Hagerstown native writes cookbook full of healthful recipes with flavor

Hagerstown native Bill Kendle, 63, has never been a man to shy away from the kitchen.

"Since my wife and I have been together I've done about 95 percent of the cooking," he said during a telephone interview from his home in Greenbackville, Va.


Kendle and his wife of 18 years, Beverly, moved to the town near Assateague and Chincoteague islands after he retired after 30 years with General Motors in Martinsburg, W.Va.

In 1995, his family doctor diagnosed Kendle as being a diabetic. Ten years later, he was told that he had high cholesterol.

"(My doctor) told me then to change my eating habits, but I didn't do it," he said.

A year after his high cholesterol diagnosis, Beverly was diagnosed with acid reflux disease.

"And until that happened, the word ‘dieting' was no more than noise on a television show," Kendle said. "... We knew we had to make some changes."

The result is his Healthy Eating Made Easy cookbook (209 pages, Bilken Books).

Kendle said before he started his culinary journey, he was insulin dependent and was taking "something like 14 pills every day." With his wife's diagnosis, he said "it was time we woke up."

But Kendle wasn't looking to do something radical with his and his wife's diet, instead he wanted to take foods they loved every day and find ways to make each dish more healthful.

He also didn't want to have to cook dishes that deprived either himself or his wife.

"I told her that I didn't want to sit here and eat a cheeseburger while she couldn't," he said.

So in 2007, Kendle started writing the cookbook, one recipe at a time, and he began with the recipes that he and his wife enjoyed.

At first, Kendle made little changes such as replacing salt with Mrs. Dash and other herbs, using lemon zest and other flavors to liven up what could potentially be a dull dish.

What they realized was that not only were the dishes more healthful, but they tasted good, as well.

For two years, Kendle and his wife would go through a different recipe every day. With Beverly acting as his primary taste-tester, Kendle said he was able to tweak his recipes. He said he had to redo some dishes about three times just to get the right taste.

During those times, he adjusted the ingredients of about 350 recipes, from that he whittled down the number to the 197 that appear in the book. The recipes are broken into seven chapters: breakfasts; soups and salads; meats; poultry; fish & seafood; vegetables & sides and desserts.

A favorite snack he included in the cookbook is a chocolate chip cookie because he can eat two cookies with skim milk for a late night snack.

Each recipe includes a nutritional index that Kendle said he worked with Pat Brinkman and Cheryle Jones Syracuse, extension educators with Ohio State University Extension, to include the correct information.