Top 10 Food Blogs for Special Diets
10. Sunday Morning Banana Pancakes
Diet
Vegan and gluten-free
The Story
Heather’s story is complex and involves numerous, very real medical issues. She started the blog in 2011, as part of her healing journey, because in 2008 she suddenly got very ill. She had acid reflux, heart burn, and a lot of other things, yet no doctor could accurately tell her what was going on. Meanwhile, Heather’s weight dropped to almost 100lbs – until she eventually found out she suffered from upper Chron’s disease. Of course, this lead to her being fed a ton of medication. This didn’t help with her weight loss issue, so she stopped taking the drugs at some point. In November 2009 she finally came across a doctor who could help her out. After seven days in the hospital she started taking prednisone, which helped, and which she was on for one and a half years. In September 2010 she became vegan, as a personal challenge. This helped her improve her health tremendously and, in time, she changed her health reasons for becoming vegan to her love for animals. After having been a vegetarian along with her for 9 years, her husband Justin also became vegan, and together they improved their health and relationship with food.
The Blog
The blog takes its name after the fact that every Sunday morning, Heather and her ‘better half’ Justin make banana pancakes, or some other kind of pancake to start their lazy day together. Aside from a wide range of intelligently indexed recipes, the blog also features a section called ‘Backyard Gardening’, in which Heather displays all the small wonders of her own garden. You can also check out her press and online appearances, collected in a separate blog section called ‘High Fives’. Since she enjoys staying connected, Heather also shares her recipes on many platforms, including Finding Vegan, TasteSpotting and FoodGawker. Aside from the lovely photos and innovative recipes, we were particularly charmed by Heather’s writing style, her way of capturing the essentials of the season in a handful of words. Head on down to the blog to check it out yourself.
Blog Metrics
PR – N/A
DA – N/A
Alexa Rank – 1,271,841
Fans & Followers – You can find Heather and her blog on Pinterest and Google+, and you can also like her official Facebook page, which already has some 2.3k fans.
Foodie Philosophy
“The start of this blog allowed me to love food again, that love of food slowly turned into a love of food photography and food styling. I am so thankful to have my health and happiness back – the powers of plant based compassionate living are truly amazing.”
Heather, her blog, cooking, and food photography, are all about health, love, and passion, and you can clearly see that in the sample of recipes below. In everything she does, she strives to live mindfully and to the fullest.
Signature Recipes
9. Oh, Ladycakes
Diet
Vegan baking (mostly gluten-free, sometimes raw)
The Story
Ashlae defines herself of something of a tomboy. She’s from Ohio but currently lives in Denver and is a huge fan of everything cooking-related. Other than that, she drinks a lot of coffee, loves shift dresses and has a thing for running her fingers along wrought iron fences. She first started baking back in 2007, when she first got a crush on a “rather handsome” guy at work. It all worked out for the best, since they’re still together and going strong: “Turns out the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, because we’ve been kicking it ever since”. She’s a teacher and has been diagnosed gluten intolerant, though she’s working on slowly reintroducing gluten back into her diet. Medical recommendations have determined her to add some animal protein into her diet, after two years of strict veganism, so she’s now only ‘95% vegan’ (she eats eggs a couple times a week).
The Blog
The blog got its adorable name from Ashlae’s boyfriend. While the recipes on the blog are all vegan, Ashale understands that people have dietary preferences and advises her readers on how to replace ingredients that are more difficult to find, such as flax eggs, with actual eggs. Most recipes on the blog are gluten free, even though Ashlae now does eat some gluten. She doesn’t believe in counting calories, carbs, or grams of fat. Aside from fabulous looking recipes, you can count on this blog to include heartwarming, funny stories of life in a couple, sprinkled with a hefty dose of baking. And, yes, she does do pies, cookies, and even pancakes, even though they’re mostly vegan and gluten-free. The blog is only updated once a week, given her demanding job as a teacher. Ashlae recently traveled through Europe and she and her boyfriend started a blog about it, Well Traveled Couple, which documents their entire experience. Ashlae also sometimes features organic fair trade vanilla extract on sale – you can check out whether or not it is currently available for purchase here. All the pictures on the blog are taken with a Canon 5D Mark 2, with a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens (primer lens), a 50mm f/1.8 lens, as well as several others.
Blog Metrics
PR – 4/10
DA – 49
Alexa Rank – 416,160
Fans & Followers – Though she says she’s Twitter illiterate, Ashlae can be found on Twitter, as well as on Facebook (over 5k fans), Instagram (over 9k fans), Flickr, BlogLovin, and Feedly.
Foodie Philosophy
“I believe in working with wholesome ingredients as often as possible – and if you’re wondering what happened to the eggs and dairy, I don’t bake with those. Recipes are always vegan, occasionally gluten free and, every once in a while, raw.”
That’s Oh, Ladycakes in a nutshell for you. All recipes on the blog are made from scratch, so if you want to check out some organic baking and cooking, take a look at our sample below, then head on down to the blog.
Signature Recipes
8. Pure
Diet
Sattvic vegetarian
The Story
Lakshmi Wennäkoski-Bielicki says she’s a lousy blog reader, which determined her to seriously wonder whether or not she should blog. However, she loved cooking, so she decided in favor of the blog after all. Her cooking story began 15 years ago, when she and her husband ran a bhakti-yoga center in northern Greece. She had already learned to value cooking skills while living in a monastic ashram. As her name might suggest, Lakshmi is a bhakti-yogi, who believes in Krishna and serves the vaishnavas, in an ancient school of philosophy descended from India’s Vedanta tradition. In the physical realm, as Lakshmi puts it, she’s 48, lives in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, and runs a business that offers vegetarian cooking classes, consulting, and catering,. She also writes for a local yoga magazine, Ananda, and works as a freelance photographer.
The Blog
Lakshmi sees cooking healthfully and wholesomely as a way of exercising love and goodness. She says cooking allows her to live a simple, sustainable life, and, as such, is an essential yoga practice. She also believes in non-violence, as a way toward self-realization, which is why she chooses not to eat other living beings. The whole point behind her blog is “to be inspirational”. She hopes to inspire others in their path toward self-fulfillment; given the spontaneous nature of this endeavor, she doesn’t always write down measurements for her recipes. Though she often tackles seemingly complex Indian-inspired meals, the ingredients are simple, easy to find, and affordable, even in spite of their lengthy list of spices. She encourages her readers to experiment with flavors and quantities, so that her recipes end up suiting them and their specific requirements.
Blog Metrics
PR – 4/10
DA – 46
Alexa Rank – 879,504
Fans & Followers – Though a yogi, Lakshmi is present in social media, with some 1.4k followers on Twitter and over 5k fans on Facebook
Foodie Philosophy
“For me, food is related to purity. It nourishes body and soul alike. Cooking is a reflection of lifestyle and culture. It tells about the qualities we appreciate and adhere to. It is a form of social interaction and a way to share affection and care. ”
Indeed, it’s all about pure living, cooking, and feeding, over on Lakshmi’s blog – and it’s also about love. Check out some of her lovingly prepared meals below and leave us feedback about which ones are your favorites!
Signature Recipes
7. The Domestic Man
Diet
Paleo (low-carb, dairy and gluten-free)
The Story
The Domestic Man is one Russ Crandall, who, in 2010, decided to start out on a cooking adventure and also chanced across the paleo diet that same year. He then came to the realization that this ‘trend’ conceals a ton of delicious and healthy dishes – there was no need for him to invent new dishes, as the millennia of history before him had taken care of that. By simply focusing on whatever it is humans ate before processed foods, he developed his cooking blog. Russel comes from Washington, but he now lives in Baltimore/DC, and has spent most of his adult life in Hawaii. That, alongside all the traveling he’s done as an adult, has come to majorly influence his cooking style. In his youth, he was a chef in several smaller restaurants, where he learned the basics of cooking, and since 2000 he has been serving in the US Navy. His story, health-wise, is quite amazing. In 2005, Russell had a stroke as a result of a blood clot. Since then, he’s re-learned how to walk, write, hold a fork, play guitar, and do just about all the things the rest of us take for granted on a daily basis. Though fully cured, in 2006 he discovered he also suffered from a very rare auto-immune disease, Takayasu’s Arteritis, which basically narrows his arteries as an effect of inflammation. Since nothing really helped, not even steroids and a ton of surgery, including a bypass, he decided to switch to the Paleo diet. He turned around in a single week, and says his condition has significantly improved since. Most importantly, he has managed to get off steroids, and is convinced that, though not fully recovered, a lot of his improvement has to do with the Paleo diet.
The Blog
The Domesticated Man was born in an attempt to reconnect modern man with the traditions, dietary habits and lifestyle that he has lost. It is one man’s effort to counter the idea that food comes out of a box and must simply be heated up and to teach others exactly where that food comes from. The blog revolves around the paleo lifestyle, with its credo built upon natural and unprocessed foods, but also on Russell’s “desire to be less… well, domestic”. Both his wife and son follow the Paleo diet and they are sometimes also featured on the blog. In terms of what he eats, Russell follows the guidelines of the Perfect Health Diet, which shuns all grains, legumes, and dairy – in a nutshell, he says, all natural foods which are low in toxins are great for the human body. All recipes on his blog are neatly labeled, with markers such as ‘Perfect Health Diet-friendly’ and ‘gluten-free’. You can buy his book here and, if you’re into food photography, you might want to know that all photos on the blog are taken with a Canon 6d, with a 50mm lens.
Blog Metrics
PR – 3/10
DA – 50
Alexa Rank – 287,021
Fans & Followers – You can find Russell on Google+, Pinterest, and even Amazon, and you can join the 21.5k fans he’s got on Facebook, his 1.2k Twitter followers, or his 2.5k Instagram fans.
Foodie Philosophy
“I didn’t really need to invent new meals to stay compliant with my diet, but instead I could just look back one, two, or nine hundred years into our past to find dishes that are naturally tasty and nutritious. Because they were developed in a time before processed foods. Since then, I’ve adjusted this site to focus on fundamental, traditional dishes that are historically relevant.”
There’s a lot of focus on tradition on The Domestic Man, so if you’re into simple, healthy, and absolutely traditional recipes, check out the ones below, as well as the rest of the stuff on the blog.
Signature Recipes
6. My New Roots
Diet
Vegetarian, mostly vegan and raw
The Story
Sarah Britton, or Sarah B., as her readership knows her, moved from Toronto to Copenhagen and realized she couldn’t legally do the job she’d trained in. She has an accreditation as a Holistic Nutritionist and Certified Nutritional Practitioner from the Institute of Holistic Nutrition in Canada. It’s a private institution, with a highly diverse curriculum, which Sarah loved. She is not a dietitian, nor is she a medical professional, but she’s very happy with the holistic education she received in how to take care of her body and has her own private practice, where she helps people restore their balance through what they eat. However, she only started cooking professionally after she moved to Europe and found that the only job she could do was cook in a vegetarian-friendly restaurant. Since then, that’s what she’s been doing. In the meantime, she herself eats only organic foods, with a focus on fruit and veg, the occasional egg, and some fish in the summertime.
The Blog
My New Roots has been around since 2007, so Sarah B has got quite a handful of tips she can share with her fellow (aspiring) bloggers. She advises them not to give up and soldier through all the work. She admits that, while she feels inspired and excited most of the time, there have been weeks where she was tempted to call the whole thing quits. Yet she goes on, knowing that she is “finally making a difference, however small it may be”. In terms of photography, she advises food bloggers to invest in a DSLR camera and use natural lighting as much as they can. She shoots with a Canon EOS 500D and two lenses: a 24-70mm f/2.8 and a 50mm f/1.2. She also features her recipes on all the major networks, such as TasteSpotting, FoodGawker, and the like. Check out the ‘Events’ section of her blog if you live in Copenhagen and want to attend her classes. If you live elsewhere altogether, you can still watch her videos, or access her library of resources, featured on the website.
Blog Metrics
PR – 4/10
DA – 60
Alexa Rank – 88,300
Fans & Followers – With over 6.1k Twitter followers, more than 65k followers on Instagram, and 62k Facebook fans, it’s safe to say My New Roots is one popular blog.
Foodie Philosophy
“A lot of people want to know “what I am” – vegetarian, vegan, raw foodist, fruitarian, macrobiotic… guess what? I am a person who eats! My food philosophy is this: I hate labels. They stink. They force a person to define themselves with very rigid terms, and beat themselves up if they suddenly eat something that doesn’t fit that definition. I know I never want to have to label what “kind” of diet I subscribe to. Being dogmatic about anything, for me, just doesn’t work. Being flexible does.”
Check out just how flexible Sarah is right below. With an assortment of exotic ingredients and ingenious recipes, she has definitely won us over!
Signature Recipes
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