Hi there! I'm Vered DeLeeuw, a blogger, a foodie, a wife, and a mom. I'm so excited that you found my healthy recipes blog!
In case you're wondering who I am, what made me start this blog and why you should try my recipes, here is some information about me.
My education
I have an LL.M. (Master of Laws) degree from Tel Aviv University, which looks very nice on my home office wall but doesn't really serve me in my daily life or when writing this blog. 🙄
When I realized that my passion was food rather than the law, I started furthering my education. In June 2019, I completed a 6-month program and earned a Nutrition and Healthy Living Certificate from Cornell University.
I also completed the course "Evidence-based Optimal Nutrition: The Quest for Proof" and received a Certificate of Completion from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
And in December of 2019, I became a Certified Nutrition Coach, certified by the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM).
I'm just as proud of these certificates as I was when I completed my fancy legal education. Here's the page on this blog where I proudly display them: My Certificates.
Media mentions of my work
Healthy Recipes Blog was named by Spoon University as their number one pick for college-friendly food blogs:
"Vered DeLeeuw’s recipe index houses a massive collection of recipes, and almost all of them support clean eating while using kitchen staples. With its wide array of choices and handy tool to scale down recipes, Healthy Recipes Blog has become our go-to site for finding fun, tasty ways to use up those last bits of food in the bag."
My work has been mentioned in several other major media outlets. Here's a link to my media page.
My weird name
My name reflects the two very different cultures that I come from. "Vered" (pronounced Veh-Red, emphasis on the first syllable) means "Rose" in Hebrew. "DeLeeuw" (pronounced Deh-Ley-Uw, emphasis on the middle syllable) means "The Lion" in Dutch. Growing up in Jerusalem and frequently visiting Holland, I was greatly influenced by my two very different grandmothers.
Grandma Chava ("Eve" in Hebrew) cooked authentic Israeli and Jewish food. Her food was well-seasoned and very flavorful. Dishes like these spicy meatballs are inspired by her amazing style of cooking.
Grandma Miep (her name is the Dutch equivalent of "Mary") was a dignified, coiffed and dainty European lady. Her cooking was a bit bland, but she more than made up for it with her wonderfully buttery baked goods. This recipe for keto shortbread cookies is inspired by her wonderful baking.
I moved to the United States with my husband, who works in high-tech, in 1999. We live in the San Francisco Bay Area and have two grown daughters. The oldest is currently on a gap year at Harvard University and plans to start her junior year in August. Her sister is a freshman at Brown University - she's the one I refer to throughout this blog, and especially in older recipes, as "The Picky Eater." Well, she's not so picky anymore! She's grown, expanded her horizons, and has become a foodie just like her parents. 😍
How Healthy Recipes Blog was born
I started this blog in 2011, after my husband was instructed by his physician to go on a low-carb diet.
It wasn't easy at first. I had to change my cooking pretty drastically. I focused on proteins (meat, seafood, eggs, and aged cheeses), fats, non-starchy vegetables, and low-sugar fruit, supplemented with the occasional keto dessert.
We've been eating a low-carb, mostly grain-free and paleo diet for the past nine years. It became my mission to develop delicious yet easy recipes and to tweak old favorites so that they suit our new lifestyle (these almond flour biscuits are a good example).
Not just low carb, but also tasty!
It's really important to my husband and me to eat well. We are both foodies. Having eaten at top restaurants all over the world, we will not settle for mediocre fare. We need our food to taste good! (Follow me on Instagram to see the awesome meals we enjoy when out of the house).
For my husband and me, low carb eating is not a fad or a passing trend. It's not a temporary diet. For us, it's a way of life that we've been living for the past nine years. So we need to make it sustainable, which means tasty!
Blogging turned from a hobby into my full-time job
When I started cooking low-carb recipes, I documented them in this blog, as a way to keep all my recipes organized. To this day, I still cook from my blog - it's so convenient!
But it didn't stay hidden for long. Gradually, I realized that people were finding my recipes and responding to them. I started receiving emails from grateful readers. So I turned this blog from a hobby into my full-time job.
This is the best job I've ever had! I love creating recipes and photographing them. I love how this blog has taught me so much. Not just about cooking, but also about running a blog, taking food photos, and shooting and editing videos.
How to reach me
If you're looking for a recipe index, simply head over to the site's homepage. It features all the important recipe categories and you can start browsing from there.
Here are my media mentions. I am humbled to have been featured on so many wonderful websites!
Here are the legal terms for using this website, and this is our privacy policy. Please read both before using my recipes. They contain important information and disclaimers.
If you need to reach me, please email HealthyRecipesBlog@gmail.com. I read all my emails and do my best to respond, although sometimes the volume of emails is so high that I can't respond to each and every one of them. I apologize for that.
Thank you so much for visiting, and bon appétit!
