About the Chef, Karen

Hello, I’m Karen. I started this blog as my pandemic passion project by gathering my tips, tricks, and family recipes to share with you. I have been a meal planner for many years, but I found it necessary to follow an eating regime that eliminated many ingredients when I was diagnosed with digestive issues. Meal planning became a health necessity. Whether you want to try new recipes, plan healthier meals, or enjoy a great dinner with your friends and family, Supper Sanity can help.

Meal planning and cooking healthy, delicious meals for family and friends is my passion. More importantly, I want to share my process to help others get some sanity in the kitchen. I developed a three-step meal planning system to simplify decisions and save time and money. Whether you’ve just been diagnosed with a health condition or you’re trying to eat healthier to reach a specific goal, Supper Sanity will help. Learn more about the Supper Sanity Meal Planning Tools

I love creating memorable meals with my family!

Passionate Foodie

I also love developing and trying new recipes, gadgets, appliances, services, and digital apps that help save time and money. My career has also been in this business – working in sales and marketing for three food manufacturers and two retailers for 20+ years. With a career and family of five, I developed a system that helped me achieve my goal of putting healthy meals on the table every night. I want to help others lose the crazies around meal planning. Full disclosure, I work part-time at Sur La Table and love the cooking classes, gadgets, cookware, bakeware, and employee discounts at the store.

Helping with Restrictive Diets

I created three worksheets to plan, shop, and cook. These tools help me plan a healthy diet quickly and efficiently. Suffering from digestive issues, I learned that some foods or ingredients cause problems, and other foods can help. Cooking meals from scratch helps control the ingredients and eliminates many additives in convenience foods. Through the years, my diagnosis has included:

  • Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) in college
  • Lactose intolerance in my early thirties
  • Celiac in my mid-thirties
  • Not celiac a year later with a second opinion
  • Seasonal allergies in my forties that always lead to sinus infections and a course of antibiotics that caused more digestive issues
  • SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) in my fifties, which is also called leaky gut

Meal Planning for Health

Thanks to my doctor’s advice, I went on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) because of the SIBO. I found the website and book Breaking the Vicious Cycle extremely helpful. After being on a diet for a few weeks, many chronic symptoms disappeared:  bloating, gas, diarrhea, sinus issues, and headaches. For 3.5 years, I maintained this diet very strictly. I gradually introduced healthy foods into my diet and monitored the results. I developed a modified SCD diet and now enjoy many nutritious foods with cheats and no symptoms. And I do not worry about what the host is serving when I am invited for dinner. My digestive tract is much more stable because of the SCD, which eliminates grains, most dairy, all processed sugar.

Enjoy the Benefits of Supper Sanity

Because of these issues, I mastered many special diets: Dairy-Free, Sugar-Free, Gluten-Free, Specific Carbohydrate Diet, Paleo. It requires planning to be compliant and not go crazy. Even without dietary restrictions, planning has other benefits:

  • Healthy meals
  • New recipes
  • Fewer artificial ingredients
  • Save money
  • Save time
  • Fewer shopping trips
  • Maintain your sanity

Whether you want to save time and money, improve gut health, plan tastier meals, or enjoy a great dinner with your friends and family, Supper Sanity tips and recipes can help your journey.