Hi. I'm Vickie Ewell.
I am a Culinary Specialist, recipe developer, consultant, educator, content writer, and founder of several blogs. In more simple terms, I'm a professional cook, lifestyle consultant, recipe addict, blogger, and content writer with over 45 years of experience in low-carb, moderate carb, and whole-food diets.
I also have 10 to 15 years experience in Meniere's disease, celiac disease, personal growth, and gluten-free cooking.
I believe in personal responsibility, in owning the consequences for your choices, and that everyone has the power to bring a sense of order and purpose to their lives.
You have the power to change the future, to design your own purpose, and to take the necessary steps to play that out. What you lack might simply be the faith, courage, strength, and understanding to create an extraordinary life.
And, that's where we come in.
Our aim is to inspire you to stop holding onto the past or waiting for the future to show up, and start living your dreams. Today. We are here to help you create a more fulfilling, higher quality life by living deliberately.
Past Professional Experience
When I was younger, I was an educator, supervisor, and caretaker of developmentally disabled adults in a number of workshops, group homes, and apartment-living facilities.
But, I had to let that profession go and make a drastic career change when I came down with Meniere's Disease over 15 years ago.
Meniere's Disease
Meniere's Disease is a catch-all diagnosis, what the medical profession labels you with once they have agonizingly ruled out all the other possible causes for vertigo, tinnitus (squealing in your ears), sensory issues, and balance problems.
A few doctors will diagnose you quickly. Sure. But this was in 2003 when not as much was known about the disease. At that time, no one knew what was wrong with me. My Primary Physician just kept sending me to various specialists.
The neurologist thought I had Meniere's Disease.
She asked my Primary Physician to have my hearing tested, which is how we found out that my balance mechanisms don't work any more. Since I wasn't episodic, however, my Primary Physician wouldn't accept the possibility of Meniere's and wouldn't authorize me to go back to see the neurologist.
I first experienced the vertigo in 2003, less than a year after I got married for the second time. Vertigo was a full-time nightmare because it left me bedridden and spinning wildly for over 2 years.
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| Hubby and me |
Unlike other people who have Meniere's, I had vertigo every single day. All day. And night. I was so disabled that I couldn't do anything for myself. I couldn't dress myself, take a shower, or even go to the bathroom.
It was just that bad.
Eventually, I got sick and tired of laying in bed, just staring at the ceiling and being a burden on hubby. This is when I accepted that the vertigo wasn't going to go away and realized it was time to teach myself how to walk again.
With the world spinning frantically, walking definitely wasn't an easy goal to reach. It took me several months before I could walk under my own power.
I spent weeks crawling around on my hands and knees, pulling myself up to furniture, and learning how to balance myself against the wall to keep from falling.
And yes, I experienced a lot of falls.
Life isn't a movie.
It takes a strong desire, rock-solid determination, a persistent faith in yourself, and lots of practice to walk again -- especially when you're in the midst of a vertigo attack.
After moving from Southern California to Utah in April of 2004, I discovered that chiropractic care could help the body adapt to the vertigo. That summer, I was contacted by a local chiropractor I had met online who told me he could help me and offered his services for FREE.
And, you know what?
It sounds crazy, but he was right.
Seeing that Utah-based chiropractor several times a week was a miracle. He helped me go from being bedridden to being partially bedridden to where I am today -- able to walk and do things for myself.
It was just that bad.
Eventually, I got sick and tired of laying in bed, just staring at the ceiling and being a burden on hubby. This is when I accepted that the vertigo wasn't going to go away and realized it was time to teach myself how to walk again.
With the world spinning frantically, walking definitely wasn't an easy goal to reach. It took me several months before I could walk under my own power.
I spent weeks crawling around on my hands and knees, pulling myself up to furniture, and learning how to balance myself against the wall to keep from falling.
And yes, I experienced a lot of falls.
Life isn't a movie.
It takes a strong desire, rock-solid determination, a persistent faith in yourself, and lots of practice to walk again -- especially when you're in the midst of a vertigo attack.
After moving from Southern California to Utah in April of 2004, I discovered that chiropractic care could help the body adapt to the vertigo. That summer, I was contacted by a local chiropractor I had met online who told me he could help me and offered his services for FREE.
And, you know what?
It sounds crazy, but he was right.
Seeing that Utah-based chiropractor several times a week was a miracle. He helped me go from being bedridden to being partially bedridden to where I am today -- able to walk and do things for myself.
I am so very grateful for that man.
Because of him, and his generosity, I'm living a meaningful, purpose-driven life today!
Once I had partially recovered from the vertigo and I could walk on my own again, I was hired by a friend to be the Culinary Specialist for her boys home.
I wrote a cookbook with detailed instructions for that home, which helped the boys and staff when I wasn't there.
Later on, after the home was sold, I was hired by the new owner to be their Culinary Specialist and continued doing the meal planning, shopping, and cooking for the same group of boys.
At this second home, my job was a bit different. I was now responsible for teaching the boys how to shop, cook, and run a kitchen. Since the home was larger, the number of boys and staff I was cooking for expanded, as well as my job duties.
At the same time, I wrote a few more cookbooks to help other group homes in the area cook more affordably, and gave their staff one-on-one training in cooking and shopping, so they could do what I was doing.
I am extremely passionate about cooking and have been cooking all of my life. Mom wasn't a cook, though. While she did make homemade bread and cookies, I didn't learn how to cook from her.
I'm completely self-taught.
This is because I'm vitally interested in the principles and science behind why you use certain ingredients instead of others, and why some cooking techniques work better.
Plus, today, hubby and I are gluten free.
This attention to detail makes the ultimate end-product so much better, which is vitally important when it comes to cooking gluten free.
I raised 4 sons on a very tight budget.
I ran the last group home on a very tight budget.
And going through periods in my current marriage when we were excruciatingly short on funds, I also learned a few tricks about how to make gluten-free more affordable.
While I don't have to live that way anymore, I still believe in respecting life and being practical in the kitchen, so we cook realistically, and affordably, rather than cheaply.
In Utah, just after I was hired to cook at the first boys' home, I decided it was time to ditch the 80 pounds I'd gained from being bedridden.
Between 2007 and 2009, I lost 112 pounds tweaking the contemporary Atkins Diet to be more like it was in 1972.
Oddly enough, I still remember every single thing I ate on that first Atkins Diet, which allowed me to lose 40 pounds in 1975 and reach goal weight within the first 6 weeks.
Tweaking in 2007 wasn't easy.
I tweaked, and stalled, and tweaked again until I managed to go from 257-1/2 pounds to 165. Later on, I did a round of HCG drops, and with the help of the HCG Diet, I managed to get down to 145 pounds.
In 2009, I discovered that I have celiac disease and hubby has dermatitis herpetiformis, the skin version of celiac.
Since I went so long without a celiac diagnosis, I have gathered an extensive list of additional autoimmune conditions and health issues that have impacted me and/or my family:
Eventually, I quit my job as a Culinary Specialist for the second boys' home (a job that I absolutely loved but couldn't keep due to the celiac symptoms I was having) and turned my passion for research, writing, and cooking into a full-time at-home career.
Since I'm a Super Sensitive Celiac, I react to gluten residues at levels that the average celiac does not. It is much safer and less problematic for me to work from home.
I'm perfectly content doing what I'm doing right now.
But cooking gluten free was no easy feat in the beginning because gluten-free baking isn't anything like baking with all-purpose flour.
I basically had to learn how to cook all over again from scratch.
The principles for getting non-gluten flours to behave like all-purpose flour is a trial-and-error adventure.
Gluten-free recipe development got easier for me, once I figured out how to adapt my old recipes to be gluten free and then adjusted them for the altitude we were living at, but gluten-free recipe development still comes with many challenges, even today.
For example, when we moved to Texas in April of 2017, I had to learn to cook all over again (yes, twice) because now we are at slightly above sea level and my recipes don't behave like they did when we were living at 4,500 to 5,600 feet.
Your altitude has a lot to do with how well a gluten-free recipe will turn out, so I've had to adjust recipes and adapt to environmental conditions each time we've changed our geographical area.
Most of the time, gluten-free recipe failures have to do with the flour mix you use, your altitude, and the day's humidity.
One of my main goals with cooking gluten free is to keep tinkering with a recipe until it comes as close to the real thing as I can get it. Often that takes using particular ingredients and brands, while bypassing what's on sale or less expensive.
In addition, I am not a photographer.
And I don't do fancy.
The food looks exactly like it does in my pictures. So what you'll find here in our recipe index is real-life recipes that hubby and I use all the time.
I got my start in writing over a decade ago at Suite 101, where I worked myself up from a simple Content Contributor to a Content Specialist to Topic Editor of their autism section.
I am very grateful today for that content farm, as well as my previous experience with developmentally challenged individuals because it gave me the space and training to fine-tune my craft.
I was already blogging part time at my Kickin' Carb Clutter blog, which I started in April of 2007, (still active), but writing for Suite 101, as well as a private client, really helped me improve my writing skills.
When Panda hit the content farms on February 23, 2011 (a Google algorithm update that was designed to keep low-quality, thin articles from showing up in search results, and penalized your entire site for it), I lost my private client and had to move my content from Suite 101 to Infobarrel.
Infobarrel was another content site that I used to write for. It survived that low-quality update, due to its higher standards for publication. Articles were not limited in length like they were at Suite 101, but Infobarrel was considerably less visible and less viable than it was before Panda bit them.
I wrote at Infobarrel under the pen name Lavender Rose because I didn't know that the forum user name was what they were going to publish my articles under.
Higher quality content farms like Infobarrel that survived the original Panda massacre deteriorated slowly, and continued to decay as each new quality update came out.
Today, Infobarrel is no longer online.
Over the past few years, I've written for a variety of clients, including a large number of webmasters at Textbroker, a content site that online businesses use to order ghost-written articles.
Ghost-written articles are those you sell all publication rights to the person paying you for the article. Your name does not show up on the article, when published, and the buyer can use their own name as if it was written by them.
I am also featured at Feedspot in their Top 75 Low-Carb Blogs list. Out of the 75 popular blogs they feature there, we are sitting at number 35 last time I looked.
To date, Kickin' Carb Clutter has been my most successful blog, in terms of traffic, income, and reputation.
After a few starts and stops, however, I decided to start a celiac blog for those who are super sensitive to gluten like I am. When you've been gluten free for a year or two and still experiencing celiac symptoms, that can be really rough, physically and emotionally.
I wanted to share my experiences with that, and what worked to turn my life around, so others wouldn't feel all alone in the difficulties that sensitivity level causes. I also wanted to provide dependable, trustworthy information for those having to go gluten free.
Over the past couple of years, I trimmed the number of blogs I have down to four; but keeping up with four blogs had me still feeling scattered and overwhelmed.
I definitely have too many blogs!
My latest writing project that I'm passionate about -- this blog -- will allow me to consolidate all of my blogging efforts into one project, rather than fragmenting myself into several niche blogs.
So . . .
We have to eat well to live. And celiacs always have to be thinking a step ahead. But just like writing isn't my whole life, food isn't my whole life, either.
Food isn't everything.
And neither is dieting.
I plan to make this a fluff-free, high-quality content site that can help inspire you to move forward with your goals, whatever that might mean to you.
Feel free to drop by our Pinterest Group boards:
My Life as a Culinary Specialist
Once I had partially recovered from the vertigo and I could walk on my own again, I was hired by a friend to be the Culinary Specialist for her boys home.
I did the meal planning, learned how to order groceries online, and cooked lunch and dinner for the boys and staff. This was a radical professional switch, but one I was well qualified for.
I wrote a cookbook with detailed instructions for that home, which helped the boys and staff when I wasn't there.
Later on, after the home was sold, I was hired by the new owner to be their Culinary Specialist and continued doing the meal planning, shopping, and cooking for the same group of boys.
At this second home, my job was a bit different. I was now responsible for teaching the boys how to shop, cook, and run a kitchen. Since the home was larger, the number of boys and staff I was cooking for expanded, as well as my job duties.
At the same time, I wrote a few more cookbooks to help other group homes in the area cook more affordably, and gave their staff one-on-one training in cooking and shopping, so they could do what I was doing.
I am extremely passionate about cooking and have been cooking all of my life. Mom wasn't a cook, though. While she did make homemade bread and cookies, I didn't learn how to cook from her.
I'm completely self-taught.
This is because I'm vitally interested in the principles and science behind why you use certain ingredients instead of others, and why some cooking techniques work better.
Plus, today, hubby and I are gluten free.
This attention to detail makes the ultimate end-product so much better, which is vitally important when it comes to cooking gluten free.
I raised 4 sons on a very tight budget.
I ran the last group home on a very tight budget.
And going through periods in my current marriage when we were excruciatingly short on funds, I also learned a few tricks about how to make gluten-free more affordable.
While I don't have to live that way anymore, I still believe in respecting life and being practical in the kitchen, so we cook realistically, and affordably, rather than cheaply.
Lost 112 Pounds Tweaking Atkins
In Utah, just after I was hired to cook at the first boys' home, I decided it was time to ditch the 80 pounds I'd gained from being bedridden.
Between 2007 and 2009, I lost 112 pounds tweaking the contemporary Atkins Diet to be more like it was in 1972.
Oddly enough, I still remember every single thing I ate on that first Atkins Diet, which allowed me to lose 40 pounds in 1975 and reach goal weight within the first 6 weeks.
Tweaking in 2007 wasn't easy.
I tweaked, and stalled, and tweaked again until I managed to go from 257-1/2 pounds to 165. Later on, I did a round of HCG drops, and with the help of the HCG Diet, I managed to get down to 145 pounds.
At that point in my weight-loss journey, however, I realized that my ultimate goal of weighing 125 pounds wasn't practical for me, due to the drastic slash in calories that it would take to maintain, and moved into maintenance at 145 pounds.
For awhile, after gaining some of that weight back due to coming down with Graves' Disease, I stopped following a low-carb diet. I used an intuitive eating style, or tried to, because my body and mind doesn't function well in ketosis or even on a serious calorie restriction.
Keep in mind that this was just peculiar to me. Many people do very well on extremely low-carb diets. Just not me.
For awhile, after gaining some of that weight back due to coming down with Graves' Disease, I stopped following a low-carb diet. I used an intuitive eating style, or tried to, because my body and mind doesn't function well in ketosis or even on a serious calorie restriction.
Keep in mind that this was just peculiar to me. Many people do very well on extremely low-carb diets. Just not me.
 |
| Me with my youngest son just before hubby and I moved to Texas |
Celiac Disease and Associated Conditions
In 2009, I discovered that I have celiac disease and hubby has dermatitis herpetiformis, the skin version of celiac.
Since I went so long without a celiac diagnosis, I have gathered an extensive list of additional autoimmune conditions and health issues that have impacted me and/or my family:
- Celiac Disease
- Dermatitis Herpetiformis
- Gilbert's Syndrome
- Meniere's Disease (vertigo)
- Graves' Disease (hyperthyroidism)
- Tinnitis
- Idiopathic Neuropathy
- Asthma
- Bronchitis
- Lymphocitic Colitis
- Behcet's Disease
- Pre-Diabetes
- Fibromyalgia
- gardening
- sewing
- knitting
- crocheting
- embroidery
- intuitive eating
- general weight loss
- Sugarbusters diet
- the Atkins Diet
- the old Kimkins diet
- the old Weight Watchers exchange plan
- personal growth
- psychology
- nutrition
Gluten-Free Recipe Development
Eventually, I quit my job as a Culinary Specialist for the second boys' home (a job that I absolutely loved but couldn't keep due to the celiac symptoms I was having) and turned my passion for research, writing, and cooking into a full-time at-home career.
Since I'm a Super Sensitive Celiac, I react to gluten residues at levels that the average celiac does not. It is much safer and less problematic for me to work from home.
I'm perfectly content doing what I'm doing right now.
But cooking gluten free was no easy feat in the beginning because gluten-free baking isn't anything like baking with all-purpose flour.
I basically had to learn how to cook all over again from scratch.
The principles for getting non-gluten flours to behave like all-purpose flour is a trial-and-error adventure.
Gluten-free recipe development got easier for me, once I figured out how to adapt my old recipes to be gluten free and then adjusted them for the altitude we were living at, but gluten-free recipe development still comes with many challenges, even today.
For example, when we moved to Texas in April of 2017, I had to learn to cook all over again (yes, twice) because now we are at slightly above sea level and my recipes don't behave like they did when we were living at 4,500 to 5,600 feet.
Your altitude has a lot to do with how well a gluten-free recipe will turn out, so I've had to adjust recipes and adapt to environmental conditions each time we've changed our geographical area.
Most of the time, gluten-free recipe failures have to do with the flour mix you use, your altitude, and the day's humidity.
One of my main goals with cooking gluten free is to keep tinkering with a recipe until it comes as close to the real thing as I can get it. Often that takes using particular ingredients and brands, while bypassing what's on sale or less expensive.
In addition, I am not a photographer.
And I don't do fancy.
The food looks exactly like it does in my pictures. So what you'll find here in our recipe index is real-life recipes that hubby and I use all the time.
 |
| Thanksgiving Dinner: Smoked Turkey, Sweet Potatoes, Fluff Salad |
My Writing Career
I got my start in writing over a decade ago at Suite 101, where I worked myself up from a simple Content Contributor to a Content Specialist to Topic Editor of their autism section.
I am very grateful today for that content farm, as well as my previous experience with developmentally challenged individuals because it gave me the space and training to fine-tune my craft.
I was already blogging part time at my Kickin' Carb Clutter blog, which I started in April of 2007, (still active), but writing for Suite 101, as well as a private client, really helped me improve my writing skills.
When Panda hit the content farms on February 23, 2011 (a Google algorithm update that was designed to keep low-quality, thin articles from showing up in search results, and penalized your entire site for it), I lost my private client and had to move my content from Suite 101 to Infobarrel.
Infobarrel was another content site that I used to write for. It survived that low-quality update, due to its higher standards for publication. Articles were not limited in length like they were at Suite 101, but Infobarrel was considerably less visible and less viable than it was before Panda bit them.
I wrote at Infobarrel under the pen name Lavender Rose because I didn't know that the forum user name was what they were going to publish my articles under.
Higher quality content farms like Infobarrel that survived the original Panda massacre deteriorated slowly, and continued to decay as each new quality update came out.
Today, Infobarrel is no longer online.
Over the past few years, I've written for a variety of clients, including a large number of webmasters at Textbroker, a content site that online businesses use to order ghost-written articles.
Ghost-written articles are those you sell all publication rights to the person paying you for the article. Your name does not show up on the article, when published, and the buyer can use their own name as if it was written by them.
This is how I've written for several keto-friendly websites. But Covid, and changes at Amazon, has left me without any present clients.
My Kickin' Carb Clutter blog, which covers all types of low-carb diets, and not just Atkins or Keto, is listed in the resource section of the book, The Banting Solution: Your Low-Carb Guide to Permanent Weight Loss, written by Bernadine Douglas.
My Kickin' Carb Clutter blog, which covers all types of low-carb diets, and not just Atkins or Keto, is listed in the resource section of the book, The Banting Solution: Your Low-Carb Guide to Permanent Weight Loss, written by Bernadine Douglas.
I am also featured at Feedspot in their Top 75 Low-Carb Blogs list. Out of the 75 popular blogs they feature there, we are sitting at number 35 last time I looked.
To date, Kickin' Carb Clutter has been my most successful blog, in terms of traffic, income, and reputation.
After a few starts and stops, however, I decided to start a celiac blog for those who are super sensitive to gluten like I am. When you've been gluten free for a year or two and still experiencing celiac symptoms, that can be really rough, physically and emotionally.
I wanted to share my experiences with that, and what worked to turn my life around, so others wouldn't feel all alone in the difficulties that sensitivity level causes. I also wanted to provide dependable, trustworthy information for those having to go gluten free.
Why Do I Need Another Blog Then? And Why This One?
Over the past couple of years, I trimmed the number of blogs I have down to four; but keeping up with four blogs had me still feeling scattered and overwhelmed.
I definitely have too many blogs!
My latest writing project that I'm passionate about -- this blog -- will allow me to consolidate all of my blogging efforts into one project, rather than fragmenting myself into several niche blogs.
So . . .
- It's time to let go of the old.
- It's time to do do something new.
- It's time to do something that includes a much larger vision.
We have to eat well to live. And celiacs always have to be thinking a step ahead. But just like writing isn't my whole life, food isn't my whole life, either.
Food isn't everything.
And neither is dieting.
I plan to make this a fluff-free, high-quality content site that can help inspire you to move forward with your goals, whatever that might mean to you.
How to Contact Me:
Feel free to drop by our Pinterest Group boards:
TWITTER
And if you have an idea for a topic, question, or just want to chat, leave a comment under any blog post or reach out to me, Vickie Ewell, at:
Lavender.Rose27@yahoo.com
And if you have an idea for a topic, question, or just want to chat, leave a comment under any blog post or reach out to me, Vickie Ewell, at:
Lavender.Rose27@yahoo.com
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