Newly diagnosed
What to clear out, what to keep, and what nobody tells you in the first month. The practical, unpanicked version.
Read the basics →Real food · Real faith · Real life
I'm Steffi England — a nutritional herbalist and wellness educator who has spent eighteen years helping people eat the way they were made to eat. When you do, something quietly wonderful happens. The fog lifts. The energy comes back. You can think clearly again, and you have something left over to give to the people you love.
A gentle, eleven-part walk through internal cleansing with real food. Yours free when you join the letter.
One letter, most weeks. Recipes, what I'm learning, and a little encouragement. Unsubscribe any time.
Start here
The Shack started as a place to figure out gluten-free cooking. It grew into something bigger — a whole-person approach to feeling well in your mind, your heart, your body, and your spirit. Here are four doors in.
What to clear out, what to keep, and what nobody tells you in the first month. The practical, unpanicked version.
Read the basics →Broths, butter, soaked grains, and the traditional foods our great-grandmothers never had to think twice about.
Into the kitchen →Kraut, kefir, kombucha, sourdough. Living foods, explained plainly enough that you'll actually make them.
Start a ferment →Health as stewardship rather than fear. The pieces I've written about caring for a body you were given on purpose.
Read on →Coaching
I've been where you are, and so have four of the five people at my dinner table. Coaching with me is not a meal plan emailed to you — it's someone walking through your actual kitchen, your actual budget, and your actual week until eating well stops feeling like a second job.
Ninety minutes to untangle one thing — a new diagnosis, a stalled routine, a pantry you don't know what to do with. You leave with a written plan.
The full arc. Food, rest, movement, supplements where they earn their place, and the mental and spiritual side nobody else asks about.
When more than one person reacts and everyone eats at the same table. Systems, shopping, and keeping the peace at dinner.
Speaking & teaching
I've taught in living rooms in Mexico, retreat centers in New Zealand, church buildings in Utah, and conference halls in Israel. The room changes; the work doesn't. I come in, I make a complicated subject feel manageable, and people leave believing they can actually do something on Monday.
Formats: single keynote, half-day workshop, hands-on cooking class, or a multi-week series. In person or online.
Coming soon
Eighteen years of writing, teaching, and research is being gathered into two volumes — one for the kitchen, and one for the people in the hardest part of it.
Everything the blog has been circling since 2008, finally in order. The recipes that earned their place at my own table, the kitchen systems that hold up on a hard week, and the whole-person approach that grew up alongside them — real food, herbs, rest, and faith, in one volume instead of a thousand scattered posts.
In progress
This one is for the people who need it most. It condenses what I have taught and studied across eighteen years into the clearest, most usable form I know how to make — written for someone who is exhausted, foggy, frightened, and running low on answers. Not a promise of a cure. A hand held out, a place to begin, and every honest thing I have learned about caring for a body while you keep going.
In progress
You'll hear first when either book is ready — plus early chapters along the way, and a chance at an advance copy.
Book news only, no more than once a month. Unsubscribe any time.
The shop
A small collection of things I actually wanted to own. Every order helps keep this site growing and everything on it free — more recipes, more guides, and more of it for everyone who needs it.
The little house with the gold heart in the gable. Tees, mugs, and totes.
The plum and gold butterfly. If you've read the blog, you know what it means.
Lime-green ribbon, plum lettering. For the families in the middle of it.
My story
I set out to feed my family. I was a dancer, then a missionary, then a mother of five with a diagnosis that reorganized every meal in the house. What began as notes to myself in 2008 became eighteen years of writing, more than a thousand classes taught on five continents, and a practice built on a few stubborn convictions: that real food is not complicated, that fear is a poor motivator, and that a body is worth caring for because of who gave it to you.
Along the way I trained as a nutritional herbalist, learned from the traditions Weston A. Price documented and Sally Fallon carried forward, and spent more than a decade being coached by Ron Williams — who has taught me more about discipline and grace than any textbook did.
What I actually use
Short list, honestly held. If something isn't here, it's because I don't reach for it.
The oils I've used and taught with for years. I'm a Wellness Advocate, so I earn a commission — and I'd tell you the same things if I didn't.
Omega balance testing and supplementation. I'm an independent partner.
Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, the work of Weston A. Price, and the School of Natural Healing curriculum. These shaped how I think about food more than anything else I've read.
En español
Soy Steffi England — herbolaria nutricional y educadora de bienestar. Llevo dieciocho años enseñando a vivir sin gluten con alegría, no con miedo. Doy clases, talleres y charlas en español, en persona y en línea.
Say hello
Questions, speaking inquiries, or just to tell me a recipe worked — I read everything that comes in.