About Rachael

Who am I

    Hi, I’m Rachael Hebblewhite!  A Wisconsin-born-and-raised girl with a heart for bunnies and a mouth for food!  Okay to be more specific, I’m a twenty-something-year-old navigating college and a healthy lifestyle.  I am the recipe developer and photographer (and everything) behind Banana Soup for the Soul.  I started it back in early 2019, my freshman year of college, when I started the AIP protocol diet and wanted to share my AIP creations and experiences with people.  Now it has expanded into recipes of all types and diets!  Originally, I started out with AIP to discover what my sensitive gut could handle, since I was diagnosed with IBS (irritable bowel syndrome).  Now I use food not only for digestive health but hormonal, emotional, social, and physical health and wellness as well.

    I have a passion for food, obviously! I love being creative in the kitchen, whether it’s adding cinnamon to everything, veering off a recipe I’m supposed to follow, or researching the best ways to cook vegan meat or bake gluten free goodies. Luckily, my hobbies match my career as I am also working on my dietetics degree at college. I have to give credit to my mom for planting my passion for healthy eating. My mom looked into Paleo eating when my grandpa was diagnosed with cancer in 2008. Since then, it has been a journey. We have blended Paleo into our diets, but we’ve also discovered that the concept of healthy eating has changed so much since then and continues to change.

    However, sometimes it’s hard to focus on just food when I have so many passions!  Other than the blog, I also love to dance, exercise, make crafts, organize, and pamper my rabbit Walter.

My History

    As I said before, I’ve struggled with IBS, especially in late high school/early college. I was a competitive dancer in high school, dancing long hours and not eating very much, especially for my exercise level. That mixed with my stress about school wreaked havoc on my digestion. I also deal with ongoing hormonal issues, brought on by lack of a menstrual cycle. Both western and eastern medicine have helped, and I continue to look into how food plays a role in hormones. Hormones, exercise levels, and digestive problems have influenced my body in ways I can’t always control. Rapid change has been the hardest to deal with, as body image and weight is something we all prefer to be stable. Nevertheless, I hope to be an example of positivity for those dealing with these issues as well!

About the Blog

    With Banana Soup for the Soul, my goal is to share my healthy recipes and my discoveries through my journey of digestive, hormonal, emotional, and overall health and wellness. My blog is always a work in progress, because the tech world is always changing! But ideas are always running through my head. On here I post mostly recipes, with tips and experiments (like my sweet potato flight!). Sometimes I’ll also post my thoughts and experiences with physical and emotional health. I also have an instagram page, @bananasoupforthesoul, where I post simpler recipes, daily eats, products I love, and more!

About the Recipes

    On the recipes I include what diets they go along with (AIP, dairy-free, vegan, etc.) and what meal type (breakfast, dessert, etc.). I have a sweet tooth, so many breakfast or snack recipes can double as dessert! I believe in moderation, and if your stomach can handle sugar, gluten, or dairy, then it’s fine to eat those foods. But I also understand those who just don’t benefit from eating those foods. Therefore, most recipes will be healthy (as controversial as that word can be…), if not also including diet types for those restricted individuals.

    In vegan recipes, I do not include butter, but I do include butter in paleo, dairy-free, and AIP recipes. Grass fed butter is considered paleo in moderation, it’s mostly fat (with only trace amounts of lactose, and it’s in the early reintroduction stage of AIP. Ghee is also a useful substitute. I also include black pepper in AIP recipes, because it wasn’t included originally in the elimination diet but was added later. If going full AIP, black pepper can always be emitted. By sugar-free I always mean refined sugar-free. Sugar, the word itself, can include the natural sugars in fruit, maple syrup, honey, and even some vegetables! That type of natural sugar I don’t try to eliminate from recipes. I include chocolate chips in vegan and dairy-free recipes because there are vegan and dairy free chocolate chips on the market. Another thing about my recipes is that they will never contain rabbit, lamb, or duck. Those animals, as tasty as they might be, are God’s precious little baby creatures that are just too adorable to eat!

    Before I create a recipe, I always do my research. I’m a science person, and a lot of recipes, especially baking, work because of science. Nothing’s going to rise from just baking soda and no acid! So you can trust that these recipes have a lot of thought put into them, and are backed by trial and error!