Blogger Story: Kalyn Denny

When Kalyn Denny, Kalyn's Kitchen, blogs she is incorporating not 1 not 2 but 3 of passions: writing, recipes and photography! In fact, Kalyn is having such a great time blogging that she's exploring ways to turn blogs into a second career when she retires.

Blogger Story Teller: Kalyn Denny, Kalyn's Kitchen

Writing a food blog is the job I've been training for all my life.  For as long as I can remember I've been passionate about food, writing, and photography.  I've indulged those passions in various ways through the years but none has connected the dots as well as the food blog does.

I got started writing a blog in a way that wouldn't give a hint of what a creative outlet it turned out to be for me.  In the summer of 2004 I was happily living my life when a man I had dated 23 years earlier came to a meeting in Utah and stopped by my house for a visit.  I had put on some weight in the years since I knew him, and had slowly grown used to being heavier, but I had been thinking  about losing weight. 

It wasn't until he walked into my house that I realized how much I hated being fat.  (For the record he had gained 50 pounds himself, so that wasn't it.)

I had been reading about diets, and I knew from past experience that low fat, low calorie would not work for someone like me who loved to cook and eat.  I also had a triglyceride problem which meant that restricting sweets would be good.  I hadn't ever been much of a sweets eater, so a lower carb approach seemed workable.  I was never that impressed with Atkins, but when I read the South Beach Diet book it somehow rang true for me.

I started the diet with real dedication and by February of 2005 I had lost 35 pounds and everyone I knew was asking me for recipes.  I started sending them to an e-mail list, but the problem was that every time someone got added to the list, they wanted all the old recipes too.  My brother suggested starting a blog, so I did, simply as a place to store recipes.  I had no idea that the whole food blog world even existed, and to tell the truth, I was quite uninterested in the internet at that point in time.

Now I'm mildly obsessed with creating new recipes and posting them to my blog, as well as reading other food blogs.  I've been featured in Woman's World magazine in an article about South Beach, and am a contributing editor to Blogher, a site for women bloggers.  My blog sponsors a weekly event called "Weekend Herb Blogging" where people from all over the world participate.

I've met hundreds of interesting people online, and an having more fun than I ever imagined being a blogger.  I'm close to retiring from teaching, and I find myself thinking of ways to spin this into a second career.  Whether or not that happens, I don't imagine I'll get tired of blogging for a very long time.

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Comments

[kalyn]

Toby, it's very fun getting to tell my story here. Thanks for the invitation. Now, I'm going to go read how other people started blogging.