Food Blogger Spotlight: Kalyn Denny

For this week’s Food Blogger Spotlight, I’m featuring a very special lady – Kalyn Denny of Kalyn’s Kitchen. Kalyn blogs about healthy eating while not cutting back on flavor and style, which is a topic I’m very close to. Her cooking style is based on the South Beach Diet and eating low-glycemic foods, and I swear, looking at her blog you’d be shocked to learn that you can lose weight by eating so well! Kalyn would know – she’s lost 42 pounds eating like a queen.

Besides her own blog, Kalyn is also a contributing editor on BlogHer, where she talks about cooking and nutrition. And she’s hands-down one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.

I’m really excited that she’s here to chat with us today. Please welcome Kalyn!

We all have staples that we couldn’t live without. What three ingredients do you *always* have in your kitchen and why? I’m not talking snacks like chips and hummus, but rather ingredients you use all the time in your cooking.

Narrowing it down to three things is a challenge, because I’m one of those people who’s fanatical about keeping an ongoing shopping list, and I rarely run out of anything! One ingredient I use in nearly every recipe is olive oil. I have olive oil and vinegar dispensers on my counter, and I love having the olive oil where it’s easy to grab it and drizzle some into the pan. I also recently learned the trick of having a plastic squeeze bottle full of olive oil, which is great for squeezing out just a dab of olive oil quickly.

Another thing I always have in the fridge is buttermilk. If it wasn’t such a bad habit, I’d love to drink it right out of the carton (but never in front of other people, that would really be disgusting!). I try not to drink all the buttermilk when I bring it home from the store, because I use it all the time in baked goods, in salad dressings, and in pretty much every type of savory dish where you might use milk.

I guess the third thing I use endlessly is dried beans. I have a floor to ceiling set of narrow shelves with glass jars filled with beans and pasta, and I cook beans all the time in the pressure cooker. I use canned beans too, but I really prefer cooking with dried beans whenever I have time. Any recipe that has dried beans will likely be a hit with me.

Imagine you moved to the smallest apartment possible – a shoebox, really – and you only had room for a single cookbook. Of all your cookbooks, which one would you keep? Why do you love it so?

After spending 10 months on house renovations last year, I refuse to imagine I’ve moved to the smallest apartment possible. Instead may I please be allowed to fantasize that I’ve suddenly come into a lot of money and am able to buy the smallest apartment imaginable in a big city somewhere in the world? (Yes, this is a fantasy, but what a fun one!)

In that case, the one cookbook I would probably want to take would be the newest edition of Joy of Cooking. I really do cook intuitively, and certainly you can find all the recipe inspiration you need on the internet these days, but when I have a question about how a certain dish or ingredient should be prepared, I still use Joy of Cooking to find answers. (And I have all three volumes, and I’d probably want to take them all if you’d allow it!)

When you’re looking for new recipes (or creating one of your own), what is your number one priority? What makes you pick one recipe over another?

I’m always looking for recipes or creating new ones, and also spend a huge amount of time cooking. (Not that I’m complaining; I love every minute of it, except for the cleaning up!) As much as I love to cook, I hate contrived, overly-complicated recipes, so easy preparation methods are one thing I keep in mind when I’m looking for recipes.

But more than anything, it’s the ingredients that make me choose a recipe, especially unusual combinations of ingredients that sound like they’d be good. For example I recently made Black Bean Salad with Fuyu Persimmons, Avocado, and Cumin-Lime Vinaigrette. I knew that would be a winner before I made it; everything about the combination appealed to me.

I also like strong flavors and I’m drawn to Middle Eastern, Asian or Mexican influences in my cooking. If a recipe has something like sumac, tahini, soy sauce, wasabi, cilantro or cumin, I’ll be interested in trying it. One of my brothers is always reminding me that “some people don’t like Middle Eastern food in the same way you do” and he thinks I should branch out in my recipe choices!

Blogs have the potential to be so many things, from personal journals to outrageous adventure reports. What is the most important thing you put into your blog, and what is the most important thing you get out of it?

I started my blog as a place to record recipes that had helped me lose weight so I could share them easily with other people who were asking for them. Then in 2006 I attended the BlogHer conference in San Jose where I heard Elise Bauer talk about how successful blogs should either be “entertaining, timely, or useful.” That crystallized in my mind the idea that more than anything else, I wanted my blog to be useful.

What I’m creating with Kalyn’s Kitchen is a recipe source, not just for people who are trying to lose weight (although they are some of my most loyal readers) but for anyone who’s attracted to my cooking style of simple preparation methods and low-glycemic but interesting ingredients. I get e-mail and comments every day from people who tell me how much they love the recipes on the blog, and that’s such nice feedback to get from readers. Plus the blog inspires me to keep experimenting and trying new recipes for myself, and what could be more fun than that!

Thanks so much for stopping by, Kalyn. It’s been a pleasure.

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Here are some of my favorite posts from Kalyn’s Kitchen:

• West African Chicken and Peanut Stew with Chiles, Ginger, and Green Onions
• Breakfast Casserole with Spinach, Leeks, Cottage Cheese, and Goat Cheese
• Agave and Balsamic Glazed Roasted Buttercup Squash
• Mediterranean Salad with Hummus Dressing