Are you starting your day with a bowlful of inflammation?

Your immune system recognizes foreign invaders (pathogens, bacteria) and fights them off in a process called inflammation. Immune cells produce cytokines and oxidants, which wipe out invading organisms and damaged tissue. This process is good and necessary for our recovery and health. However, problems arise when your body is constantly fighting off offending situations (chronic stress, poor diet, unregulated blood sugar, gut issues)—leading to widespread inflammation.

Do you love blueberry pie? Try this healthier version of your fave Maine staple.

A few weeks back I attended a restorative yoga class and for 2 hours (TWO HOURS!) I was relatively still. Alone with my thoughts, this could have been a really bad thing. But it wasn’t. I could have wanted to crawl out of my skin. But I didn’t. I could have been bored or annoyed or judgmental, but I found none of those feelings.

Fuel Bites are also really, really great for that midday slump that typically sends you reaching for caffeine or sugar, or at nighttime when you're raiding the cupboards for snacks.

There's lots of room to play with this recipe, so I'm sharing a basic template.

Orange rinds contain fiber, B vitamins, Vitamin C (lots), minerals, and flavonoids (anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, anti-heart disease). So aside from lending a punch of citrusy flavor to foods, they're also really, really good for you.

DIETS DON'T WORK for long-term, sustainable weight loss.

We all know that to be true, right...? If diets worked, we'd all be walking around in our ideal bodies. If diets worked, "struggling with weight" wouldn't be a thing. If diets worked, we wouldn't all have a stack of diet books stashed somewhere.

It's been hectic over here—snow, mom and dad got sick, snow, baby got sick, travel due to snow, more snow...you get the DRIFT (oh, puns).

Happy New Year! Did you set a New Year’s resolution? I’m not huge on resolutions.

I always used to set health goals for myself, but I would bite off way more than I could chew and then burn out. And feel crappy about it. Which made me stressed. And therefore less healthy.

Potatoes are coming up like crazy with my CSA. We've had them mashed, baked, roasted, cut into oven fries, shredded into breakfast hash, and pureed into soup.

I discovered pureed soup when I visited Ireland about 10 years ago. For a week I subsisted on potatoes, pureed soups, breads, cheeses and Guinness. I returned home 600 pounds heavier and with a real affinity for pureed soup.

Want a healthy way to start your Christmas Day? Make this apple bake for breakfast if you have holiday guests staying with you. Or even if you don't. I can't get enough of it lately!

What I ate Wednesday: A real f*$%ing lot. Because I’m breastfeeding. And I’m famished. Always. (Another day you’ll see what I did with my CSA veggies. Today, I rant.)

My 6 month old baby is exclusively breastfed. That means she hasn’t had so much as a drippity drop of anything outside of breastmilk since June 3rd when she was born.

...are you still using bottled salad dressing? Ditch them and make your own instead! It's as easy as dumping a few things in a jar and giving it a shake (hence the name of this dressing).

Many bottled dressing are laced with sugar, corn syrup, preservatives, low-quality oils and other yucky ingredients.

I suppose it’s a little cliché to talk about being grateful this week. But I’m doing it anyway.

Last week I detailed the craziness of my past few months. I got a lot of responses telling me to keep my head up, that it would get easier, that I was doing a great job. First of all, thank you for the responses. You’re awesome.

When you purchase a share, you support a local, small business (a farm). You also regularly receive local food that is very, very fresh. Like, not just not-picked-in-California-and-ripened-on-its-way-to-you fresh, but maybe even just-picked-from-the-ground-that-day fresh. Keep in mind that with a CSA, you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get each week.

Granola is one of my all-time favorite snack foods. Unfortunately, a lot of store-bought granola is loaded with sugar and refined oils. Luckily, it's SO easy to make your own at home. Usually I use rolled oats when making granola, but since they've been giving me wicked heartburn lately, I branched out to other grains. So glad I did, because this mixture was delicious!

When the desire for a sweet treat sets in, I listen. Keep in mind, though, that pregnant or not, I'm a Real Food Junkie. So I'm not reaching for Pop Tarts or Oreos or Fig Newtons. Nope— I'm getting crafty in the kitchen, figuring out different ways to combine whole, real, nourishing foods and shape them into desserts that I feel good about eating.

The salads I construct at home are so far superior to what I can get out at restaurants that I don't even want to call them salads. They are huge bowls filled to the brim with high-quality produce, satisfying protein sources, satiating healthy fats, and a slug of super yummy homemade dressing. So really, they're more like bowls of bounty. Bounty Bowls.

Admittedly, buying fresh-made organic juice can be expensive (with good reason—it takes a lot of produce to make one glass of juice). Making your own at home is more convenient and cost-effective, but not everyone owns a juicer. Most of us, however, do have a blender. Here's an great way to make fresh juice in your blender.

The other night I was really in the mood for mashed potatoes, but thought I would add a little twist. The twist turned out to be not-so-little, but the result was delicious. My husband had no idea what he was eating (Mashed potatoes? Turnip?). Nevertheless, he finished his plate in record time.

My favorite thing about this recipe is that the kale doesn't always make it into the oven. Because kale leaves slathered in this sauce are delicious on their own. The last time I set out to make kale chips, I ended up saying screw it, chopped the kale even smaller, put it all in a bowl and ate it as a salad. One head of kale trumps one bag of potato chips every day—no matter what form it's in.