of culinary school and writes, she "could’ve stayed there forever! It was an incredible experience."
After graduation, Emilie went on to work as a private chef, recipe developer, food stylist, and behind the scenes on cooking shows. Eventually, she became curious about blogging and photography.
Since starting The Clever Carrot, Emilie's work has been featured in Oprah Magazine, Redbook Magazine, Clean Eating, Women’s Health Magazine, The Huffington Post, Food 52, Saveur, Food & Wine, Today Food, and in the pages of Artful Blogging Magazine. She was a finalist for ‘Best Food Photography’ in the annual the Saveur Blog Awards and she contributes to the digital cooking publication, feedfeed.
Emilie considers herself fortunate to be a published author. She has written two cookbooks: The Clever Cookbook and Artisan Sourdough Made Simple.
On a personal note, Emilie lives on Long Island with her husband and their two little boys. They have a little garden, lots of backyard animals, a fig tree, and love spending time in nature.
Emilie is inspired by everything. She tends to create recipes based on her Mediterranean background, her family's recipes, and her travels. Even her cat. And if you ask what’s in her shopping cart, it’s filled to the brim with olive oil, lemon, fresh herbs, and good bread (possibly a child, too!).