Dishing Podcast

Kate Kordsmeier has been a full-time freelance food and travel writer and recipe developer since 2010. Today, you can find her work in over 100 magazines, newspapers and websites, including USA Today, Travel + Leisure, Wine Enthusiast, Real Simple and Cooking Light.

In October 2015, after being diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), Leaky Gut Syndrome, insulin resistance and hypothyroidism, and subsequently healing her symptoms naturally, Kate created Root + Revel.

Although Kate is a food writer - it’s literally her job to eat and report on the world’s most delicious foods - and a food lover who believes strongly that life is not worth living without fried chicken, cheese and wine, she has also seen firsthand the power of nutrition and how much the food we eat affects the way we feel.

After her diagnosis, Kate was blown away by the rapid transformation she saw in her body from simple, natural and holistic lifestyle changes. The food she ate and the natural products she used (and the toxic products she tossed!) have helped her live a near symptom-free life.

Root + Revel is a site for people who care about the quality of their food, where it comes from, how it tastes and, ultimately, how it makes them, and the planet, feel. It’s a site that promotes real, whole foods that are as delicious as they are nutritious, foods that are always short on chemicals and artificial ingredients, but never on flavor. It’s a site bursting with advice for people ready to celebrate life and explore the world, nourishing their bodies and souls along the way.

Kate lives in Atlanta with her husband, Matt, and their two cats, Scout and Boo.

Growing up, the meals Emilie Raffa's family enjoyed were centered around fresh ingredients and little to no processed food. They bought local. Cooked from scratch. Ate good bread with every meal. The Clever Carrot is a blog about finding balance in what you eat and how you cook.

And if there’s a way to make your life easier, Emilie has found (and shares) the shortcut!

In 2006, Emilie graduated from the International Culinary Center (formerly known as the French Culinary Institute) where she earned a degree in Classic Culinary Arts. She loved every minute of culinary school and writes, she "could’ve stayed there forever! It was an incredible experience."

After graduation, Emilie went on to work as a private chef, recipe developer, food stylist, and behind the scenes on cooking shows. Eventually, she became curious about blogging and photography.

Since starting The Clever Carrot, Emilie's work has been featured in Oprah Magazine, Redbook Magazine, Clean Eating, Women’s Health Magazine, The Huffington Post, Food 52, Saveur, Food & Wine, Today Food, and in the pages of Artful Blogging Magazine. She was a finalist for ‘Best Food Photography’ in the annual the Saveur Blog Awards and she contributes to the digital cooking publication, feedfeed.

Emilie considers herself fortunate to be a published author. She has written two cookbooks: The Clever Cookbook and Artisan Sourdough Made Simple.

On a personal note, Emilie lives on Long Island with her husband and their two little boys. They have a little garden, lots of backyard animals, a fig tree, and love spending time in nature.

Emilie is inspired by everything. She tends to create recipes based on her Mediterranean background, her family's recipes, and her travels. Even her cat. And if you ask what’s in her shopping cart, it’s filled to the brim with olive oil, lemon, fresh herbs, and good bread (possibly a child, too!).

Kate Ahl founded Simple Pin Media as a way to help her blogger friends take one thing off their plate so they could focus on creating great content for their blogs. At the time, she and her husband were living off government assistance and $1000/month. Since that cannot sustain a family of five long term, Kate also started Simple Pin with the hope that it would provide financial support for her family.

Four years, 100 management clients and over 400 accounts later, Kate and her team know a whole heck-of-a-lot about Pinterest, such as how to effectively market on Pinterest organically!

Kate has built a successful team and, in addition to running Simple Pin Media, she provides social media management coaching and speaks on Pinterest marketing at events, including the Build Your Blog Conference, Indulge and Blended, SNAP, Social Media Marketing World, Activate and Everything Food.

Kate and her husband are passionate about running their businesses so they can be free to do things that have a positive impact on their community. Kate runs Simple Pin out of her She Shed in the garden. She even has a Pinterest board devoted to She Shed ideas.

Kate says it's peaceful to work from home when you're balancing the needs of three kids and a foster baby with running your own businesses. Her children have no idea what it means for their parents to work traditional jobs and are constantly asking why they work all the time. (They only work 30 hours a week!)

Kate likes sparkly drinks, fine cheese, and great friends. She believes in cultivating her offline community as well as her online community because it helps her to keep focused and grounded. She writes, "Someone has to help me ‘call my crazy’ sometimes and allow me to watch how they use Pinterest."

Bev Weidner is the high-energy mom of boy/girl twins, Will and Natalie; the wife of a dude, Aaron, who has immorally good hair; and the indie rock musician star of her own previous, pre-high waisted jeans life.

She even played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz in New Mexico in 1995. (Her mom wanted her to tell you that.)

After quitting her job in 2010, Bev started her blog, Bev Cooks, to keep herself occupied while she figured out what she really wanted to do with her life. But in no time, she fell in love with the art and process of blogging; cooking, photographing and sharing the experience. More importantly, she fell in love with the blogging community, out of which she has made some of her closest friends.

With the success of her blog, came the privilege to travel coast to coast to write and photograph for various publications, like Food Network, Tablespoon, What To Expect, Chinet, and Hey Mama, and even to speak at blogging conferences and events.

Bev's knack for not taking life (or herself) too seriously has led to some seriously cool opportunities. (And a surprise viral moment.) She's traveled all over the world, starred in two national television campaigns, and recently launched a new digital series with the Food Network.

Since 2010, Bev has been sharing recipes, stories, style, music and horrible advice TO ANYONE WHO WILL LISTEN. What started as a venue for creative comfort food has become a community of people who understand that anything is better with a good rosé and a good laugh. And more rosé.

Growing up, Amanda Biddle's mother and grandmother always invited her to help them in the kitchen. Whether assembling cream puffs, filling pans of Madeleines, or prepping chicken Milanese, the food, and the time spent making it, was an expression of love. There’s nothing she enjoys more than cooking or sharing a meal with the people closest to her heart.

Living in an area that has an abundance of local producers, Amanda embraces cooking for the season. She is frequently found exploring farm markets, planning her menus and recipe posts based on what’s fresh and beautiful on any given day.

When she isn’t indulging her inner food nerd, Amanda enjoys playing classical piano (fun fact: she shares a birthday with Beethoven), golfing (only if you pretend not to notice when she misses the ball), and watching classic movies. She is a collector of cookbooks (she reads them like novels) and lover of dogs. Her loyal pup, Toby, has taken on the self-proclaimed role of Striped Spatula’s photo shoot director, keeping a close eye on the set just in case any crumbs might fall.

A self-taught photographer, Amanda’s content has been featured in a variety of food and lifestyle publications, including the websites for Woman’s Day Magazine, Country Living, ELLE Decor, Good Housekeeping, and Kitchn. Most recently, her work has appeared in print in The Digest, a premier lifestyle magazine in North Jersey.

Jenny is a former inner city school district reading specialist who “retired” from her teaching career when her blogging income far exceeded her salary.  Through hard work and dedication, her lifestyle blog, The Melrose Family, became regularly sought out by nationally recognized brands such as Neutrogena, Smuckers, Glad, Costco, Stanley Steamer, Sara Lee and many more. The unique pitching process Jenny developed for working with brands transformed an empty editorial calendar into one that was completely booked months in advance.

Today, Jenny combines her passion for teaching with her extensive experience working with brands to help other bloggers monetize and grow their websites and social media outlets. She offers videos, e-courses and coaching on JennyMelrose.com; she runs a private Facebook group for influencers looking to share knowledge and take their businesses to the next level; and she hosts a podcast, Influencer Entrepreneurs with Jenny Melrose.

After helping his wife Lindsay create and launch her food blog, Pinch of Yum, in 2010, Bjork Ostrom started to wonder: is it possible to make a living from this blog?

One year later, he began publicly sharing traffic and income data the blog generated as a way to document and share the couple's findings with other food bloggers. Pinch of Yum's monthly income reports have been a unique resource for many bloggers across all niches as they have ultimately documented how the Ostroms took their site from a $20/month hobby to a six-figure business between 2010 and 2017.

In January 2013, Bjork launched Food Blogger Pro "with over 250 videos covering the most important things a food blogger needs to know to start and grow a food blog." The site was an immediate success, with an initial membership representing 26 countries.

Today, Bjork continues to run Food Blogger Pro while also developing two new software tools, WP Tasty and Nutrifox.

Bjork’s favorite things in life are watching The Office reruns with Lindsay, all things tech, rainy days, Sage the dog, and a Juicy Lucy with fries.

Food and nutrition expert Maggie Green is the owner of The Green Apron Company. The Green Apron specializes culinary nutrition, food and nutrition writing, and recipe and cookbook development.

Maggie is a registered and licensed dietitian. After a career in clinical dietetics and food service management; Maggie launched her own business, The Green Apron Company. As a personal chef, Maggie cooked privately for over 100 clients in the greater Cincinnati area. In 2001, she successfully transitioned her work to the publishing industry.

As a cookbook editor, Maggie edited the Joy of Cooking (2006) and BakeWise (2008). As a food and nutrition writer, Maggies’s experience includes writing for Humana’s Active Outlook Program and their award-winning HAO Magazine, as well as a seven-year stint as a food writer for a local newspaper, Inside Your Town.

As an author, Maggie wrote her first cookbook, The Kentucky Fresh Cookbook, in 2011. Published by University Press of Kentucky, Kentucky Fresh explores seasonal cooking and regional foods of Kentucky. In 2016, Maggie wrote her 2nd cookbook, Tasting Kentucky: Favorite Recipes from the Bluegrass State. Tasting Kentucky showcases 100 recipes from restaurants and inns all across the state of Kentucky. Maggie's third and fourth cookbooks, Essential Pantry and Essential Plant-Based Pantry will be published in 2018 and are sure to change the way home-cooks think and feel about cooking as they streamline their pantry and simplify their meals.

As a professionally trained chef and registered dietitian, Maggie is a sought-after culinary nutrition expert, food and nutrition writer, recipe developer, and cookbook industry consultant.

In 2012 Maggie launched Cookbook Camp. Cookbook Camp offers individual and group coaching programs for aspiring cookbook authors. She is a member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics as well as the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

Maggie lives in Ft. Wright, Kentucky with her husband, the best male cook she knows. They have three children and a shaggy dog, also named Maggie, who all enjoy sharing time in the kitchen and around the table.

Susie Bulloch has always loved to cook and eat (she grew up working in the family restaurant), but getting the courage to leave the kitchen and head for the patio forever changed the way she looked at food. As she says on her website:

  Everything went from, “I could probably make that recipe” to… “How can I cook this on the grill?!”

Susie has taken all of the steps and learned all of the hard lessons about outdoor cooking so we don’t have to.

In August 2015, Susie traveled to NYC to compete for a Guinness World Record for the longest grilling marathon by a team. She and her team smashed the old record by grilling consecutively for 34 hours and 35 minutes!

Today, Susie is working toward her dream of hosting her own cooking show by doing as many local lifestyle shows as she can and grilling non stop to sharpen her skills. A KCBS certified BBQ judge, she also teaches live grilling classes. Her last class was attended by over 200 people!

Susie believes that if you put your dreams out there, you’re already one step closer to accomplishing them. She also believes that grilling and BBQ should feel accessible to everybody, ribs should be sauced, and a good fire has the power to really bring people together.

Brooke Lark has been a professional food photographer and videographer since 2006. Her client list includes General Mills, Disney, World Kitchen, Int'l Housewares Association, kitchenware giant GoodCook, NYTimes Bestselling nutritionist YuriElkaim.com, FitMenCook, Simple Green Smoothies, and NatureNates.com.

Brooke's Food Photography and Videography FB Group has grown to be one of the largest gatherings of food creators in the industry, with more than 5000+ members and growing.

And early contributor to Unsplash (the very idea of generously giving away her photography struck a chord and she was immediately hooked), Brooke's photos have been viewed and downloaded millions of times monthly. Work uploaded to her food blog is free to download, use and share but Brooke also customizes shoots for clients and their brands.

When not playing with food or launching new businesses, Brooke is likely out with her witty teens, escaping to the canyons on mountain bike or chasing her vaguely naughty puppy around the neighborhood.