Behind the Scenes of a Successful Food Blogger: Kalyn’s Kitchen

I recently (re)met Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen blog. Since I’m fascinated with food blogs and love good food, I asked her if I could get a sneak peak into her kitchen. She told me she would be cooking all day on Thursday and I could drop by.

Kalyn’s motivation for blogging started when she wanted to lose weight. She was already a good cook but now she needed to adapt recipes to fit her new way of eating.  She based her recipes on the South Beach diet and lost 40 lbs! Friends began to ask how she did it and asked her to share her recipes. She emailed the recipes but it became a lot to keep up with. Then in 2005, someone suggested she start a blog.

From that point Kalyn took her blogging as a professional endeavor. That still comes through in everything she talked about. She was an award-winning elementary school teacher and spent any free time she had blogging. For four years she told me she hardly read a book, watched a movie or socialized. She eventually quit teaching and makes a full-time income blogging which is almost all from ads on her site.

Here’s Kalyn’s kitchen on cooking day:

Kalyn's nephew Jake (the chopper) is her assistant and right hand guy (pictured above). They tested three recipes.

Kalyn's tools:

Kalyn's props:

Random Facts

Most popular recipe: Chicken green chili mock casserole
Number of crockpots owned: 10 – and she has at least three timers to go with them

Cameras used: 2
Jake's opinion: “she’s a genius at pasta salads”
Favorite places to buy groceries: Costco and Harmon’s
Favorite food blogs: The Perfect Pantry, Simply Recipes, and Oh My Veggies
Number of food blogs she follows on Feedly: 300-400
Best blogging tip: make your blog useful to readers. It’s not about you. Too many bloggers lose sight of their audience.
Favorite social media tool: Buffer
Favorite image editing tools (besides Adobe Lightroom): ipicki and PicMonkey.
Favorite blogging conference: BlogHer

This is one of the dishes we made: Vegan Red Cabbage Bowl with Tofu and Peanut-Sriracha Sauce and here is my picture of her assembling the salad:

and the final product from her blog:

Thank you Kalyn and Jake for letting me in on the secret life of a food blogger, for all the delicious food and for the great company!