Photo by Derek Smith

What is This Blog About?
My name is Kalyn Denny and Kalyn’s Kitchen is the home-cooking blog I started in 2005 when I’d lost over 40 pounds on the original South Beach Diet (affiliate link) and wanted to share my recipes with the world.  Now fast forward over 15 years later, and I’m still focused on healthy cooking and have transitioned from teaching elementary school to life as a full-time food blogger. My blog is focused on Easy Carb-Conscious Recipes, and you may want to read this post about different diet types and this blog to see how Kalyn’s Kitchen has evolved through the years.

What hasn’t change is the focus on carb-conscious eating and most recipes you’ll find here are low-carb and gluten-free, many are original South Beach Diet friendly and some are Keto, dairy-free, Paleo, Whole 30, and vegetarian or vegan. (If you’re following a certain way of eating you can use the Diet Type Index to see what recipes I have for your particular way of eating. There are also orange diet-type tags at the top of each recipe showing which diets I feel that recipe is suitable for.)

The carb-conscious recipes I like to create are often suitable for weight-loss or controlling blood sugar, even though I am not advocating one specific eating plan. And I’m not a low-carb fanatic and not every single recipe here is ultra low carb, but all the recipes on the site are geared towards carb-conscious eating and many thousands of people per day use this site as a source for the deliciously healthy low-carb recipes that I love to create.

Information That May Be Helpful:
Have questions? Check out the Frequently Asked Questions which might answer them. And if not, here’s How to Contact Kalyn.

Support for the South Beach Diet:
Because The original South Beach Diet was so life-changing for me, I tried to make this site a resource for other people who are following it.  You can read more about that on the page for Low Carb Diet / South Beach Diet Information and Resources.

What Other Diets are My Recipes Suitable For?
I try to make my blog useful for people following many types of carb-conscious diets.  You can use photo-index pages for the following diet types:

Low Carb  Recipes that are low in carbs and suitable for any type of Low-Carbohydrate Diet.

Can Be Keto The lowest carb/highest fat recipes on the site, suitable for Ketogenic diets.

(The site also has plenty of low-glycemic recipes, which are Carb-conscious recipes suitable for Low-Glycemic Diets. These are recipes that might not be strictly low in carbs, but have ingredients that don’t raise blood sugar.)

The Original South Beach Diet  Recipes for Phase One, Two, and Three of the original South Beach Diet.

Dairy Free  Recipes with no dairy products.

Gluten Free  Gluten-Free recipes.

Vegetarian Both Vegetarian and Vegan recipes..

How Kalyn’s Kitchen Got Started
Often people ask me how I started the blog, and Kalyn’s Kitchen actually began with an offhand remark made by my brother Rand. One day in early 2005 I was complaining about how hard it was to keep up with friends asking for recipes, and he said, “Maybe you should just put your recipes on a blog.” At that time I had no idea there were people on the internet writing about food, and certainly could never have imagined how food blogging would ultimately change my life.

My Family is the Greatest
My talented brother Rand still does graphics for the blog and creates beautiful pins and Facebook videos, and Kalyn’s Kitchen certainly wouldn’t be the same without him. (Thanks Rand!) He’s also a willing taste tester whenever he makes a visit to Utah.

I also have eight more brothers and sisters who do a lot to enrich my life. Thanks to my sisters, brothers, sister-in-laws, and brother in laws Sandee, Clayton, Pam, Kelly, Mark, Lisa, Janet, Dave, Amy, Laurel, Carl, Vida, Dan, Val, and Jon for all they do for me. There are also 39 nieces and nephews and more than 75 great-nieces and nephews who occasionally make an appearance on the blog, including my nephew Jake  and my niece Kara, who are my cooking assistants on a regular basis.

My Life Before Blogging
In my previous life I had a business organizing catered houseboat trips at Utah’s Lake Powell.  That was a lot of trips to Lake Powell, but for my day job, I was an elementary school teacher for 30 years, and it’s always fun when former students find me through the blog. During my teaching career I served as President of the Davis Education Association, and was also a board member of the Utah Education Association and the National Education Association. I retired from teaching in 2009 to become a full-time food blogger.

Other Blogging Adventures
In addition to working on Kalyn’s Kitchen I also feature from-scratch slow cooker recipes from food bloggers all around the web for my other blog Slow Cooker or Pressure Cooker.

For years I was also writing about food at BlogHer.com, and even though I have now “retired” from that position, I’m still a big fan of the BlogHer/SheMedia organization and am proud of my association with them.

I’ve been lucky enough to speak about blogging at a few conferences. I was the moderator of a panel on The Art of Food Blogging at BlogHer Conference 2007 and participated in a panel about Food Blogging Best Practices at BlogHerFood 2009. I was also on a panel about Secrets of Successful Food Blogging at SXSW Interactive 2009, a panel about Food Blogging: Beyond the Basics at the IACP Conference in 2011, a panel on Building Blog Traffic Through Social Media at BlogHerFood 2012, and a panel on Pinterest at BlogHerFood 2015.

Kalyn’s Kitchen has received some nice mentions in print media and other places on the web, and I appreciate all the publications and sites who have featured my work (although for quite a few years now I haven’t been doing a good job at all of adding things to that page!)

Kalyn’s Kitchen Through the Years:
(These are the anniversary posts I’ve made each year on the birthday of my blog.)
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns One
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Two
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Three
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Four
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Five
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Six
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Seven
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Eight
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Nine
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Ten
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Eleven
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Twelve
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns Thirteen
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns 14 (and Kalyn Examines her Bucket List)
Kalyn’s Kitchen Turns 15 (and Three Questions for Readers)
Kalyn’s Kitchen is Sweet Sixteen!

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