About Kelly Kirkendoll
Welcome to Kitchen Gone Rogue, a food and travel blog I started in 2016! I’m Kelly Kirkendoll, a dairy-free recipe developer, travel enthusiast, writer and food photographer.
I have spent close to three decades navigating my adult-onset dairy allergy, my daughter’s lactose intolerance and my son’s peanut allergy. From re-making recipes to cooking to grocery shopping, eating out and traveling, it’s been a food allergy journey I was determined would not require us to miss out on delicious food and adventures.
I am the former “Dinner and a Show” restaurant review columnist and food photographer for TheatreJones, an award-winning arts journalism site that Metropolitan Arts Media ran until the pandemic hit. Additionally, I am a founding board member for Cusine for Healing, a nonprofit that prepares and delivers nutritious, delicious meals to those with life-threatening illnesses. By day, I run Thrive PR, a PR/marketing agency I founded in 2003.
Kitchen Gone Rogue is my food blog where I share my dairy-free recipes (as seen in Tasty, BuzzFeed, FoodGawker, PARADE and USA Today 10Best). I also provide restaurant, product, adventure and travel reviews.
I created this website to help others who need or want to cook without dairy. Every recipe is dairy-free, most are peanut-free and many are gluten-free, vegan or paleo. My mission is to help readers make delicious dairy-free dishes and enjoy meals, holidays and travel without missing out!
As seen in:
Cooking Since Age 7
“…no one is born a great cook, one learns by doing.” – Julia Child
I blame my mom for my lifelong love affair with cooking, eating and relishing food. I wasn’t always the adventurous eater I am now, but I LOVED my mom’s homecooked meals. And, oh, could she bake amazing cookies and pies from scratch!
Aside from greasing cookie sheets and icing cookies as a preschooler, my first foray into cooking was around age 7. I was the ring leader in an attempt by a gaggle of neighborhood kids to bake bread using only a list of ingredients in my favorite book at the time – The Little Red Hen.
I’m not sure what I thought would happen, but we baked the equivalent of a rock in a cake pan (and I got grounded for at least a week)! You see, my mom was talking to the neighbor outside, and I wasn’t allowed to use the oven (of course). My dad thought it was hilarious … and if my mom could have grounded him for laughing until he cried when he heard the story, she would have!
My kitchen skills have greatly improved since then! And my mom, adult children and grandchildren(!) now happily visit and gobble down whatever comes out of my oven.
My Sad Goodbye to Dairy
I will never forget the day a skin prick test revealed that I am allergic to cow’s milk. After my doctor delivered the bad news and handed me a list (a long list) of everything I couldn’t eat, I sat on his exam table and cried.
On that list were foods like ice cream, cheese, butter and sour cream plus ingredients like whey, casein, lactoglobulin and nonfat dried milk. What!? I LOVED milk!! How could I live without it? Without cheese, cream cheese, cheesecake (my favorite dessert) or coffee ice cream (my other favorite dessert)!? And why is it in ev-er-y-thing!? Oh, the pity party was ON!
That was almost 30 years ago. At the time, I had been living with a painful, miserable, exhausting sinus infection for 6 months that wouldn’t go away, no matter how many horse-pill-sized antibiotics, nasal sprays and steam showers I threw at it.
After quitting dairy cold turkey, my life significantly improved in 3 ways: 1) My stubborn 6+ month sinus infection finally went away, 2) My recurring sinus infections went away (I had averaged about 3 per year as an adult, and since completely giving up cow’s milk, I have had only 3 in more than 25 years!) and 3) My occasional migraine headaches stopped.
While I won’t get rushed to the hospital if I accidentally get a tiny bit of cow’s milk, I avoid it like the plague! You don’t know how bad you’re feeling until you feel soooo good. I’m NOT giving that up for anything!
Get My 10 Tips for Going Dairy-Free
Struggling to eat or cook dairy-free? Get my free guide.
What You’ll Find Here
- All recipes are dairy-free.
- If you don’t eat dairy-free, you are welcome here too! You can easily sub the real thing in recipes that call for dairy-free products.
- About 90% of Kitchen Gone Rogue’s recipes are what most people would consider healthy; 10% are indulgent or healthy-ish.
- All recipes are tried, tested and then tested again. Some I’ve made countless times (especially the Family Favorite Recipes).
- My goal is to create recipes for dishes and desserts that no one can tell is “free” of anything.
- In addition to dairy-free recipes, you’ll also find other food allergen-friendly options. Search by the special diet you’re looking for.
- Why the name “Kitchen Gone Rogue”? Because it’s fun, adventurous and creative … all things I want to bring to YOU and my work.
- Beyond recipes, you’ll also find product reviews, travel guides and helpful resources for those new to cooking and eating dairy-free.
Brand Partnerships and Working with Kitchen Gone Rogue
Over the years, I have collaborated with a variety of food and beverage brands, restaurants, agencies and destination marketing organizations (DMOs) to provide sponsored posts, recipe development, food/adventure/travel reviews and/or food photography.
Brands I have worked with include: