Lindsay Friedman likes to make healthy low carb gluten free and most importantly delicious food. She blogs all about it on the TheToastedPineNut.com. She lives in California with her husband and two kids who have endless energy.

Tell everyone a little bit about you and what you do with The Toasted Pine Nut.

I am a healthy food blogger. I make it and develop recipes that are low carb and gluten free and sometimes Paleo. I take pictures about them and I write about them on my blog and they share them with people.

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How did you actually get into blogging?

I had a couple of blogs that I love to read and that was something I always wanted to do. After my second son was born he was about six months old and I kind of had like a now or never moment. I said, if I don’t do it now I’ll probably just continue along my my path.  I actually went to law school and was planning on being a lawyer, so I was probably going to go in that direction. I figured, let me just give it a shot and see how it goes.

How do you juggle work and being a mom?

I’m still everyday looking for that balance. I don’t have it all figured out.

How did your husband play into your blogging journey?

A year after we got married, my husband was having these like really weird unexpected symptoms, drinking a lot of water and losing weight. He was in medical school at the time and he’s said “I think I have diabetes”. I said, that is bizarre.You do not have diabetes.  

Eventually just went into school one day and had somebody check his blood sugar and he was ended up being hospitalized for diabetes. It was totally life changing for us because in order to help maintain his blood blood glucose levels it’s recommended that you use stay on a low carb diet.

I really had no concept at that time. I was a big pasta and bagel kind of gal. I was struggling and having a really hard time finding a resource that could give me reliable reliable low carb recipes that weren’t keto. I wanted like a healthy low carb alternative.

I was really struggling with that and I started cooking and learning more about how to cook for him.  Eventually I decided to go to be a resource for somebody that wants to cook a low carb, healthy, diet.  I try to be that resource for people.

Did you always intend on niching down?

I started out very narrow and it was my intention was always to be a diabetic friendly food blog. I realized once I kind of put myself out there was that people that aren’t necessarily diabetic or cooking for diabetics like the food that I make. So I’ve kind of brought it up a bit and I realized that a lot of my food is also gluten free and paleo. People who are paleo or who have intolerances find their way to my blog also.

How did you get started making money off your blog or making money with brands?

I tell people to put yourself out there and send out e-mails because you’ll never know if brands want to work with you until you put yourself on their radar. I just shoot out e-mails to brands or you could reach out reach to them through social media.

How did you get started with video?

The first step is trying to figure out the whole aerial view. You know like having your camera up to shoot your hands and shoot straight down because if you have a normal tripod it doesn’t really work. My first step was just looking on YouTube, just typing in like how the heck do I do this?

What is your best piece of advice for a blogger who is just getting into this food blogger space?

Find blogging friends that will support you!

Find Lindsay!

• TheToastedPineNut.Com
• Instagram: @thetoastedpinenut
• Facebook: The Toasted Pine Nut