Traci Wennerholm is a blogger who got her start at age 11 when she created a rubber birthday cake for her Dad. While her parents were out for his birthday dinner, she decided to make his birthday cake. After he got home and took a bite, he stopped chewing. He then proceeded to scrape the frosting off and then stretch out her cake.
Starting the Blog
Growing up, Traci’s Dad had kidney and heart issues and ate a specialized diet. She often remembers getting pizza delivered without the cheese, or trying thin rice based dairy free milk. She could see that her Dad missed out on a lot of the foods that he loved and so she worked on ways to alter recipes to make sure he could.
The only problem was? She wasn’t the best cook back then.
Rubber cakes, visits from the fire department and trips to the urgent care clinic for stiches were pretty commonplace those early years of cooking.
As she got older, Traci developed colitis and didn’t have a lot of time to alter recipes to fit her new eating lifestyle. By this time she now had her own family with three young children and a husband who traveled a lot. Those early years of adapting recipes for her Dad had taught her a lot and she was able to start cooking for herself and her family while adapting the recipes she loved or craved.
She now works full time as a counselor and makes over recipes in her spare time. Her specialty is creating minimal ingredient recipes that include substitutions for food allergens so anybody can enjoy her recipes!
Her Favorite Partnership
One of Traci’s favorite brand partnerships was with a salsa company. She loved that the company sent her enough salsa she could host a salsa and chip meeting for her staff. The theme of the staff meeting was self care. It was during the downhill of COVID and the staff was worn out. She didn’t know what she could tell them on self care to make them feel better so instead she showed up with plates of salsa, bread and chips. The staff sat around and tried the different salsa’s and chatted. Instead of hearing a lesson, the staff got to relax and experience self care for a few minutes.
Strangest Brand Request
Traci’s first husband had Type 1 diabetes and she became used to getting emails in her inbox from companies that would claimed to cure her then husband’s diabetes. She would have requests for pills, vitamins and food companies. “I would just laugh,” she said, “I’m pretty sure none of them had any idea about Type 1 diabetes or had done any research on it but they all wanted me to promote their product to cure it.”
Tips for Eating with Food Allergies
Traci’s tips for eating with food allergies include:
- Being okay to mourn: Recognize there are foods you are going to miss and foods you are going to crave when you have food allergies. It’s okay to mourn.
- Finding a way to enjoy what you want: There is a whole section on Traci's website devoted to just cravings and copycat recipes. “One time I was with some work associates and was STARVING! We were at a restaurant known for their biscuits and I was so angry that I couldn’t have them. I went home and found a way to make them with five ingredients or less!”
- Plan ahead: “My phone is my life on a vacation. I’ll often look ahead at menus at the places we are traveling to. Planning ahead just gives me some piece of mind so I can enjoy my trip and the hard part of finding food is already done.”
- Bring snacks: Traci says she can’t stress this one enough. “I recently had a conference I attended that had allowed me to preorder my meal ahead of time. I was SO excited I was going to show up and have food waiting for me. I left straight from work to the conference and had forgotten snacks. When I got there I was a little hangry and the person couldn’t find my food! They gave me a water bottle and ice chips!! I ended up missing part of the conference to go and find food!! I always try to plan ahead anywhere I go and have snacks or something packed that I can eat.”
This was a paid article from Intellifluence.
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