5. My Darling Lemon Thyme
Diet
Gluten-free (as well as sometimes raw, dairy-free, vegan, and/or sugar-free)
The Story
Emma Galloway is a former chef and a self-described “real food lover”. She hails from New Zealand, but has been living in Perth, Western Australia, since early 2011. She’s been vegetarian forever, as her parents brought her up in this lifestyle and also ate self-farmed organic produce. She studied cooking professionally and worked as a chef for some 8 years. Once her two kids were born, she realized, after having worked as a pastry chef, that both she and her little ones were intolerant to gluten and lactose. She says having the children completely altered her perspective on what a hard day’s work actually means. Once she finally had medical confirmation on the allergies, she took on gluten-free cooking as a challenge, which she has come to love.
The Blog
Emma started the blog at the suggestion of a few friends, who realized she’d become totally addicted to food blogging. First, she laughed at the idea and forgot all about it. But then, a few months later, she realized she actually had a lot to share with the world, in terms of information on food allergies and intolerances. She started the blog in July 2010, as a place to share gluten-free vegetarian recipes, stories, and tips on organic gardening. The blog of course draws its name from the old children’s song, My Darling Clementine, which she sings to her daughter Ada. When Ada was around 3 and a half years old, she got confused, and started calling her mom “my darling lemon thyme”. There’s a ton of flavor in the recipes found on her blog, which completely demolishes the notion that gluten and/or dairy-free cooking is bland and boring. You’ll also notice the Asian influences in the cuisine, which partly owe to the fact that the author’s mother-in-law is Vietnamese. The blog also has a ‘Life’ section, with tales from Emma’s days, an introductory article to gluten- and/or dairy-free eating, and also features Emma’s cook book. All photos on the blog are taken with a Canon 60D with a 50mm lens.
Blog Metrics
PR – 4/10
DA – 47
Alexa Rank – 334,854
Fans & Followers – More than 4.5k Facebook fans. 1.2k followers on Twitter. You can also find Emma on Pinterest, Flickr, and Instagram: she’s a genuine sensation!
Foodie Philosophy
“My aim is to inspire people with fresh, simple, flavorful recipes and to help break down the boring, flavorless stigma commonly attached to allergy-free eating.”
Judging by the looks of the meals below, Emma’s cooking is anything but bland and boring! We’d love to sample some of it, too, so be sure to check out her recipes on the website and see if they inspire you to whip up your own versions.
Signature Recipes
4. Roost
Diet
Chron’s disease diet
The Story
Caitlin Van Horn lives in Alabama, with her husband and their “precocious kitten, Lady Mary”. The couple moved to Alabama after “feathering [their] hipster nest in the Pacific Northwest” and are hoping to one day start a bio-dynamic organic farm. The story of the blog started some three years back, when Caitlin’s husband was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease. In order to help him out, Caitlin decided to purge both their diets of sugars and processed foods, instead focusing on seasonal whole foods. Caitlin says she’s inspired by classic and children’s literature, cello music, traveling, and Britain. She loves long walks and heartfelt conversations, sometimes sings, and enjoys period dramas to the point where she is sometimes convinced she was born in the wrong era. She’s a prop and food stylist by day and, we’re guessing, an aspiring writer, judging by her prose.
The Blog
The blog’s title is actually a verb: “to roost”, which literally means ‘to rest’ and has been designed as its author’s “place of rest and reprieve”. Aside from cooking with natural, wholesome, and seasonal ingredients, it also features plenty of journaling and life writing, as well as product giveaways which are also always healthful and natural. Since the recipes featured are all about eating local, natural, and seasonal foods, it’s no wonder they are arranged by season. There is something decidedly refined about the recipes here and it’s refreshing to know they are also healthful; one thing is for sure: they key you in on how healthfully and with what variety you can eat, even if you go entirely seasonal and with nothing but whole foods on the menu. All photos on the blog are shot with a Canon 5D Mark II, a 50mm 1.4 lens, a 45mm 2.8f tilt shift and a 100mm 2.8 macro, only in natural light, but with heavy use of diffusers, screens and reflectors.
Blog Metrics
PR – 5/10
DA – 63
Alexa Rank – 245,638
Fans & Followers – Caitlin is not on Facebook, but she’s got over 3k followers on Twitter, some 1.5k Instagram followers, and can also be found on Pinterest and Vimeo.
Foodie Philosophy
“Here at Roost I wish to encourage others to eat clean, seasonal foods that not only taste good but are healing to the body. It is also my hope to capture beauty in its most uninhibited form, whether that be in nature, at home or among loved ones.”
Beauty and clean, whole foods is what this blog is all about and Caitlin’s knack for writing and picture-taking turns it into a fascinating read, day in and day out. Check out some of our favorite recipes below!
Signature Recipes
3. Cannelle et Vanille
Diet
Gluten-free
The Story
Cannelle et Vanille is, essentially, one girl and one girl only – Aran Goyoaga, who hails from the Basque Country, but has been living as an expat in the United States since 1998. She is a mother to a boy and a girl, a freelance food writer, stylist, and photographer. In 2005, she was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis and with Meniere’s Disease in 2009, which is why late that year she switched to a gluten-free diet. Though she’s a business and economics major (and one with an MBA, no less), she decided at some point to switch to her actual love of the culinary arts and attended culinary school. While working for various restaurants and hotels, she taught herself food styling and photography. She advises all those who want to follow in her path to find artists they really admire and try to assist them. Also, she says, practice makes perfect. Aran also teaches baking, styling, and photography, and regular readers of her blog can check out the Workshops sections if they’re interested in signing up for one of her classes.
The Blog
The blog takes its name from Aran’s favorite smells and tastes as a child, which is very fitting, seeing as how her blog is “very much filled with nostalgia”. You will find all sorts of food-related things on the blog, from recipes and life stories, to tales about the author’s travels. The blog has spawned a cook book, published in late 2012, which is titled Small Plates and Sweet Treats, and which can be bought online here. All the photos on the blog have been taken with a Canon 5D Mark II and, if you’ve perused them and made note of the lovely use of props, you should know that the author is a self-professed tableware and prop addict. Since Aran is, after all, European, readers ought to expect all the recipes to use grams instead of ounces. Of course, given her conditions, as well as a medically diagnosed genetic sensitivity to gluten, all recipes on Aran’s blog are gluten-free, since she intends to maintain this dietary lifestyle for the rest of her life. To boot, all her illness symptoms have vanished after she took up this way of cooking and eating!
Blog Metrics
PR – 6/10
DA – 66
Alexa Rank – 156,982
Fans & Followers – Cannelle et Vanille has got more than 22k followers on Twitter, over 78k on Instagram, and can also be found on Flickr and Pinterest.
Foodie Philosophy
“Cannelle Et Vanille [is] my baby, my blank canvas for creating anything and everything sweet that comes out of my heart.”
That’s what the blog really is all about: a passion for creating sweets, which have been concocted and cooked with love. Enjoy our selection below and head on down to the blog itself for more sweet treats, all of them gluten-free!
Signature Recipes
2. Nom Nom Paleo
Diet
Paleo (with some lenience toward dairy and other non-paleo diet inclusions)
The Story
Michelle Tam is a nurse, a wife, and a Nutrition and Food Science graduate, with a degree from the prestigious Berkeley University of California. Her relationship with food is long, intense, and complex – she admits she loves to eat and thinks about food most of the time. She learned a lot by being her mother’s “little shadow as she prepared supper each night” and says that’s where she got her “deep, abiding love for magically transforming pantry items into mouth-watering family meals”. In college, she wanted to become a food flavor scientist, which led her to adopt a low-fat, high-carb diet. That’s also where she met her current husband Henry, who shares her love for food, and the reason for which she decided she didn’t want to create artificial flavors after all. Whole foods from the farmers’ market simply tasted better. So, instead, she became a hospital pharmacist with a doctorate in clinical pharmacy from the UCSF. After giving birth to two lovely kids, she decided she needed to do something to lose the weight and get stronger. Since cardio and calorie counting only helped with the weight loss, but not much else, and her husband had become an adopter of the paleo diet, she decided to also give it a try. Half a year into it and feeling great, she started her blog, which husband also helps out with. And she’s looking and feeling great!
The Blog
Not only is Nom Nom Paleo a great, fun read, but it’s also an awesome starting point for those looking to learn about the paleo diet. The blog also comes with a comprehensive shopping guide for those who want to start in this path and need to know what accessories to stock their kitchen with. It features an iPad app, as well as an all-paleo cookbook – the free recipes which also feature in the freemium version of the app can be sampled on the blog. The blog will occasionally include some non-paleo food items, such as dairy or coffee, but it also comes with not one, but two sets of recipes which those that want to go a 30 day paleo challenge a try. The blog is very serious about paleo and its author takes the time to explain some of the more controversial aspects to her cooking, such as using a sous vide, or occasionally microwaving her leftovers. The photos on the blog are taken with a Nikon D7000, a Nikon D80, and a 50mm f/1.4D AF Nikkor lens for the macro shots, as well as an 18-200mm VR lens for wider shots.
Blog Metrics
PR – 4/10
DA – 62
Alexa Rank – 45,974
Fans & Followers – This blog is burning hot: it’s got 94k fans on Facebook, over 20k Instagram followers, and Michelle Tam has raked up nearly 36k Twitter fans and almost 28k Instagram fans. Wow!
Foodie Philosophy
“Paleo’s the only approach that’s managed to improve my body composition and fuel me with enough energy to wrangle two small boys, hold down a full-time night shift job, cook for a houseful of hungry cavepeople, lift heavy(ish) stuff in the gym, and maintain a food blog.”
Michelle is all about good, quick food that fuels the body with all the necessary ingredients for energy. Her blog is packed with goodies that just about anyone can whip up in a snap, which don’t add on fat, and which will basically have you feeling amazing about yourself and your diet. Check out some of our favorites below.
Signature Recipes
1. Green Kitchen Stories
Diet
Vegetarian, gluten-free, low sugar, low dairy
The Story
David Frenkiel and Luise Vindahl are the proud parents of baby girl Elsa. They blog together: Swedish David, who is a magazine art director by day, updates the blog and takes the pictures. Luise, who is Danish, but has been living in Stockholm for the past five years, is a Social Studies graduate who’s currently studying to become a Nutritional Therapist. The blog partly derives its name from the couple’s green wall in their kitchen, but the title mostly has to do with it being a vegetarian blog. David is the vegetarian, food stylist and photographer, who admits he loves cooking but is probably better at baking, while Luise comes up with most of the recipes and “is famous for making a feast out of nothing”, in David’s words. David has been entirely meat-free for the past 15 years, while Luise is mostly vegetarian. David shoots with a Canon 5D Mark III, a 50 mm f1.2 lens and an 100 mm f2.8 lens.
The Blog
David and Luise blog extensively about their daily lives and, in fact, their ‘About Us’ page has some suggested reading for those who want to learn more about their story. Predictably, a lot of the recipes and blog entries they create have to do with raising their daughter Elsa to grow up healthy and develop a non-toxic relationship with food. In “The First Meal”, for instance, they use the opportunity of Elsa’s first solid meal to explain their reasons for choosing to raise their daughter by feeding her healthfully: with whole foods, a low intake of dairy, gluten, and sugar. Of course, they are sensible and balanced enough to add: “if Elsa some day decides that she wants to try a hamburger with her friends, we will be totally fine with that”. The Green Kitchen Stories is a great read for many reasons: it teaches one how to take a healthy approach to food, through a focus on whole foods and especially fruit and veg; it’s a great and honest lesson in parenting; last, but certainly not least, it’s a fun journey alongside a young, active couple, with whom we’re sure many can relate. All this in plain English, with great pics, endearing personal details, and a cute baby girl featured in many of the posts. You can also check out the couple’s book, which was published in Europe, the US, and Australia in 2013. They also sell a great recipe app, suitable both for vegetarians, as well as for omnivores, which is compatible with most tablets and smartphones.
Blog Metrics
PR – 5/10
DA – 59
Alexa Rank – 109,919
Fans & Followers – The Stockholm-based couple has got well over 16k followers on Instagram, more than 40k fans on Facebook, and almost 7k Twitter followers.
Foodie Philosophy
“We believe that the way we eat is all-good for our bodies and that everybody probably would feel better cutting down on meat as the center piece of the dinner and focus a little bit more on whole foods and vegetables.”
Green Kitchen Stories is all about whole foods, being creative with them, and developing a lifestyle that focuses on healthfulness and balance. Add into the mix the couple’s adorable baby daughter and you get a blog that’s equally fun and informative to follow, for all those who want to improve their dietary habits. Check out some of our favorite recipes from them below.
Signature Recipes
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