About Southern Bytes

Welcome! I’m Kari, and I’m the Photographer, Writer, and All the Things Southern Bytes.

I love food. I love to cook, eat, and experiment in the kitchen. I also love to work in the garden to grow a lot of our own food. (I especially love to grow weird vegetables that you can’t find in stores!)

I live with my husband and our border collie mix, Melly, just north of Chattanooga, TN, and have been running Southern Bytes for five years – it has been a whirlwind. (But I’ve been cooking for over 20 years!) When I’m not working on Southern Bytes, I work as a web developer for food bloggers making sure the food blogs of the world stay up and running smoothly.

My husband and I love traveling to try new food and unique beers, and then I try to recreate the food at home. It’s one of my favorite hobbies. My other favorite hobby is recreating my husband’s family recipes. He’s from Louisiana and we love New Orleans – we even got married there – so be prepared for Cajun cuisine overload!

Background & Education

I learned to love cooking from an early age, but I didn’t always cook well. I started making food from scratch right before college and eventually started learning to grow my own food. This sparked my desire to become a health coach at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in 2015.

At the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, I learned a lot about nutrition and balance. A lot of what I learned in school is incorporated into my approach to meals and planning. At home, I still cook a lot of Paleo food, but we also enjoy plenty of goodies and wholesome Southern food as well.

Before studying at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, I studied Math and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Vermont. When I finished school, I felt a little lost because I didn’t really want to be an engineer.

I worked as a dog walker and pet sitter for a while, and then I became a vet tech. I worked as a vet tech and worked closely with a holistic vet focusing on animal nutrition for a long time until I got really burnt out from it. I was gaining weight, I was stressed out, and all I did was work. I eventually went back to pet sitting and ended up falling into nutrition after losing a lot of weight with the Paleo diet and the Whole30. I enjoyed it, but it still didn’t feel like my place. I finally found my “thing” when I started building a website for my health coaching business. I loved it. I started diving deeper into web development and learned the basics – then I did a coding bootcamp. It felt like l had finally figured out how to use my engineering skills, challenge my brain, and enjoy my work.

Then, it got even better because I found a job where I could work as technical support for FOOD BLOGS. I worked as an Updates & Maintenance Team Leader for NerdPress – they support a lot of blogs that you visit – every day became a balance of working, gardening, cooking, and blogging.

After doing that for almost four years, I am now working full-time at Southern Bytes and doing freelance technical support for food bloggers.

A man and a woman in a car wearing flannel and sunglasses in black and white. — Michael and I love to take weekend trips to explore hole in the wall towns and try unique restaurants and breweries. (And we love to make goofy faces!)

I’m excited for you to join us in our kitchen and on our adventures! If you like what you see here, we would love it if you would buy us a coffee!

About the Southern Bytes Blog and Recipes

What You’ll Find Here

Recipes that are Easy to Make at Home using everyday ingredients. I like to embrace the philosophy of true Louisiana cooking – taking the simplest of ingredients and making something extraordinary.
Recipes that can be adapted for most dietary restrictions. (I try to include variations for Paleo, Gluten-Free, and Vegetarian diets in my recipes.)
Southern Classics that have been tested and tasted by the toughest critics (Michael and my mother-in-law 😉 ).
Italian Classics that I have learned from my mother (that had to be changed into recipes as they were originally written as “a handful of this, a splash of that!”)
Spanish Recipes from my best friend and Spanish “sister” from Leon, Spain.
Cajun and Creole Classics that have been passed down through several generations.
Quick Meals and Instant Pot Favorites to help you make the most of your time.
Takeout Copycat Recipes because cooking with your family and knowing what is in your food is so much more enjoyable.
Tips for how to make basic dishes perfectly every single time – Instant Pot Chicken Breast, Drop Biscuits, and Instant Pot Yogurt.

A newly married couple making stupid faces while cutting their wedding cake.

What You Won’t Find Here

I don’t believe in counting calories, low-calorie, counting macros, Weight Watchers, etc. That kind of dieting works for some people, but for me, it caused a lot of anxiety, extreme thinking, restriction, and negative thoughts.
I try my hardest to not use things like $25 Vanilla Beans (except for making vanilla extract) or $30 cuts of steak. I can’t afford that, and I don’t expect you to either. My recipes are here to show you how to make a $5 piece of meat taste like a million bucks.
I don’t have a professional photographer. (Except for when Katy McAvoy shoots cocktails for me in exchange for tech support because I can’t photograph a drink to save my life.) I’m sorry. My pictures are real. They are taken in my kitchen, and some are taken on the floor – sometimes, I carry food out onto my porch for better lighting.
You won’t find tofu. I will make suggestions for substituting tofu for meat in recipes, but processed meat substitutes, tofu, tempeh, etc., make me feel VERY SICK. I will assume that if you are a vegan or vegetarian, you have experience properly cooking these foods, and if you don’t, Iosune at the Simple Vegan Blog, Julie over at the Simple Veganista, and Katie at Hey Nutrition Lady can help you with some good vegan recipes!
I’m also not a gluten-free expert. Talk to Jen at Peel with Zeal for the best gluten-free recipes.