The beginning
How It Started
The pain started around age eleven. Nothing dramatic, just a stiffness in the mornings, a dull ache in his back that everyone had a theory about. Posture. Gaming. Growing pains. Easy to explain away, and so it was.
It never went away. Over the years it crept: more stiffness, more pain, a fatigue that sleep never touched. Daniel eventually saw a doctor. The referral to a rheumatologist was declined. That was more or less the end of the formal medical path.
What filled the gap was his dad, who has AS. That context changed how Daniel started reading his own symptoms. He went looking, through forums, research papers, and other people's accounts of the same creeping pattern. His HLA-B27 gene came back positive. No formal diagnosis, but the pieces fit. That was enough to act on.
The research eventually led him to the No Starch Diet. And that is where everything changed.
Food became medicine. Then it became joy.
The No Starch Diet
The Diet That Changed Everything
If you have never followed the No Starch Diet, it is hard to explain how completely it reshapes your relationship with food. Starch hides everywhere: in sauces, spice blends, coatings, thickeners, even the flour dusted on supermarket cheese. Following NSD means becoming a label detective in every aisle.
The theory centres on a bacteria called Klebsiella, which appears to feed on starch and may play a role in triggering the inflammation that drives AS. Cut the starch, starve the process. It sounds almost too simple. For Daniel, it made a real difference: less pain, better mornings, and a baseline that finally felt manageable.
But here is what nobody tells you upfront. Once you find your rhythm and rebuild your kitchen around real ingredients, the food gets good. Not good-for-a-restricted-diet good. Actually, genuinely good. Around 96% of meals in this household are cooked at home. That number is not a sacrifice. It is something we are genuinely proud of.
The recipes on this blog came from hundreds of weeknight dinners, weekend experiments, and one ongoing question: how do you make NSD food that someone without AS would also want to eat? We think we have mostly figured that out.
Daniel & Caitlyn
Two Tastes, One Kitchen
Caitlyn and Daniel do not have the same palate. This is actually the most useful thing about them as a cooking team.
Caitlyn knows what she likes: chicken, beef, familiar flavours, meals that feel like comfort. She is the honest taste-tester, the one who will tell you straight if something has gone wrong. She is not particularly interested in fusion experiments or obscure cuts, but she is endlessly patient with Daniel's tendency to turn a simple dinner into a forty-five-minute project involving three different pans.
Daniel is the experimental one. He got interested in food out of necessity and never fully came back from it. He is drawn to unusual combinations, cooking techniques, and the challenge of making NSD feel like abundance rather than restriction. He will spend a Sunday afternoon reshaping a favourite recipe to be completely starch-free and come out the other side genuinely excited about what he has made.
Between them, every recipe that makes it onto this blog has cleared a high bar: Caitlyn has to actually want to eat it again. That filter has made every single one better.
Two people, two palates, one kitchen. And it works.
June 2026
Gold Coast Bound
Nelson is beautiful. The light, the sea, the surrounding hills, the pace of life. It is not a hard place to love. But in June 2026, we are leaving it behind.
For Daniel, warm weather is not just pleasant, it matters for AS. Cold, damp winters make mornings harder, movement slower, and pain worse. Queensland's subtropical climate is not just appealing, it is genuinely better for his body. The science backs that up.
Healthcare access played into it too. Queensland has stronger rheumatology networks, better access to biologics and clinical trials, and a more connected specialist ecosystem. For someone managing a chronic condition long-term, that is not a nice-to-have.
And then there is the less clinical reason. We wanted to build something new together, somewhere with energy and a different pace. The Gold Coast felt like that place.
We will write about the move as it happens: the logistics, the feelings, the first shop at a Gold Coast supermarket, and the search for a butcher we can actually trust. It will all be here.
Why we write
From Our Table to Yours
This blog exists because Daniel searched the internet for honest NSD resources and did not always find what he needed. It exists because Caitlyn thought their story was worth telling. And because a few friends and family kept asking what they were eating and whether they could have the recipes.
So here it is. Tested NSD recipes that actually taste good, honest posts about what works and what does not, and stories about building a life on the Gold Coast. We write about food, health, and the ongoing work of taking care of each other. We try to be straight about the hard parts and enthusiastic about the good ones.
We hope you find something useful here. Or at the very least, something delicious.