Dishing Podcast

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:

1. to encourage readers to create exciting dishes from whatever ingredients they can find in their pantries and
2. 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.

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.

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)!