Alaena Haber, MS, OTR, makes her cookbook debut with The Healing Kitchen, showcasing her dedication toward nourishing and fresh meals in a modern, budget-conscious kitchen. Alaena's no stranger to cooking—she runs popular blog Grazed and Enthused. She started preparing meals for her family as a child, and many of her techniques and flavor pairings are inspired by the aromatic family-style meals that made her Lebanese grandmother Teta a legend. But unlike Teta, you won't be spending all day at the stove complaining about sore feet with this collection of recipes. Alaena pursues a holistic approach to happiness and well-being and truly believes health starts on your plate. She passionately uses a grain-free, anti-inflammatory diet to successfully manage her own chronic illness and wants to bring these healing recipes to your dinner table. Alaena also recently received her master's degree in occupational therapy, which allows her to help adults and children pursue and achieve meaningful lives. Alaena, her husband, and their dog have lived in four cities in the past 2 years and enjoy traveling the country by foot, bike, and kayak. Sarah Ballantyne, PhD, is the creator of the award-winning online resource ThePaleoMom.com; cohost of the syndicated top-rated The Paleo View podcast; and New York Times bestselling author of The Paleo Approach and The Paleo Approach Cookbook. Sarah earned her doctorate degree in medical biophysics at the age of twenty-six and spent the next four years doing research on critical care medicine, innate immunity, gene therapy, and cell biology, earning a variety of awards for research excellence along the way. Sarah's transition from academic researcher to stay-at-home mom to award-winning and internationally recognized health advocate and educator was driven by her own health journey, which included losing 120 pounds and using both diet and lifestyle to mitigate and reverse a dozen diagnosed health conditions. As a scientist both by training and by nature, Sarah is deeply interested in understanding how the foods we eat interact with our gut barriers, immune systems, and hormones to influence health. Sarah's innate curiosity goes further than just understanding diet, and she is also deeply interested in the impact of lifestyle factors like sleep, stress, and activity. Her passion for scientific literacy and her talent for distilling scientific concepts into straightforward and accessible explanations form the foundation of her work and her dedication to improving public health. Sarah also emphasizes a theory-to-practice approach in all of her work through her focus on recipe creation and everyday solutions.
