Meet The Blogger: Zoe From My Allergy Kitchen

Welcome back to another instalment of my Meet The Blogger series, designed to help you find some new exciting blogs to follow and read. Today I’m chatting to Zoe from My Allergy Kitchen to find out how she started her blog and what inspires her to create content; I hope you enjoy reading our interview.

person cutting vegetables with knife — Image Credit

Tell us a bit about yourself and your blog

I’m Zoe and I’m the blogger behind My Allergy Kitchen. I’m a food allergy blogger and I share practical tips and advice about managing food allergies, as well as allergy-friendly recipes.

How long have you been blogging?

I have actually been blogging on and off for about 10 years! I’ve had a few different blogs over the years, including an eco/ethical blog, mummy blog and food blog. However, I never really found my niche until my current blog My Allergy Kitchen which I started in January 2018.

What or who inspired you to create your blog?

The inspiration came from my experiences with my youngest daughter. When she was a baby she was diagnosed with multiple food allergies. It took a long time to get diagnosis and support even though she had symptoms from birth, due to a lack of awareness about food allergies among health professionals. Then, after we got the diagnosis it was a very steep learning curve, trying to figure out how to cook without dairy, egg, wheat, soya, oats and legumes! I decided to create my blog to help others going through the same experience.

What’s your favourite thing about running your blog?

Being able to interact with other parents and support them with things like asking the right questions at doctor’s appointments, as well as helping them with practical things such as birthday cake recipes for children with allergies.

How do you stay motivated?

I’m very passionate about supporting families with food allergies and raising awareness of this issue. I get such a great response from my followers which keeps me motivated. I do take a break a few times a year to prevent burnout and I always come back feeling refreshed and full of inspiration!

What’s been the most challenging part of your blogging journey to date?

I self-published a book on Amazon! It’s the most challenging project I’ve ever done, but I’ve wanted to write a book ever since I was little so I enjoyed every step of the way. It took me 18 months in total to write, edit and publish the book. I wanted to write a book so that I could go into more depth than I could in a blog post. I spent hours researching and putting it all together to create a handy quick reference guide about food allergies for parents. I’m really proud of this achievement.

Tell us about your favourite blog post

Definitely my Dairy Free Banoffee Pie recipe. It took me several attempts to get the recipe just right, which meant making lots of banoffee pies – it’s a hard life right?! All the best desserts have dairy in, so I was determined to make a dairy free version so no one feels left out. Some of my recipes are really healthy but this one is definitely a naughty treat!

Describe your blog in four words

Yummy, dairy-free, positivity, supportive.

What are your future hopes and dreams for your blog?

I hope that one day my blog will no longer be necessary because scientists will invent a cure for food allergies! In the meantime, I’d like my blog to be the first place people visit when they want to know more about food allergies. I’d really like to turn it into a full time business so I can dedicate even more time to it and create more resources to help people.