About

I am happy you are here! I am Caryn, a photographer, cook and writer combining my passions and sharing them with you! I have embraced eating a gluten free, dairy free and refined sugar free diet, and what I post here are my favorite recipes. The “Free” part of Tasty’n’Free describes my allergen friendly recipes, and the “Tasty” originates from the fact that I love food, and it is really important to me that I am eating delicious and well prepared food.

My site is a collection of the recipes I have created and experimented with since discovering I am allergic to wheat and almonds. In the throws of extreme discomfort, I decided to make a drastic change to improve my health, and in turn, I have had to relearn how to cook the things that I love to eat. I have also had to retrain my palate to enjoy food that also makes me feel great. My plates have a lot more vegetables than they used to, and I am making most of what I eat from scratch. Learning to make your favorites from scratch becomes a necessity when most of the packaged and processed foods out there contain something you are sensitive to.

I am a label reader. When I first embarked on eating this way, I would spend hours in the grocery store trying to find the pre-made foods I wanted to buy without wheat, dairy and refined sugar. Pretty soon I realized that these products were few and far between, and I stopped wasting my time reading labels, and started figuring out how to make it at home.

On the first six months of my journey in 2013 I followed a yeast free diet. My stomach was comprised and I also had to cut out eggs. I have since added eggs back in, and I use real butter. I am also much less strict than I needed to be in the beginning, and mostly have retained my commitment to gluten, dairy and refined sugar free.

The basic principle around a lot of the diets that are popular and making a difference in people’s lives right now is that they are whole food based and encourage an individual to be aware of their personal needs. I encourage everyone to take an honest and proactive approach to their health. I am also a promoter of enjoying the food we eat and the culture around it.

I hope this site gives you inspiration and the feeling that you are not alone in bucking conventional food trends. Food is as much about people coming together as it is about nourishment and I encourage you to enjoy the process of finding those things that work for you and creating new, healthy, and lasting food memories

Photos of Caryn taken by Aleks at aleks-gajdeczka.co