It's easy to see why cold brew coffee is all the rage. Its smooth, low-acid taste makes it infinitely drinkable. Although there are several styles of cold brew coffee makers on the market, you don't need any fancy equipment to make it at home. One of the easiest ways to make it is in a french press, but you can also use a mason jar, large measuring cup, or pitcher, as long as you're willing to strain out the spent coffee grounds or tea leaves afterward.

Classic Cold Brew Coffee

The basic ratio for making cold brew coffee concentrate is 1:2, meaning one part coarse ground coffee to two parts fresh, filtered, room temperature water. So, if you're using a one-quart mason jar, for example, aim for 1.5 cups of coffee grounds and three cups of water. All you need to do is add the grounds and water to the jar or pitcher, shake or stir, and let sit overnight (at least 12 hours). At the end of the steeping time, filter the mixture, save the liquid, and toss the grounds. (Do you see how a French press would make this part easier?) What you have now is cold brew concentrate, ready to be mixed with water or milk and served over ice.

Frozen Cafe Mocha

Have you ever made frozen hot chocolate? It's basically a smoothie made with milk and hot chocolate mix. If you have some hot chocolate mix on hand, toss it in a blender with milk and cold brew coffee concentrate for the ultimate chocolatey treat. If you don't have a blender, you can also mix it up with a whisk and serve over ice. A dollop of whipped cream and a drizzle of chocolate syrup make this the perfect cold dessert on a hot summer night.

Cold Brew Mojito Iced Tea

Cold brewing is the perfect process for iced tea because the result is so smooth, without the bitterness of heat-extracted black tea. The extra time it takes is well worth it, especially for this refreshing mocktail. For each cup of cold water, use one bag (or one teaspoon, if looseleaf) of black tea, a pinch of lime zest, and one or two mint leaves. Steep for 8-12 hours, strain, and add sugar if desired. If you don't have fresh limes to make zest, add a squirt of lime juice (to taste) just before serving.

Dirty Iced Chai

If you like chai, but also coffee, you will probably enjoy a dirty chai. It may not sound delicious, but it is. It's also super simple to make. All you do is add a shot of espresso or a serving of cold brew concentrate to a serving of iced chai. If you don't have any chai concentrate on hand, you can make that with the cold brew method, too. Measure out of two tablespoons of looseleaf chai (or use an equal amount of chai teabags) and combine it with one quart of water. Brew overnight, strain, and then mix 2:1 with your preferred milk. To make it dirty, add a serving of undiluted cold brew coffee concentrate.

So, you want to cut back on gluten, like what you find in wheat, barley, and rye, or on grains in general. Whatever your reasons for wanting to change your eating habits, you may be wondering what's left when you remove bread, pasta, pancakes, crackers, and all those other delicious grain-based foods. You may even think that you need to purchase expensive gluten-free versions of those foods. Well, you can buy gluten-free substitutes if you want to, but it's not necessary! Here are five delicious foods that do not contain gluten.

Spiralized Veggies

If you don't have a fancy machine to cut your veggies into spiral shapes, you can use a vegetable peeler to get the same effect. Although zucchini is the most popular vegetable to use this way, carrots also work well. All you do is cut your preferred veggie into long, thin strips, cook briefly in boiling water, and top with your favorite pasta sauce.

Corn Tortillas/Tortilla Chips

You may not have thought of this, but corn tortillas are naturally gluten-free, and so are the wonderfully crunchy chips that are made from them. So, although you may have to rethink your PB&J, taco night is here to stay. The same goes for enchilada night, tamale night, and huevos rancheros night, as long as you remember to use corn tortillas, not flour.

Cauliflower Rice

Cauliflower has no gluten and is a healthy vegetable in the brassica family. Once you've processed a head of cauliflower in a food processor and steamed it for a few minutes, it's ready to be served as a rice alternative or combined with cheese and eggs to form a delectable pizza crust. Regular rice is gluten-free, too, but the reason cauliflower rice made this list is that it's super versatile and less calorie-dense than rice.

Three-Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies

You may be going gluten-free to be healthier, but even healthy eaters want a sweet treat now and then. That's why these last two items are decadent, gluten-free desserts. To make gluten-free peanut butter cookies, all you need is a cup of peanut butter, a cup of sugar, and an egg. You beat the three ingredients together, roll small scoopfuls into balls, place them on a baking sheet, and use a fork to add those cute little criss-cross lines to the tops. Then bake in a medium oven (around 350 degrees) for about 10 minutes. That's it!

Flourless Chocolate Cake

This chocolate cake only has three ingredients: a pound of chocolate, eight eggs, and two sticks of butter. Beat the eggs in a stand mixer until frothy and doubled in volume. In a separate bowl (in the microwave or double boiler), melt the butter and chocolate together. Gently fold the eggs into the melted butter/chocolate mixture, a little at a time. The trickiest part about this recipe is the actual baking part: the best way to do it is to bake your cake in a springform pan in a water bath. First, wrap the outside of your springform pan in a couple of layers of aluminum foil, and then place the whole thing inside another pan containing some hot water. Bake for about 25 minutes at 325 degrees.

As you can see, going gluten-free doesn't mean giving up all of your favorite foods. It also doesn't have to mean expensive grocery runs! With a few tweaks here and there, you can eat gluten-free and not feel like you're missing out at all.

If you're anything like me, you've been hearing about the health and environmental benefits of a vegan lifestyle for years now. Although I've been intrigued by the thought of limiting my carbon footprint and improving my well-being by eating fewer animal products, it's also been difficult to picture a life without cheese. As more of us go vegan, though, the choices in my local grocery store have expanded exponentially, making it easier than ever to embrace this healthy lifestyle. If you're ready to get on board, try these eight baby steps toward eliminating meat, dairy and other animal products from your diet.

Save It for Dinner

If you usually eat meat throughout the day, consider limiting poultry, red meat and fish to dinner only. Doing so will immediately reduce your consumption of animal products, especially if you go completely vegan for breakfast, lunch and daytime snacks.

Plan One Vegan Meal a Week

Have you heard of Meatless Mondays? After successfully removing meat and dairy from your daytime meals, try making one dinner each week that's completely free of animal products. It doesn't have to be Monday, of course, but swapping out one or two entrees a week for a plant-based alternative will boost your health and get you one step further to a completely vegan lifestyle. This step will also build your repertoire of delicious vegan recipes.

Take It One Product at a Time

Try switching just one of your normal dairy or meat staples for a vegan alternative. For example, buy margarine or a coconut oil spread instead of butter next time you go to the store or replace your typical 2% milk with a soy, almond or even rice variety. You'll get a chance to try an array of vegan products and even find some new favorites to add to your regular rotation. Next time you buy groceries, make a second swap and so on.

Add Instead of Subtract

Don't think of a lifestyle change as taking things away from your diet. Instead, try new foods and vegan favorites to naturally expand your horizons without the feeling of deprivation. Look for recipes that take advantage of fruits, veggies, nuts, grains, seeds, tofu and beans. The more comfortable you become with these staples, the easier it will be to nourish your family without animal products.

Get Enough Nutrients

Whether you primarily eat fresh produce and other whole foods or you also incorporate packaged items, check your diet against the recommended nutritional information for a person of your age, gender and health status. If you find you don't get enough of a certain vitamin or mineral, ask your doctor about adding a supplement to your daily routine.

Keep a Journal

Tracking your diet as you transition to eating fewer animal products can help you see the benefits of this lifestyle change. Have you been losing weight? Noticing more stamina during your workouts? Sleeping better? Feeling more positive? Documenting these items will provide motivation to keep going in your quest for a healthier, happier you.

Reach for Resources

With so many books, blogs and recipes at our fingertips online, it's never been easier to get the knowledge you need to go vegan. You can even order food, supplements and ingredients online, which is especially helpful in communities with limited grocery options.

Eat at Home

If your favorite restaurant is the local steakhouse and your go-to lunch is a pepperoni pizza, break the meat and dairy habit by preparing most of your meals at home. You'll save a significant amount of money while eliminating the temptation to stray from your vegan journey.

Changing your diet for the better, whether that means going completely vegan, eliminating meat or being more aware of the animal products you consume, is a major lifestyle change. These smaller goals can get you on the right track for a nutritional overhaul that's good for the Earth, too.

You've heard all the hype about meal prep, right? It's the latest Sunday afternoon craze. You plan and prep a bunch of meals and either pop them in the freezer or portion them into small containers so that you have something to eat all week. Sounds like a perfect world. If all that sounds like too much work, but you're still stressing over what to make for dinner when six o'clock rolls around, I have news for you: 

Meal prep can be as straightforward or as complicated as you want. You can easily make meal prep work for you, according to your habits, preferences, and cooking skills. Here's the super simple formula:

Start With a Grain (or Grain Substitute)

Whether you're interested in prepping more lunches or more dinners, create the foundation by cooking up some grains. If you're into rice, pasta, or polenta, start there. If you're looking for keto-friendly, low-carb alternatives, try zoodles (you know; zucchini noodles), quinoa, cauliflower rice, spaghetti squash, or something along those lines.

Cook enough of this base food to last most of the week. The key here is to season a bit, but not too specifically. You want this one grain to stretch over several different meals, all with different flavor profiles. So if you plan to have the rice with refried beans one night, baked chicken another night, and curry every day for lunch, it needs to have a generic seasoning when you first make it. Try cooking it in chicken broth, vegetable stock, or just salted water.

Add a Protein

You probably know the drill already: pick your favorite protein (or two) cook up a big batch of it, and don't season it too much at the beginning. If you've been cooking for yourself for a while, you already know what you like and how to cook it. The biggest difference between meal prep Sunday and any other day of the week is how many portions you decide to cook.

If you're having trouble deciding how many different proteins to prep, think about what you could make with just your favorite one. For example, if you like chicken, you could make a roast chicken and potatoes meal, chicken tacos, chicken soup, and so on. Then add one more favorite protein. Do you like beans? Cook them with just a little salt or broth, and you can add chili powder and cumin for taco night, meat and sauce for chili night, and so on. Get creative if you want, or stick to your same-old, same-old. Whatever works for you.

Don't Forget Your Veggies

Veggies are important! Don't leave them out. For vegetables you plan to eat fresh, such as in a salad, it's best to chop and dice only a few days' worth at a time. For veggies you want to cook ahead, think about how you can streamline the process. Could you roast some onions and squash at the same time that you're baking a chicken? Great! Let your oven do double-duty.

Bonus: Tools of the (Meal Prep) Trade

The beauty of meal prep is that you can ease into it with whatever tools you already have. However, if you want to make big-batch cooking easier on yourself, you might want to invest in a few big-batch cooking tools:

If you're anything like me, a good bowl of yogurt and granola is a form of comfort for you. It's just so satisfying! Although granola can be full of nutrients, including vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats, it also contains a lot of calories, a lot of carbs, and often a lot of added sugar. There is hope, though!
The good news is that you can build the perfect granola bowl, no matter what eating style you follow. With a few tweaks to a classic recipe, you can enjoy this fun comfort food without feeling like you're cheating!

1. The Perfect Keto Granola Bowl

A typical serving (six ounces) of full-fat plain Greek yogurt only has around seven or eight grams of carbs, start with that. Make sure it's plain, though, because once they start adding flavors and sweeteners, it all goes downhill. The next step is to add some grain-free granola, which you can find at natural foods stores and many mainstream grocery stores. If you want to make your own grain-free granola, try using egg whites, butter, and flax meal as a binder, since you won't be adding sugar to get all the yummy nuts and seeds to stick together. Monk fruit extract works great as a sweetener in this recipe, as long as you remember that it can be up to 200 times sweeter than sugar, so don't add too much.

2. The Perfect Gluten-Free Granola Bowl

It's easy to make a gluten-free granola bowl, even if you can't find pre-packaged gluten-free granola. All you need to do is use your favorite granola recipe and make sure you use gluten-free oats, which are pretty easy to find at large grocery stores. Just make sure to read the labels of the other ingredients you use, including the yogurt. (Note: Oats do not naturally contain the type of gluten that you'd find in wheat and barley, but they can sometimes be cross-contaminated in processing and packaging. That's why you need to look for "gluten-free oats.")

3. The Perfect Vegan Granola Bowl

One of the great things about this modern age is that vegan yogurt is everywhere now. You don't have to make it yourself anymore unless you want to. Although there are several different types out there, vegan coconut yogurt is the one I see most often at the supermarket. Vegan granola is pretty easy to find, too, since dairy and honey are usually the only animal products in most brands of granola, and they're easy to spot on an ingredients list. You could always opt to make your own granola and use a different liquid sweetener, like maple or agave syrup, if your recipe calls for honey.

4. The Perfect Raw Food Granola Bowl

Because it's fermented, yogurt is generally considered to count as raw food, so choose your favorite and go with it. To make raw granola, you can combine lots of nuts and seeds with chopped dates, cinnamon, and other spices (with or without oats), and process in a food processor. Ta-da!
So there you have it: the perfect granola bowl, customized for four different popular diets!

When the weather starts to get warm, I immediately begin to crave fresh, seasonal summer produce. Creative salads are a great way to highlight the bounty of the farmer's market this time of year. Start your meal planning this week by incorporating these delicious, healthy summer salads you can throw together for a nutritious meal in minutes.

Panzanella With Salmon and Cucumbers

This classic Italian bread salad gets an upgrade from a side to a main dish with the addition of fresh cucumbers and rich, flaky fish.

Strawberry Salad

Fresh berries are the star of the season, especially when combined with fresh spinach, crunchy nuts and tangy cheese.

Spicy Mango Salad

Spicy jalapeno and tangy lime juice add an unexpected counterpoint to the sweetness of the mangoes. To make this salad, combine:

Grilled Corn Salad

Inspired by the street corn sold by vendors in Mexico, this salad pairs with everything from grilled chicken to a hearty rice and beans dish.

Green and Yellow Bean Salad

This salad is full of fresh flavors and makes an ideal light lunch with a crusty loaf of bread.

Couscous With Almonds and Sundried Tomatoes

Bring this hearty grain salad to your next summer potluck.

Eating a variety of fruits and vegetables along with low-fat protein, nuts, seeds and low-fat dairy supports your health and well-being. Get the nutrients you need while enjoying the mouthwatering flavors of fresh, local ingredients.

If you’ve neared or passed the dreaded age of 40 like me, you probably have friends or family members that insist you take a multivitamin. After all, according to the commercials on TV, everyone over 40 absolutely NEEDS a multivitamin to be healthy, right? Are multivitamins really as important as we’re told? Today, I decided to slap on my investigative reporter hat and share the shocking truth about multivitamins.
To tell you the truth, even I was surprised by the answer. It turns out that recent studies show that taking multivitamins is a complete waste of time for most people. Those huge pills don’t magically protect you against heart problems at all. Why not?

Are Most Multivitamins Effective?

Professional nutritionists have known these pills are a waste of money for a long time. That’s why you’ll rarely see a nutrition expert recommending mega-humongous multivitamins with 20+ different vitamins and minerals. I found three reasons why those pills don’t work:

The good news is that, for the most part, multivitamins seem safe. Getting too much of healthy vitamins (except for vitamin E and beta carotene) won’t hurt you. It just won’t help much either.

Are Multivitamins and Nutritional Supplements the Same?

I should explain that when I talk about multivitamins, I mean those all-in-one pills packed with every vitamin known to man. I’m NOT referring to nutritional supplements, which are very different. Many studies show that taking supplements CAN provide health benefits, and really big ones.

Why are supplements different from multivitamins? Because they target specific vitamins, minerals, nutrients and healthy compounds that you personally are missing. Nutritional supplements combine natural ingredients that alleviate certain health problems, including pain, poor mental focus, low energy, depression, elevated blood sugar and high cholesterol.

Are Nutritional Supplements Beneficial?

If you have a health problem you want to deal with naturally, I absolutely recommend trying a high-quality supplement designed for it. For example, turmeric, ginger, garlic, Omega-3 fatty acids and black pepper can be very effective at fighting inflammation.
Most people don’t need multivitamins. But almost everyone needs to get more of certain nutrients. Older adults usually need extra vitamin B12, calcium and vitamin D. People following a vegan or vegetarian diet have to get B12 and Omega-3 fatty acids from supplements, too.
If you’re having trouble sleeping at night, try adding some magnesium, melatonin, Valerian root and tryptophan to your diet with a supplement. Just from personal experience I can tell you it works wonders. Valerian root helped me sleep like a baby when I had problems with stress headaches a few years ago.

Are Natural Foods a Great Source of Most Vitamins?

You can get many wonderful benefits from planning healthy meals. If you want to enjoy natural stress relief, munch on lots of green leafy veggies (folate), salmon (Omega-3 fatty acids), berries (antioxidants), Greek yogurt (probiotics) and dark chocolate (tryptophan). However, if you know you’re missing certain nutrients due to a busy schedule, there’s nothing wrong with taking a natural supplement containing those nutrients.