A delicious (and reliable) pie crust recipe is essential in every kitchen. Even better if it’s grain free and paleo! I often go crustless for recipes like my bacon and broccoli quiche, but for some recipes, a pie crust is important.

I recently realized that I although I have several pie recipes with crust, I hadn’t shared my standard pie crust recipe on the blog… so here it is!

No-Fuss Almond Flour Pie Crust

I wanted to create a pie crust recipe that was grain free and dairy optional. I decided to use almond flour as the base because it has a nice crunch and flavor when baked.

The dough for this pie crust is the press in kind, not the roll out kind...

Beetroot powder is one of my favorite ways to add beautiful color to homemade beauty products. But beets are amazing for reasons beyond their gorgeous color. Beetroots and beet greens are amazing powerhouses of nutrition and can help the body in multiple ways when included in a healthy diet.

What’s in a Beet?

Beetroots are an incredible food that has a distinct nutritional profile. They contain a little bit of everything!

Take a look at this list:

• Folate
• Manganese
• Potassium
• Vitamin C
• Magnesium
• Iron
• Copper
• Phosphorus
• Vitamin B6

Additionally, beets contain phytonutrients like betalains. Beets are especially high in betalains which are responsible for giving beets their color and have many health benefits of their own (read on for those benefits!).

You may not believe this if you’re n...

Infant car seats are crucial for keeping infants safe when transporting them in cars or other vehicles. That’s what they are meant for — and that’s all that they should be used for, or the consequences can be lethal.

When you have one of those infant car seats that detaches from a base and can be carried, it’s very tempting to leave Baby in it after transporting him. If he’s asleep, you can bring him to wherever you are going and let him sleep — nobody wants to wake a sleeping baby — while you do chores or visit or whatever you were going to do. If you are leaving him with a babysitter, the car seat seems like a convenient place for him to sleep. And when you are home, the car seat can seem like a great place to put Baby when you need your hands free.

Except that none of t...

Morning sickness — the common term for nausea and vomiting during early pregnancy — is not unusual, as many women know. Starting around the sixth to eighth week of pregnancy, as many as 80% of women report having nausea and 50% experience vomiting. But as comedian Amy Schumer can attest, hyperemesis goes well beyond what people generally think of as morning sickness. Marked by doggedly persistent nausea and vomiting, hyperemesis occurs in up to three out of 100 pregnancies. Not surprisingly, women who have hyperemesis often lose weight: losing approximately 5% of pre-pregnancy weight is common.

Why does hyperemesis occur?

We don’t know why women experience nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. Nor do we know why some women experience such an extreme version of symptoms...

We can all agree that sunburn is harmful. While I may not use most sunscreen, this is the reason I’m careful to cover up or go inside when the sun gets too hot. Unfortunately, the best-laid plans don’t always turn out for the best and sometimes overexposure happens.

When it does, I turn to:

DIY Sunburn Spray

This spray uses a few of my secret weapons for skin health to rapidly relieve the discomfort of sunburn. I discovered this recipe last year. It uses many of the common ingredients you’d consider for sunburn relief with my secret weapon: water-soluble CBD for rapid relief.

Note: This spray helps any type of skin irritation, not just sunburn.

You’ll find some of these ingredients in many sunburn relief recipes, but I’ve never found anything as effective as this unique powerhouse co...

This month we recognize World Microbiome Day with information to help new parents learn about their baby’s developing bacteria colonization and how interventions in the first 1,000 days of life may affect their child’s risk of developing preventable autoimmune conditions.

As I have discussed in a previous blog, the microbiome — the varied and teeming colonies of gut bacteria inside of us — is greatly influenced from the time of our conception until the second year of life, and the development and colonization of the microbiome during the first 1,000 days of life can profoundly affect our health during infancy through adulthood.

Major microbiome colonization begins with delivery

Each method of delivery — vaginal birth or delivery by cesarean section — produces a different colon...

Eggs are back in the news — again. A study from the March 2019 JAMA found that higher intakes of cholesterol and eggs were associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and death.

The researchers reported that ingesting an additional 300 milligrams of cholesterol per day raised this risk, as did eating an average of three to four eggs per week.

Should we finally resign ourselves to taking our toast without a sunny-side-up yolk? Not so fast.

What did the study find?

Human diets are complex and notoriously hard to study. This is one reason why health headlines are often maddeningly contradictory.

For the JAMA analysis, participants provided diet information at the beginning of the study that was used to interpret their health up to 30 years later. The JAMA study, like m...

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. There is strong evidence that screening for CRC with colonoscopy, other visual exams, or stool-based tests can reduce CRC mortality. As a result, several expert organizations have long recommended regular CRC screening for US adults ages 50 to 75.

In 2018, the American Cancer Society (ACS) became the first major organization to recommend CRC screening starting at 45.

Why did the ACS recommend CRC screening starting at 45?

The incidence of CRC and mortality from the disease has declined over the last several decades among adults over 50, which may reflect the effectiveness of screening in this age group. In contrast, since the early 1990s, there has been an increase in CRC incidence and mortality am...

It’s well known that bee products like honey,  royal jelly, and bee propolis have many health benefits. These honeybee products have a permanent spot in my kitchen as well as my home remedy cabinet. So, it’s not surprising that bee pollen is also an amazing health food and supplement.

Bee Pollen: The Surprising Superfood

Bee pollen is not the same as pollen. Pollen is the male seed of flowering plants and is necessary for fertilizing the plant for reproduction. Bee pollen is a ball or pellet of pollen, nectar, enzymes, honey, wax, and bee secretions created by worker bees. This mixture is used as the primary food for young bees.

Bee pollen is one of the few completely nourishing foods as it contains nearly all nutrients necessary for human health, including:

• protein and amino ac...

Once you learn how to read, it’s easy to take the skill for granted. Like breathing or walking, we don’t give the ability much thought unless it begins to deteriorate. But trouble reading can develop at any age for a variety of reasons, including difficulty concentrating, mild cognitive impairment, and physical changes.

Mental roadblocks can cause trouble reading

Fuzzy thinking and difficulty concentrating can get in the way of reading. “If your attention isn’t focused on the sentence you’re reading, you’re not likely to register enough of the sentence to understand what your eyes just passed over,” notes Dr. Joel Salinas, a neurologist at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital.

You might experience fuzzy thinking or difficulty concentrating because of

• a lack o...

Entree salads are one of my favorite things to serve for dinner. I can usually serve all the components of the meal in one dish with only a small amount of cooking. (The leftovers are fantastic for lunch the next day… always a bonus!)

A classic French Nicoise salad has a lot of elements that require preparation, but it’s such a delicious salad that I consider it worth the effort. Plus, it looks like a beautiful work of art when you’re done!

What Is Nicoise Salad?

Nicoise salad gets its name from the Mediterranean French city of Nice, where it originated. The exact ingredients used in a Nicoise salad vary from place to place, so what follows in this recipe is the version that I prefer.

The trademark of this salad is a lovely array of colors, textures, and flavors from a mixture o...

The American Heart Association and the FDA recommend that we all eat at least 25 grams of dietary fiber per day. But what is it, how do we know how much we’re eating, and where did that number come from, anyway?

What are the types of fiber?

Dietary fiber is a good carbohydrate, also known as roughage, found in plant foods (not supplements). There are two kinds, soluble or insoluble, and both are really good for us. Soluble fiber becomes a thick gel in our intestines, which slows digestion (which keeps blood sugars from spiking) and traps fats so they can’t all be absorbed (which lowers cholesterol levels). Sources of soluble fiber include oatmeal, beans, lentils, and many fruits...