Hello there, I’m Kelly: a recipe developer, food blogger, beekeeper, and homesteader!

Here on The Herbeevore you’ll find easy plant-based meals, tips for entertaining and cooking, homesteading, and fantastic fresh & vibrant recipes you can make & enjoy in your own kitchen!

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I love creating fresh and healthy recipes for everyone at our table. You’ll find many modern versions of traditional recipes and tasty recipes using fresh, seasonal ingredients. We love fast, simple, and delicious recipes – all perfect to share with those you love!

Let’s Get Cooking

I’ve always been passionate about cooking, and am so lucky that I am able to develop and share my recipes on this site. I’ve been blogging since 2017, and have published over one thousand recipes across my websites. I have mostly plant-based, vegan and vegetarian recipes here on The Herbeevore, as well as more focused sites like my low sodium food site LowSoRecipes, and some fantastic recipes with a twist on ModernBites.

Most recipes you see here I’ve created from scratch, and I also I’ve compiled some great Family Recipes . My family has a long history of owning restaurants and diners in the stockyards of Chicago in the 1940s, and even ran a supper club until the 1970s in the Chicago suburbs.

I’ve always been passionate about cooking and getting creative in the kitchen.  I develop recipes with the fresh produce from our garden and with honey from our beehives.  I also love cooking with pantry staple ingredients, and anything we pull from the garden (see below)!  Most of my recipes are plant-based, as that is how we eat on a daily basis.  Some are vegetarian, some are flexitarian, and some contain meat. I believe in balance and eating simply, enjoying as much local and homegrown produce as we can.

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Our epic Blue Adirondack potato harvest we grew this year!

Each year we work towards becoming more sustainable, eco friendly, low waste, and self-sufficient as possible on our land.

Gardening and growing our own food has helped us to become more self-sufficient and take from the land. Plus our bees gather pollen from all kinds of garden plants (they especially love cucumbers and squash blossoms)!

Living an Eco-Friendly Homestead Life

7 years ago when we were house-hunting, we found this wonderful acreage in New England wilderness, and knew we belonged here.  Our property is heavily forested, with huge boulders and old rustic rock walls lining the property.  We have fully embraced living the rugged homestead lifestyle.

  • We grow our own food in our outdoor gardens in the summer and fall, and turned our garage into a greenhouse for the winter months
  • We compost all kitchen scraps to reduce food waste
  • Chop, haul, split, stack all our own firewood to heat our home in the winter
  • Tap our maple trees to make maple syrup in the spring
  • Hike on the winding trails we built throughout our property
  • And started beekeeping with a nice little apiary

Content Creating and Recipe Developing

Blogging and sharing content comes naturally to me. I hold a Master of Arts (MA) degree in History & Archival Studies (my specialty was digital archival content!), and also a Masters Degree in Library and Information Sciences (MLIS).  Before I started blogging, I spent 5 years digitizing and publishing content for universities online, and I’ve been working with digital content in the corporate world for 9 years. Sharing and creating thoughtful content is ingrained in everything I do.

I first started this site as a recipe archive to compile and write my favorite recipes that I created so I can make them again & again.  This site has since evolved into a living cookbook, documenting all our tasty homecooked meals and sharing them with my wonderful audience.

I want to encourage everyone to eat more locally and sustainably, enjoy the land, and have fun in the kitchen using whole ingredients to make something fantastic.

How I Began Beekeeping

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7 years ago we decided to give beekeeping a try.  It was a totally new journey for us and felt great to do something to help our ecosystem.  We have anywhere between 2-5 hives at a time… and each has between 20,000 – 50,000 bees!  We’re just hobbyist/backyard beekeepers, we don’t do it professionally. I love tending to our well-established colonies and see our bees happily foraging around the homestead in the summer. I even caught a swarm of bees on our property too, which was one of the wildest experiences of my life.

Cooking and baking with our own honey, and using our beeswax to make great products is one of my specialties. Friends and family beg for my beeswax hand salve recipe, and I love making and gifting homemade lip balms with beeswax from our hives.

Features

I develop original recipes for national brands and global food campaigns! It’s been a wonderful journey, and I still love getting creative with food.

As I built this website up, I started having brands reach out to me to develop unique recipes and create video, social media posts, and photography to use and share on their websites. You may see some sponsored or recommended products and brands in my posts, almost all of which I personally use when I develop recipes.

I’ve been featured in fantastic ad campaigns with Del Monte fresh produce, Bertolli Olive Oil, MyFitnessPal app, and have done recipe developing for the Nutr machine, Nasoya tofu, and One Degree Organics products to name a few!

You can hear my recent podcast interview on the Cook Local Eat Local Podcast, where I give great tips and recipes for sustainable food ideas!

I’ve also been featured in many fantastic publications, websites, and blogs, such as:

features in media outlets and publications

Keep In Touch on Social Media!

Make sure to follow along on our social channels for great videos, features, recipes, and more.

Say Hello

If you are curious about any of the ingredients I use in my recipes, I try to link to the exact products that I use.  You can also check out my Amazon Storefront to browse some lists I’ve built for our favorite pantry staple ingredients, tools we use for composting, a collection of products for beginner beekeepers, and of course some favorite plant based snacks!

Thanks for Visiting, and Happy Trails!

– Kelly