How I Create Content For My Site – Episode 12: PaleOMG Uncensored Podcast

I was recently asked multiple questions about how I come up with content on the website, how I stay creative with recipes, and how I keep it fresh. So I’m talking all about that today and answering many of your questions, as well!

And if you’ve been waiting for podcast episodes to be transcribed, you can read episodes 1-6 right now! Just click here to search the first six episodes. And I should have the next 6 transcribed in a week or so! Thank you for all your patience! Click here to check out all the previous podcasts and be sure to rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher!

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Episode 12 Transcription:

This is Juli Bauer from PaleOMG and you are listening to PaleOMG Uncensored.

Juli Bauer: Hey guys! How’s it going? What’s going on in the world of you right now? Hopefully, it’s warmer than it is in Colorado. Actually, it’s kind of warmed up today. I think it’s getting to like 55 degrees, but yesterday it was like; I don’t f*cking know, 10 degrees, meaning our gym was probably 4. Our gym was so cold. And we even have a heater that we turn on; but it gets so cold. After you’ve worked out, and if you stay there and coach, and your sweat cools and you become freezing; it’s just so cold. It’s just so cold in there. It gets you a little less excited to work out. But you know, you just f*cking push through. You just go. You just go.

Anyways; this week has been ultra fun because I had the stomach flu; and as you know, stomach flu is just a real f*cking good time. So Monday morning; I had to work at my gym for like 6 hours on Monday morning. Felt good; good to go, and I had to go pick up my dog from my husband. So I went and picked up the dog from his work, went back home. I reheated up some salmon that I’d made the night before, made a salad and ate that, and right away my stomach was like; nu-huh. Nah girl. I was like, that makes no sense. This food isn’t bad; I made the salmon the night before, I reheated it up in the oven. There’s nothing sketch about it. Why am I feeling this way? Maybe my stomach is just off.

So I just sat on the couch, and I had no energy. I was like, why am I feeling so lazy? Maybe because I was up at 5. I don’t know; I just feel so lazy and I don’t want to do anything, and my stomach is just grumbling. So I was like; ok, I’m just going to go to the gym. I don’t want to because I feel weird; I’m just going to go work out. I’m going to do it. And I took a Pepto-Bismol tablet or something like that. So I’m driving in the gym, and I’m like; this is a bad idea. Why did I do this? I should just turn around now, but now you’re halfway there; just go. So I get to the gym, I sit in the parking lot, and I’m on the armrest that’s between you and the passenger seat, and I’m just sitting there hunched over, thinking; ok, something’s going to happen here. I don’t know where it’s going to happen, but something is going to f*cking happen. And whatever wants to come out of my body is going to, and I don’t want to be sitting in the gym trying to do a squat clean when that happens. No, no, no.

But you know what I had to do? I had to drive home in rush hour traffic, which isn’t much better. You know? Sitting in traffic. Ok, you’re going to be like; why the f*ck are you talking about this, and I hate you Juli, and I’m turning your podcast off. But, this one time, I got the stomach flu actually. I remember this in college. It was my friend’s 21st birthday, and I was in Greeley, and I; {laughs}. So I had one margarita when I was out to celebrate her 21st birthday, and I was like, I’m just not feeling right, so I’m going to keep going out with you but I’m not going to drink anymore. And then I was like; I’m going to go home tonight, not spend the night with you, but I’m going to go home because I just feel super weird. And I’m driving home, and there’s a DUI checkpoint, so it’s like a long line of cars, and I’m sitting there, and I’m like; “I’m going to throw up in my car. I’m going to throw up in my car, it’s going to smell like margarita, and I’m going to be at a DUI checkpoint!” It was very frightening.

But I was like, I’m not intoxicated, I’m just literally going to throw up. I was sitting in this traffic, and then I was like; ok, sh*t is going to happen. What am I going to do? So I grabbed a box that was in my car, or maybe it was a bag; I don’t know what it was. But I threw up into this bag or box, and it leaked everywhere. All over me, all over the car. And it tasted like; I mean it smelled like; oh my god, that’s terrible. It smelled like margarita. If anybody’s in Colorado; or I don’t know if anything has changed; those real margaritas, so it’s just like f*cking sugar. Oh my god, it was terrible. Got home, threw up all over me. I think that was my last experience with the stomach flu. But that’s when I lived with my parents, because it was the summer and I was still in college, and I lived with my parents. And you know what my dad did, because he’s the greatest person? He took my car in to get completely cleaned out. Now you’re a f*cking adult, and you’ve got to do that sh*t on your own. Your parents aren’t doing that for you. Hell to the nah.

Thankfully I did not puke in my car. But I got home, was dying. Body aches. My husband was like; hey, will you unlock the door for me. He didn’t have his key, or something. I go to the door; as soon as I unlock the door I have to run and throw up and life goes downhill from there. But the good thing about stomach flu is it’s over in 36 hours. I was back to normal. It’s not like the normal flu or cold where you’re like; congested forever and it’s like weeks or like mono or whatever.

So, we’re on the up and up; you know. I’m feeling good now. It’s like getting an enema or something. A coffee enema. I had a friend who did that once. It’ll just clean you out; clean slate. But I’ll stop talking about body excretions at this point.

Anyways, last week I had a bit of a yawning incident going on on the podcast, and a lot of you gave me f*cking sh*t about that, and I said in the podcast; please do not give me sh*t about yawning, I can’t help it! You know, there were some people who were cool; you were like, Oh my god that’s funny, can’t stop yawning, you’re a human being. Thank you. The other people were like, maybe you should edit that out. I don’t know how to f*cking edit this out. You know, I’m just recording this podcast in my office. I don’t know how to do that, people. So I apologize for the yawning; life gets in the way. At least I’m not vomiting from the stomach flu while I record this podcast, so really I’m doing you guys a favor by only yawning! So cool. I get it. I stopped looking at iTunes reviews because I’m too scared that the yawning may have really enhanced the iTunes reviews. So. {sigh} Yeah.

Anyways, no yawning today. I’m sitting in my office, sitting up straight, not bundled up in a blanket because I turned up the heat. I’ve been trying to take big breaths; get the oxygen in, get it flowing. So thank you for your recommendations whoever recommended breathing. {laughs} That always helps with life.

Let’s see what else is going on on the agenda. Tomorrow I’m going to see my esthetician. I’m just going to laser off this face; just do some lasering because I just love it. I love whatever stuff she wants to do. That is like my favorite thing to do, is go see my esthetician. She wants to burn my face, I’m cool with it. You know? Burn it. Burn 10 years off. I’m down. But I just love getting my face lasered. Lasers are f*cking cool. I don’t know why I’m talking about this. I think because I feel like I don’t have enough to talk about on this podcast today. But there are a bunch of people asking questions; I asked on Instagram if anybody had questions, and so many people asked questions so I don’t know why I’m freaking out. But I just feel like I’m not giving; I don’t have enough to talk about. But we’ll see.

I also; I got some comments or questions that were like; I was to know more about specifically the paleo diet, or like more science stuff, and that is so not me. And I’ve said that from the beginning; if you read the about me page, on my blog www.PaleOMG.com I say I am not about the science; I just don’t give a f*ck. So I apologize that that’s what you’re looking for, but here I just like saying words. Not science related, because that’s not my background. There are amazing people out there, like Rob Wolf, or Diane Sanfilippo, or Whole9 or Whole30, whichever, I don’t remember what they call themselves. There are so many people who know science and are good at that. So if you’re looking for that; that’s awesome. I just talk about my own personal background and stories and experience; not the science. Because science is really boring to me. But I know it’s not to other people; so just go to other people. So there’s that.

So today, on the podcast, I’m talking about how I create content. So last week on my last episode, I asked people random questions, and a bunch of people asked, like, how you came up with recipes, or the difference between almond flour and coconut flour, just those types of questions so I thought I would just do it here, and see how that goes. So let’s take a sip of water and let’s get going guys.

Ok, so just a quick recap; I did a podcast about how I started my blog in the first place, and if you want to know any of that information, or have any specific questions about that, go listen back to that episode. It has all my information there. But quick rundown; I started my blog in 2011 when people just asked me to share my recipes on one. People asked, and I did it. I decided; so when I first started paleo, I was competing in Crossfit and I wanted to get better at Crossfit, and I knew that nutrition was really important. So I started eating paleo, but I didn’t know how to cook at all. I had no background. I didn’t cook much with my mom growing up. She worked full time, so whenever we cooked together, we baked a pie. And there were all these rules; I don’t know, this is boring. I just thought it was really boring when I had to follow other people’s rules.

So when I started doing paleo, well, I just almost yawned and I tried to block it out. I just don’t want to get in trouble. Ok, so when I started paleo, I started cooking from other people’s recipes that were online; this was back in 2011 so there weren’t many recipes. If you go back that far in paleo, you know, there were not many recipes out there. So I would cook from a couple of people’s websites; like Diane Sanfilippo’s; her Balanced Bites website. And there weren’t many cookbooks, it was just a couple of blogs out there. So it was Diane’s; there was this great website called Health Bent; I think it’s still out there. They had great recipes. So I started cooking a couple of these recipes; and I was like, I love the recipes, but I f*cking hate following directions. I’m too ADD for this. I just like to play by my own rules.

Once I started making these recipes, I just knew I had to do my own. So what I did when I kind of first started was I would first talk to people; friends all the time would give me different ideas. I remember one of my friends back in the day, his name was Dom. He was like; have you ever made Salisbury steak? I’m like I have no idea what that is. No, so no I’ve not ever made those or tried those. So what did I do? I looked up multiple Salisbury steak recipes, and saw what were the main ingredients for a Salisbury steak. And you’ll see all these recipes, and they all have different twists on them. So I would kind of pull from different ideas, and how I could make it paleo. And that’s kind of what I often did.

I would go to the grocery store, and I would look up different magazines, and I would just kind of see what the magazines were making. Whether that was holiday or maybe grill recipes or cast iron skillet recipes or one-pot. I’d look at these recipes, and I would kind of pull ideas from that and see how people came up with these recipes more than anything. I would watch the Food Network, as well. I watch the Food Network whenever I’m home; I mean, I was just watching the Food Network two minutes ago before I started reading this podcast. I just love watching the Food Network. It teaches you things; how you’re deglazing a pan, which maybe you were doing that before but you didn’t know what it was called. But watching the Pioneer Woman; just the other day I was watching her show, and she made mulligatawny soup, which is like an Indian curry soup, and I had never heard of that until I watched that show, and then I look up what’s in mulligatawny soup, and there’s hundreds of versions all out there, so I kind of make my own spin on it. So I’ll kind of talk about that more and crediting sources and that sort of thing.

But then, over time, a lot of times I’ll just come up with a recipe on my own. Maybe it’s inspired from a Thai restaurant, when I had Tom Kha Gai soup; make something like that. Or a curry; I love curries, and I always want to get better at making curry. Stuff in the Crockpot; what’s good in the Crockpot? Tougher meats are great in the Crockpot, and I could try to make my own spins on that. So, over time, the more you cook, and if you’re a person who cooks on a regular basis, the more you get creative. Because you’re like; oh, well I made this recipe 100 times, and I know how to do it, so how can I put a new spin on it that just makes it a little bit different. So, yeah, the more you cook, the better you get at it.

And I get questions all the time; “how do you come up with new content all the time?” it’s just like any job; how do you get better at your job? You do it all the time. And if you’re doing something all the time, you’re going to get better at it, you’re going to get more creative, you’re going to get inspired even more if you love what you’re doing. But you just get better at it. There are 100 different chocolate chip cookie recipes; you’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, but you, obviously, might want to make your own chocolate chip cookie recipe. So you just kind of start throwing things together.

So, when I first started; you guys, this is what I did. I created a little script of how I was going to talk, and I did not talk in any of that order. I’m already failing my script. Anyways, when I first started with cooking paleo things, and I was like; I’m going to do this, I’m just going to make up my own recipe. One of the first recipes I made was like a muffin recipe, and it was super, super dense; still edible, but it was crazy dense, and I’m like, ok this isn’t very good. Not worth posting, that’s for sure. But, how can I change it. What needs to be different?

I remember making these biscuits, and I used all coconut flour, because I just didn’t know what coconut flour was, but I knew it was a paleo flour. So I made these biscuits that were all coconut flour, and they were completely inedible because they were so, so dry! And then I was like; well, ok, not cooking with just coconut flour from now on. So you kind of learn over time what works, what doesn’t work, why it didn’t work, did I add too many eggs so it’s kind of spongy and it has that egg texture or egg flavor to it. And how can I substitute it and change it the next time around? So you really learn from your mistakes. Test and retest; it’s like anything. It’s like any job, you start at a new job, you make a mistake, you “get in trouble” in whatever way, and you move past it and you figure out how to not make that mistake next time around. So it’s just any type of job, this time it’s just food.

When I first started cooking for the blog; so this was 2011. I was super broke, so a lot of times I would cook whatever is in season, because that’s obviously the cheapest, and also whatever was on sale. So whatever meat was on sale, I had to figure out what to do with it. That was a lot of times stew meat or ground meat; so I would come up with ideas off of that. And a lot of times I would just look up ground chicken recipes, and see what different things people had made. They were like building blocks of ideas, and you kind of go from there.

A lot of times, I write down stuff constantly that I see on TV or I try at a restaurant, or I see on a menu, whatever. You’re always looking for ideas. Oh, my mother-in-law is calling. Hi Jolene! She listens to my podcast. She’s the best. She just had knee surgery. I’ll call you back, Jolene.

Anyway, the inspiration is just ongoing. I mean, think about all the recipes that are in this world. It’s ongoing. It’s infinity. There are infinity recipes, and infinity inspiration. People come up with new recipes every single day, and it’s crazy. So that’s kind of how I come up with different inspiration. I look at Pinterest all the time. I think about what’s in season, what holidays are coming up, like Christmas is coming up so I’m making kind of holiday, cheery inspired recipes or kind of, I don’t know, comfort food dishes. That’s what I do more so around the holidays. Valentine’s Day I do desserts. As much as I f*cking hate football, people like snacks; I like snacks, so I’ll do Super Bowl snacks before the Super Bowl. In the summer time, I do more grill recipes, because people are outdoors more and do more drinks, because you want those nice, refreshing, cold drinks.

Everything; there’s always inspiration, and yeah, I’m just always kind of pulling inspiration from all over the place. And I’ll get more into this when I ask; when I talk; f*cking Juli. When I look through some of these questions, because people have exact questions that I want to answer, but since I’m talking about all the content, I also want to talk about other posts. I also share on my website workouts; so my weekly workouts, and I share fashion posts, as well.

So, when I started writing cookbooks, which was about 4 years ago I think I started my first cookbook, four or five years ago. So when I first started doing that cookbook, it was harder to come up with content for the blog. But then once I did my second one, it was really challenging because I was traveling to write my second cookbook, and with all the travel, and producing recipes for a cookbook, it’s much more challenging to produce recipes quite as often for the blog. And so I just kind of felt crammed into a corner that I just couldn’t be creative because all your energy had to go to the book. Because you want a book to be the best content that you have.

So once I started doing my second book, I wanted to come up with something that just made it easier and more interesting that I didn’t feel as burned out. So I started sharing my weekly workout posts, and my end goal was really to make my blog a lifestyle blog that you could come to for multiple different reasons, so I was like; ok, I’ll start sharing my workouts. Because that’s the other thing; I’m so passionate about food, but I’m also so passionate about fitness, and I always was really nervous to talk about fitness, because I never wanted people to feel like; I was like, oh you have to work out, you have to work out a certain way. I didn’t want to be that annoying Crossfit person that we all know too well. I just wanted to just be a person who worked out and then maybe some other people saw that randomly and they worked out.

But once I started sharing my weekly workouts post, when I started doing more of the motivational stuff, and I just started talking about, this is why we should workout and this is what is so amazing about working out, and this is why I love working out. Instead of; I tried to make sure it was a positive experience and I got great feedback from that, and people really took note of that. They saw that I was trying to be positive about fitness; because fitness for so long was a negative thing for me, and it was a thing I hated until I found Crossfit. So I just wanted to share that with others, and motivate others, and give them another reason to come to my website; not just food. Food is just as important as fitness; it really is. Keeping our bodies and our bones strong is so important; just as important as food.

So I started sharing my weekly workouts, and that really grew from there. I was like; ok, what else can I pull into weekly workouts post, other than just what workouts I did. So I started sharing free travel workouts and those motivational kind of topics. I started sharing on-sale fitness apparel, and then a lot of times I’ll share what I ate in a day, because people request that all the time, so I’ll just show a kind of snapshot of what I’m munching on. So yeah.

Then I started doing Monday posts for my weekly workouts, and I just felt way more inspired for my recipes, because I didn’t feel like I had to post a recipe every Monday. I had a time to breath, decide what recipes I wanted to make, instead of just pulling something out of my ass that I wasn’t really as proud of. And I talked about this when I was saying in that episode I talk about how I built my blog; I talk about when I’m on book tour, I shared photos of the outfits I was wearing, and those got more likes than my food photos, so I was like, maybe I should share fashion as well. So I started doing Fashion Fridays, and from Fashion Fridays came more sponsored posts and just companies wanting to work with me. So that helps me create content.

So what I do now every week, because I’ve expanded into things that I’m just passionate about, which I just talked about at the beginning, like skin care. I really became passionate about that after dealing with cystic acne and coming through that; so I started sharing posts about that. So every single week, I put together a to-do list of every single day what I need to do. I also have; I talked about this, I keep saying I talked about this, so sorry if you’ve never heard this and you’re annoyed. I have an app on my phone, it’s just the Notes app, and it just looks like a little sticky note. But I create different notes, like my to-do list every single day, and then I have my post, so I list out every single post that’s coming up. And I put in all the sponsored posts that I have coming up, any of the obligations that I need to make sure I get done in a timely manner.

So I write down all those posts, and what recipes are coming up, and then I can really look ahead. So when I was in November, I was writing out December posts of what recipes needed to be made that were holiday inspired. So that’s what really helps me keep organized, and then I can make sure I’m getting enough recipes in; I’m getting fashion in; I’m getting my workouts in, and I’m really bringing all those things together and adding some other fun stuff in there, like beauty or décor; whatever. So that’s kind of how I create content for my website. Yeah, that’s how I do it. I don’t know; every single day is a little bit different.

But I want to answer all these questions, because these questions will get a little bit more in depth and hopefully answer some questions you maybe had but didn’t get to ask. And all these questions were on Instagram, so thank you guys for asking these questions. Let’s take a sip of water real quick. You guys gotta stay hydrated, you know. Food is important, fitness is important, water is f*cking important.

Ok, Marie Greenwald; she asks, “How much do you worry about perfection? I just started a blog this summer and I feel so good about some recipes, but others are just ok. I know not every recipe is going to be perfect or the favorite, but how do you decide if it’s good enough?” First, you’ve got to go with your gut, obviously. But I do try to remember, especially at the beginning. I mean, I look back at recipes at the beginning, and I’m like; those recipes suck. But so many people liked those recipes. And I think it’s good to remember that even when a recipe is not your absolute favorite, it doesn’t mean that someone else isn’t going to love it. And I have many of those recipes that are like, meh. And people love them, even the super simple recipes that other people have come up with. Like cauliflower rice; what if people didn’t see a cauliflower rice recipe until they came to your website? You know, it’s not like you’re reinventing something.

But you are giving something to that person that they might have not seen yet, or might have not tried. So I think it’s important; you’re going to have a mixture of recipes, not every recipe is going to be your absolute favorite. But I wouldn’t just push those aside. Maybe just keep those, and then if you’re low on content, you could add that in. if you’re like; well, this is a simple recipe. But know that your taste buds are not the exact same else’s, and someone might absolutely love that recipe. So that’s something to keep in mind. Not every single recipe that I’ve posted has been my absolute favorite, and there are still people who have loved it. So, good to keep in mind from my own experience.

Kristen Joy Bauers. Cool last name! Even though we spell it different. “I’m curious to know if you have any technical cooking training or if you’re just a natural developing flavors in cooking or baking. Thank you for always welcoming reader questions.” Stop it Kristen, you’re the best. Well, I think I said this at the beginning, but I have no background in cooking. I don’t think I’ve ever taken a cooking class, even in high school. I don’t think I was in any of those cooking classes. I had no background with cooking, but I was always a little bit interested in it. I just was so intimidated by it.

I remember my sophomore year of college, when you finally have your own kitchen, you’re in your own apartment out of the dorms. I remember; oh my god this dog is howling outside! {Laughs} But I remember just trying a lasagna recipe; you know, something super simple, and I just wasn’t super impressed with it, kind of disappointed. And I’m like; I don’t know about this cooking thing. Maybe I just totally suck at it. But it wasn’t until paleo when I was like; ok, I have to figure out how to cook if I’m going to eat this way long-term, and I want to eat this way long-term. So lots of trial and error. I think you just get better at developing flavors over time, and you remember why something didn’t taste good, or why something did taste good.

So, just thinking of this, I feel like since I’ve never been to a cooking school, or any of those classes, I don’t always know how to verbally express what I think about certain foods. I really like watching the food network; a lot of times, I listen to Giada, and the way she expresses why a certain food tastes good; I’m like, oh yeah, that make so much sense! I was recently making one of my recipes, and you should totally try this recipe because it’s f*cking delicious; it was a barbecue chicken casserole. So it’s kind of a sweet and savory dish, and it just needs acid, and I’ve never thought of food as an acid before. I guess because in cooking classes in school you learn what foods are acidic and why they should be in certain foods, but it needed some acid, and I would have never thought of that when I was first making the food. But since I’ve been cooking for 5 or 6 years, I’m like; ok this needs an acid, this needs some kind of pop to change up the dish. So I got banana peppers and pickled jalapenos. So you give it just a depth that wouldn’t have been there.

So I think, just like I said before, those techniques and those developing flavors just comes over time and comes with trial and error; and you’re like, why didn’t that work, and you just think through those things. And you just kind of get better at it. But no background for me. A part of me almost wants to go take some classes or go to some sort of school just to learn more about food, and learn more of how to express what I think about food. I don’t know; part of me still kind of wants to do that.

This is T Christine19. “How the heck do you come up with so many unique recipes? How do you make sure it isn’t something that’s been done before? How do you balance how much you share about your personal life, and how do you avoid cursing out who asks if they can sub some completely random things in your recipe?” That’s funny.

Ok, I honestly don’t know how I come up with creative recipes. I think I look how people do things. I guess I talked about this before, but I look on Pinterest, I go back to what I’ve tried at restaurants. What I don’t do is I don’t go to food blogs; I never go to paleo food blogs. People have asked me, “What are your favorite paleo food blogs you read?” I don’t read anybody’s paleo food blog. I am friends with many paleo bloggers, but I don’t read their blogs because I think it’s easy to take people’s ideas and you kind of talk yourself into thinking it was your own. And that’s just not the case. So I stay away from paleo blogs. But I look at Pinterest all the time; now Instagram is pretty much food-stagram, I mean, come on, what else are people looking at other than half naked bodies and food on Instagram.

So I look at Instagram explore page all the time, and yeah, I just keep pulling ideas from there. What things are in season, what holidays are coming up? I have, obviously Christmas is coming up, so I just made this really good potato dish, skillet dish. I was like; I want to make a sweet potato dish for it that’s kind of a spinoff of sweet potato casserole, so it’s this sweet version of this savory dish that I just recently made. So I made kind of a sweet version of that. The more you cook, the easier it becomes to make new recipes. I have this apple tart that I’m going to make soon, and it’s going to have a shortbread crust. I made the shortbread crust a while ago, then I keep making new versions with this shortbread crust of new recipes.

So my friend Vanessa from Clean Eating with a Dirty Mind, she said this on book tour when we were on book tour together, and she has a dessert cookbook, you can find it on Amazon, and she; you make one cookie recipe, you’re able to make 10 cookie recipes based off this base recipe that you made. So that’s how you come up with more recipes, too. You build off of things you made, and flavors that you’ve developed, and you keep building, and it just becomes easier and easier I think over time. You just never run out of inspiration, honestly.

“How do you make sure it isn’t something that has been done before?” That one’s like; to make sure you’re not doing what someone else has been doing, don’t read their recipe, you know. I like to look at what people; if I’ve never made something, say a Salisbury steak; I want to know what herbs and what spices go into it, and then I want to build it from there. So I might look at; ok, this dish has rosemary, cayenne pepper, blah, blah, blah, and over time I figured out that I really like, I don’t know, cardamom or something weird like that. I really like cardamom in that recipe so I’ll add that into my own. But to make sure you’re not coming up with someone else’s recipe is to just come up with it by yourself, and that’s the best way to do it.

“How do you balance how much you share about your personal life?” I just don’t share stuff; I guess I just don’t show images of my husband. I just keep that out, because it’s nonya business. {laughs}

“How do you avoid cursing people out who ask if they sub completely random things?” That sh*t annoys the f*ck out of me. You cannot rate a recipe and say that it didn’t come out right, but you did 14 different things to it. That’s not how it goes. If you change something, it is not the recipe that I made. So keep that in mind when you’re making people’s recipes or judging them; judge it based of exactly how they made it. Don’t judge it off of how you changed it. So, I mean I’m pretty bitchy to those people. Use your f*cking brain, you know. So I don’t avoid cursing people out; I just do.

Ok, let’s see. Lemons and Lime. She says; I think she; maybe he? “Can you do a science behind paleo baking podcast?” {laughs} Oh no! We just talked about science, and you know I’m just not into that. She says, “Especially egg-free paleo baking.” Ok, so I’m not good at the science behind baking especially. Two people that you should absolutely go to; I love these two people, is Vanessa from Clean Eating with a Dirty Mind; she has an amazing cookbook who tells you all about baking, and all about the specifics, and different flours, and she’s awesome. Has f*cking beautiful photography. And then another friend; Brittany Angell, who has a book specifically about different flours and how they affect each other and how to mix them. She has amazing cookbooks. So find those two people, and if you have any questions, ask them because they are great at baking. Baking is not my specialty. I have some baking recipes on there, but that’s not my go-to; that’s not my passion. So that would be two people to absolutely look to to answer those questions.

Samtastic! “Where do you find your inspiration for creating new recipes? Do you spend a lot of time doing research on different types of dishes?” So obviously I kind of talked about this, but I spend a ton of time doing research. And my research is looking through Pinterest, and Instagram, and magazines, and something I see online. And that’s where I get all that inspiration. So when my husband is watching football, that’s what you’ll see me doing. I just write down; maybe I’ll just see something of a flavor pairing.

So one of my favorite blogs is Half Baked Harvest, and I will see her mix and herb and a spice that I never thought about mixing together. So I’ll write those two things down, not the recipe specifically; and I’ll be like, how can I do this on my own some day? I never thought about using those two things together. So I kind of pull from there. So I’m looking at inspiration all the time, and I’m writing down ideas constantly. I have a recipe idea, notes in my notes section on my phone, and I write notes down all the time, so that’s kind of how I do it.

Let’s see; Molly Mae. “How do you know what different flours to use and their individual purposes in baking?“ Again, I am no baking expert. I think people get the most questions about making paleo food when it comes to baking. Baking is that crazy thing, and I’m just not good at baking. But I do know all the different flours that you can use. And I have played around with them a lot. So when I first started; I told that story, about when I first started making paleo baked goods, I made biscuits with all coconut flour, and it tastes like sh*t; and you have to had more eggs, and who wants to add 8 eggs to a f*cking biscuit recipe? No thank you.

So I would look up different; I would find different flours and look up what they did and see other people use them, and start kind of using a mixture of them. And that’s what I found works the best with flours, is kind of using a mixture of flours, not just one. Almond flour is one of those ones that does pretty well on its own; I don’t want to be eating something that is that high fat and just all almonds. My skin just doesn’t work with that, my gut doesn’t work with that. So that’s why I pulled to some of the other flours like tapioca flour. And I love almond flour, I just like kind of mixed in, and I try not to use almond flour in every single one of my recipes, because it’s just so intense. And I can’t eat it myself that much, because I kind of have an allergy to almonds. So more than anything, Molly Mae, is testing and retesting and failing and spending a lot of money on failed recipes, but you finally figure out what that mixture of flours works. But it’s a lot of f*cking up, that’s for sure.

LXGX33; “Do you ever get in a funk or feel unmotivated to constantly come up with new recipes or interesting content. If so, what are some ways you overcome this?” I used to get in a funk a lot. I got in way more funks when I was writing cookbooks, because it’s just really hard to come up with content for your website and put all your energy into your book as well. Because your book is a deadline; but you don’t want to lose people who are reading your blog, and you don’t want to let them down. So it’s really hard to find balance, and I lost a lot of motivation when I was doing both. But when I’m just putting my energy into my blog, I don’t feel that loss of motivation. And what really helps with that is that different content, like the fashion, the décor, the beauty. Whatever people are asking about, I can share that and that keeps me from feeling unmotivated.

And then really, planning ahead and making sure I’m excited about what recipe I’m making. If I’m not excited about it, I’m not going to make it, and I find something new to make. So if I really like the recipe, it keeps me motivated. But coming up with different content has really kept me excited about my blog and really more in-tune to my blog, too. I feel like I am excited to respond to comments, and before I didn’t feel that way because I was just losing motivation and excitement. So doing all those different things has really helped.

Oh my god, you guys. My lips are so insanely chapped from this dry weather. Damn Accutane has ruined my lips forever! Ok. Let’s see. Kennedy PM, “How did you grow your blog readership passed just friends and family; it would be so helpful to know.” Well, Kennedy, definitely go listen to my episode about how I grew my blog. But my blog, luckily, grew from word of mouth mostly and organic traffic, and I think a short blog name really helped with that. So when people were searching paleo, maybe mine was one of the sooner ones that came up. So it was really organic, and people telling each other, and sharing recipes, so I’ve been really lucky with that. But definitely go listen back to my podcast because I talk about that in more specifics.

Just Jacks22. “How many times do you usually test or tweak a recipe before it’s ready for the blog? Do you have a different process for cookbook recipes?” Well nowadays, I usually don’t have to test recipes multiple times unless it’s like a dessert recipe or a baked good or something. When you’re coming up with a meat recipe or a vegetable recipe, you don’t often have to f*ck with it too much because it’s so simple and it’s easy to come up with. Like I made my sweet potato dish; the sweet potato dish that’s coming out for Christmas, and the hardest thing about it was just making sure the cooking time was correct, and that was the most challenging part. But coming up with the flavors, you know, you just know flavors over time.

So when I first started, I probably made recipes 2 to 3 times. A lot of times I gave up, and I was like; f*ck it, I don’t care, I’ll move on to the next recipe. But I’m not a person who is that obsessive about a recipe that I’ll make it that many times. So I don’t do multiple recipes that often. When it’s for a cookbook, and I really want a cookbook recipe, I’ve definitely done that multiple times. Especially in that third book, I made that stuff on a regular basis. But when it’s just for my blog, if it’s not coming out, I have sh*t to do. I’m moving on to the next recipe.

JMadison, “How do you multitask so well?” Wow you’re so nice. “I watch your Snap Stories, and I’m so impressed by all you get done throughout the day. It keeps me motivated!” Shut up, that’s awesome! I’ve talked about this before but make to-do lists. If you’re a person who doesn’t do to-do lists, do it! Oh my god it’s the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. I love to-do lists. Live is just one to-do list, and you’ve got to write it all down, and write everything down. I literally write when I’m going to eat lunch, I write when I’m going to take a shower, I write when I’m going to; I don’t know, do laundry. I write everything down because then I don’t miss anything. So that’s how I stay organized is just writing sh*t down, what I need to get done, and I do that every single day, and I do it multiple days ahead of time. It’s Friday right now when I’m recording this podcast, and I’ve already written my to-do list out through Wednesday. So, write every single day out; that’s what works for me and that’s what keeps me motivated and keeps me getting everything done because I don’t forget anything, since I’m super ADD that really helps.

Paleo Ally. “What is the main difference between coconut flours and almond flours? Why are they not interchangeable, and what are they best used for?” I mean, they’re just total different chemical structures. That’s why they’re not interchangeable. Coconut flour is extremely dense, and almond flour is pretty dense but it’s just not the exact same, I guess chemical structure, that’s why. So you just can’t use them interchangeably. That’s just not how life works, you know? It’s like, trying to, if you’re cooking and, I don’t know, let’s see. You’re making a roast, and then you use chicken breast instead of a roast; well it’s just not a roast, you know. Now you’re making chicken breast instead! So they’re just not interchangeable. They’re not the same; of the same twine. I don’t think that’s a saying. Whatever. So you just can’t. Like I said before, it’s a mixture of multiple that have seemed to do the best for my recipes, and I like that the best so that’s what I’ve stuck with.

E2 whatever that says. “How do you keep your recipes unique without using mostly the same ingredients and directions as someone else, like there are a million paleo chocolate chip muffin recipes out there?” So I think just coming up with unique recipes is just, like I said before, doing it on your own. If you come up with it and you decide how much ingredients go into it, and you write out the instructions, and you didn’t just copy and paste, and do exactly how someone else did and change one ingredient, then you made it up.

I like to look at how a muffin recipe was made. If they use baking soda or baking powder. Or like say just a regular; not a paleo muffin but a regular muffin. How much flour was used, how many muffins came out of that. Then I build off of that. Ok, well I know that this will work well with baking soda or baking powder, whatever, and I know that this amount of flour with this amount of eggs; how can I do this, test it out, see the batter. I’ll see how the batter mixes; do I need to add some from there, and that’s kind of how I do it. But just making sure you’re not looking up people’s other recipes; that’s how you’ve got to keep it to yourself, is just creating something on your own. That’s it at the end of the day.

Let’s see; I had to kind of go through some of these questions because a lot of them were not related to this. So thank you so much for asking all those cool questions, but I’m just keeping it to creating content. Ok, so Rollpaleo, “I’m wondering how you avoid reinventing the wheel, so to speak. It seems like every paleo blogger has a recipe for things like cauliflower rice, sweet potato fries, and other staples, and I’m curious how do you avoid that?” I don’t think I avoid that. I have those types of recipes, and especially in my cookbooks, because I try to think of it as; maybe this person is only buying one cookbook. And I’m so lucky because they chose mine. And just because other people have come up with recipes like cauliflower rice, but what if they don’t have those cookbooks? I want to make sure that I come up with my own cauliflower rice, and those staples that people can make because a person who is coming into paleo say they like rice, or they like fries, and they need alternatives. So I want to have those alternatives there.

So I have plenty of those staple recipes, and then plenty of more in depth; more elaborate recipes as well. So I don’t feel like I avoid that. I come up with that; but over time, I feel like I come up with less and less of those staples, because I’ve done those staples. But I definitely don’t avoid it. Because I think those are things that get people interested in paleo, is, “Oh, you can have cauliflower rice? Well I’ll try that and see how that tastes.” It might get people to actually buy another one of your cookbooks, or visit your website. So I think staples are still important, as well.

KweenKatie; oh, queen Katie? I’m stupid. {laughs} “Hi Juli! I would love to hear how you balance companies wanting to give you things for free in exchange for a good review with being true and honest with your readers. I always wonder how bloggers think about that idea of sponsored content while remaining authentic.” And that definitely gets; it’s gotten not more challenging, but I always want to stay true to myself. I had a company recently reach out to me, and you’ve seen this, and I won’t say who it is, but you’ve seen this all over social media, there are many, many people who have repped this company, including the Kardashians; big named people for this company and they’re reaching out to me to do something, which is so cool. But it doesn’t follow what I believe in, and as much as I’d love to get paid for repping a brand, it really does have to fall into what I believe in, as well. So, sometimes you just have to say no, and that sucks. Who likes to say no to getting paid when you run your own business? Nobody likes to say no to that. But, that just doesn’t fall into my own brand, so I stay away from it.

I work with companies that I want to work with, and I get to choose at the end of the day. I get to say no if I want to, and I have said no multiple times. But I also say, if the company wants to send me a product, like a food related product, I’m happy to try it out. I tell them that I won’t necessarily talk about them on my social media, but I’m happy to try their product, and then we can talk about moving forward if I like the product. And I have told multiple companies when I don’t think the product is what I believe in, not saying bad things about them but maybe it just doesn’t work for me or it doesn’t taste what I want it to taste like. I explain that. But say a company wants to send something and I really love it, then we can talk about working together in different ways, whether I just share something on social media because I love them, or we work together in a paid collaboration.

I just stay true to myself and what I believe in, and what I want to share with my readers. Because maybe it’s a product that I would want in my own life, like one of my favorite brands is Siete foods; they create tortillas. And I want everybody to know that; I’m friends with them at this point, but if I wasn’t I would still be telling the world about them. If they want to ever pay me, that’s awesome, but I’m going to talk about them regardless, because they’re amazing. So yeah, that’s kind of how it works with collaborations, I guess.

Let’s see; oh, I kind of talked about that. Let’s see; Rock Paper Skillet. Stop; that name is adorable. “Long time listener, first time caller.” I love when people say that, that’s just my favorite. “Are your recipes original, adapted, a combination of both? How do you credit a source? Do you contact anyone for permission? At what point do you feel like it’s your own and it’s not been done before? I started and blog and link to recipes I find online but otherwise it feels like a grey area.”

I think it definitely does feel like a grey area, for sure. So I made; I said this, the mulligatawny soup that was inspired by The Pioneer Woman; so I said, this recipe was inspired by the Pioneer Woman. But; let’s see, what did I make the day before? Oh, say I made these pumpkin cookie dough chocolate cups that wasn’t inspired by any sort of person, it was seeing pumpkin cookie dough, and then I was like; oh, I want to put this into a chocolate cup. So no idea came from one specific person; I saw something on Pinterest about pumpkin cookie dough, and I’m like; oh, sh*t, I’ve never made a pumpkin cookie dough, I want to make that. And then I make my own pumpkin cookie dough, not based off any recipe that I saw online, it was just me throwing ingredients together.

So if a recipe; like my shortbread crust recipe was inspired by another food blogger, so I linked to her page when I said inspired by this recipe here. So if any specific inspiration came from that blog or website; I would always recommend linking that. If you’re linking an exact recipe, what I ask and people reach out a lot of times if they want to link a recipe; I tell them to not share the recipe directions. They’re welcome to share my photo and the ingredients for the recipe but in the instructions, they must link back to my website, not share the instructions. That way I’m credited for the recipe but people are always brought back to my website instead of having a website share my stuff. It b rings people back to my own website.

There are a lot of grey areas; but if you want to share someone’s recipe, always reach out to them. I really appreciate it when people do that; that’s always really nice. But it’s a hard area for sure. But just like I said before; coming up with your own recipes by not following someone else’s. You know; I want to make this paleo muffin recipe, let’s start throwing sh*t together, look how the batter looks, taste it; f*ck raw eggs, who cares, and then bake it, see how it goes. If it didn’t work well, why didn’t it, and problem solve. Do it. So there’s that. Rock Paper Skillet; I love your f*cking name.

And last but not least, that’s so funny, I literally was like, this podcast is going to be so short, and it’s been an hour already. It’s all that throw up story from the beginning. Killing it!

M Levins 1015. “Do you even bother figuring out nutritional info for your recipes? Or do you just say to yourself; f*ck it! YOLO!” Well, M Levins, you’re my favorite because you said “f*ck it” and “YOLO”. So, I get requests for nutritional information on my blog all the time, but that is not what I’m interested in, and I lived a life of counting calories, and counting fat, and counting sugars, and counting carbs, and hating my f*cking life, so I’m never going back to it. So I stay away from that, and I say “F*ck it, YOLO” all day, eryday. And you know what, if you are a person who needs to know that information or wants it in your life; there are nutritional calculators all the time out there. I know MyFitnessPal is a great one that people use to document nutritional information. But not what I’m interested in. I just don’t give a f*ck, so yeah, YOLO man. I just eat my food. I stop when I’m full, and I move on with my day.

That’s that, guys! So thank you so much for all your awesome questions. If I didn’t answer your question, I apologize, but I was just doing ones that were website/content related, not any of the other random ones. But I’ll have random reader questions again in the future, so I’ll make sure I’ll look at that Instagram post to put those in there.

So thank you guys so much for asking all these questions. It’s been awesome. Remember, if you have specific paleo baking questions, go to my friends Vanessa from Clean Eating with a Dirty Mind, and Brittany Angell; www.Brittanyangell.com. They both are paleo baking dominatrix. Can I say that there? They just f*cking dominate sh*t. so definitely go check out those people; they are amazing, and they can answer any of those baking questions. But you know what; when you’re just cooking regular paleo food, it is so easy. Because you’re just cooking some meat and veggies and putting some new spins on it. So there’s always fun things to be created in the paleosphere.

So that’s that, guys. Thank you so much for listening in today. I don’t know what next weeks’ is going to be. You know what I was thinking of talking about; was, how do I say this. I was thinking about saying, or talking about how to, I guess how to just become confident. Because for so long I fought so many insecurities, and I feel like I’ve really broken free from that. Not to say that I don’t have insecurities; we all have insecurities, we all go through that stuff. But I think I really want to talk about that, because I think that’s something so many people fight with, and it’s really frustrating. So I’d love to talk about that. So I might talk about that next week! So there’s that, guys.

But you know what I’m going to go do? I’m going to go rub my dog’s belly because he was so good, because he didn’t bark, and he didn’t annoy you guys at all; meaning me annoying you by telling him to get out of the room, and you give me… whatever. So I’m going to go rub his belly. I’m going to go get this podcast ready to go for your guys tomorrow, and then I’m going to go out to dinner to get some ramen with my husband. My favorite thing when it snows is to get ramen and instead of the noodles get rice; yes, I eat rice. And then afterwards we’re going to go in our new hot tub, because it’s been too cold to get in the hot tub at night, and I had the stomach flu. Who wants to go in a hot tub with stomach flu? No thank you. S we’re going to have a nice little hot date tonight, literally hot. {laughs} Boom. That’s that.

Well I hope you guys have a wonderful week, wonderful weekend. Keep kicking ass at life. If you have any sort of questions related to this podcast, head over to www.PaleOMG.com and you can click on the link for this podcast episode and ask questions there. And if you just want to check out my website, feel free to; www.PaleOMG.com. I share all kinds of fun sh*t there. And then remember to rate and review and subscribe; and to only review the podcast if you’re going to leave something positive. If you want to leave a positive imprint in the world, leave a positive comment. Imprint? Is that what you call it? Isn’t that what they do in Twilight, imprinting? I don’t know. But be positive in this world, go kick some ass at life, get organized, and do you. Do what you love guys. It’s been wonderful. Thank you guys so much for listening. I’ll see you next week. Bye!