"Low Acid, Big Flavor" Has Something For Everyone

Low Acid, Big Flavor, tailored for those struggling with gastritis, GERD, common heartburn and just typical ongoing tummy discomfort, grew out of a very personal chapter of my life. People sometimes assume that all the pickles, ferments, and hot sauces I’ve made over the years must caused my gastritis (inflammation of the stomach lining), but that’s not how gastritis works. In fact, food doesn’t cause erosive gastritis. However, once the condition has formed, food choices factor heavily into whether someone gets worse or better.

In my case, the condition developed as a result of abdominal radiation therapy I underwent as a teenager, combined with stress and other factors that had nothing to do with what I was eating. The irony is that the same curiosity and creativity that drove my cooking ended up helping me heal. This diet didn’t restrict my life — it saved it.

The book brings together 68 dinners, sides, snacks, soups, and sauces that helped me rebuild my digestion without giving up flavor. My background in sauce-making, spice blends, fermentation, and being creative in the kitchen helped me make what I consider to be a missing link in the vast (but often boring) world of “gut-friendly” cookbooks.

Every recipe focuses on clean, whole ingredients and avoids common triggers like vinegar and other acids, highly processed seed oils, heavy preservatives, and more. You’ll find homemade condiments, custom spice blends, and a full chapter on low‑acid fermentation techniques — miso, sourdough, low‑gluten bread, milk kefir — for anyone who wants probiotic benefits without harsh acidity. The recipes are adaptable for Paleo/AIP, Whole30, pro‑metabolic eating, vegan, pescatarian, Mediterranean styles and more.

I’m fully recovered now and back to enjoying the foods I love in moderation, but the lessons from that period stayed with me. Low Acid, Big Flavor is for anyone navigating gastritis, GERD, reflux, or general gut sensitivity — and for home cooks who simply want cleaner, more nourishing meals. These dishes are flexible enough to cook for yourself and still serve the same meal to your family, without feeling like you’re eating “special diet food.”

If you’re looking for a cookbook that respects your stomach and still delivers real flavor, this is the one I wrote for you. At the same time, a lot of these recipes were contenders for a possible third book in my “Insane in the Brine” series. For years I have wanted to share many of the recipes in this new book, such as homemade Korean bibimbap and japchae, sushi rolls and Korean gimbap, all-fruit ice creams, my Portuguese kale soup, low-gluten rye bread, and much more. As it turned out, this book was a fabulous opportunity to share many of these recipes which I was wanting to get there anyway, regardless of their appropriateness to the low-acid food community.

So whether you’re looking for fresh ideas for your gut-friendly lifestyle, or have been craving more of classic “Insane in the Brine” recipes, this book has something for everyone!

You can find it on Amazon here: Low Acid, Big Flavor