Have you ever found yourself …
Eating a microwave meal or another boring salad while your family enjoys “real food”
Spending tons of extra money at the grocery store buying things you don't need
Grabbing another frozen pizza for dinner because there just isn't time to figure out what's for dinner
Spending hours searching the internet for recipes that fit your diet and preferences
Starting to meal plan only giving up a few weeks later because it takes so much time and work
Feeling like dieting and weight loss is impossible
Getting bored eating the same food week after week
Spending hours every day calculating nutritional information and points
You're not alone. Experiencing of all this in our own lives, we knew there had to be a better, easier way. Using our own experiences and those of our members, we set out to create website, recipe hub, and meal planning tool to make meal time and healthy eating easier.
We believe:
To eat healthy long term, you need to have a plan. Benjamin Franklin got it right when he said, "By failing to plan, you are planning to fail”
Families should be able to eat together and eat the same thing – no more plate envy or cooking multiple meals
Mealtime shouldn't be stressful
Healthy food doesn't need to be boring or bland – it needs to taste delicious and be packed with flavor
People change diets often for lots of reasons – your plan should easily adjust with your changing needs
Everyone is busy and everyone could use a little extra help in the kitchen
Using those beliefs, we built Slender Kitchen. We hope that Slender Kitchen takes the guesswork and difficulty out of healthy living and meal planning.
How it All Got Started
Slender Kitchen was launched December of 2010 by co-founders Kristen McCaffrey and Joe Memun as an experiment in cooking and blogging. Noticing Kristen’s growing interest in cooking and healthy eating, Joe (in charge of all things tech) suggested that Kristen (in charge of all things kitchen) start a cooking blog. After a few weeks of percolation, Slender Kitchen was launched. In the first two years, Slender Kitchen was just that - a simple recipe blog that shared the recipes that Kristen was preparing at home.
However during those two years, Kristen had a sneaking suspicion that a lack of recipes wasn't really what was holding people back from losing weight – herself included. The real culprit was a lack of planning. So Kristen and Joe set out to change things.
They started by creating weekly .pdf meal plans that members could download weekly. And although these meal plans were successful and lots of members started losing weight and finally enjoying meal time again, Kristen and Joe always knew this solution didn’t work for everyone. What if someone had an allergy? What if someone didn’t like a certain ingredient? So they set out to create something new.
This pursuit was two years in the making and the result is what you find on Slender Kitchen today - a customizable meal plan focused on healthy eating with everything you need to make a healthy meal plan you’ll family will love without the stress or hours of time it takes to create one yourself.
Kristen’s Story
Before the start of Slender Kitchen and diving into the world of cooking and blogging, this story really started with my own experience struggling to find a healthy and happy balance in my own life.
Shortly after graduating college, I found myself 25 pounds heavier and knew how to cook exactly one dish that didn’t come directly from my freezer. I was tired. I felt bad about my body. I was exhausted after trying countless wellness trends and never seeing any long-term change.
At that time, I was also moving to a new city, starting a new job, and beginning graduate school. Busy didn’t even begin to describe my life. Life was exciting and I was happy BUT I just couldn't take the idea of spending another year feeling uncomfortable in my own skin. I needed to make a change.
Needing some inspiration, I started reaching out to friends and family who really embodied a healthy lifestyle and mindset. During these conversations, I discovered three things that would be critical to my long-term success – I had to learn to cook, I needed a plan, and I needed to change my mindset. This wasn't about the number on the scale, it was about feeling my best.
Now it was time to get to work. I started to teach myself to cook. Luckily it’s not that hard! I devoured blogs, cookbooks, magazines, and videos and with each healthy recipe I followed, I grew more confident in the kitchen.
Then I started planning meals and workouts. Each week I spent hours searching for recipes, adjusting serving sizes, building meal plans, and creating shopping lists. It took forever - but it worked.
Let’s fast forward a few years. After finding success in my own wellness journey, I wanted to help others do the same. That’s how Slender Kitchen was born. I wanted to share my love of delicious food that also fuels and nourishes your body. I wanted to make meal planning easy and stress-free.
