Raw Tuesdays!

I think it would be really great if I could manage one raw day a week, don’t you? Like most health-minded kids, I try to incorporate as much raw food into my diet, but I would like to take it to the next level : beyond that of an almost daily smoothie, crudités before dinner, and fruit for snack. The heat and humidity certainly make eating fresh raw fruits and veggies only for an entire day rather appealing, and since my dashing & witty younger vegetarian brother who I am visiting was game for this little challenge, soit! (So be it). Let’s have Raw Tuesdays kids!

Not having a huge amount of experience with Raw Cuisine (I’d qualify myself as “raw curious”), and not having access to libraries or bookstores with Raw recipe books aplenty, I asked two ultra-lovely Raw Cuisine enthusiasts Veggie Girl and Jen the Veg*Triathlete of Fuled By Plants if they had any suggestions for a future book purchase. They both kindly provided a few titles and a little commentary on their suggestions (Thanks ladies! you are super-cool!). While I did mention that I was looking for a Raw book that wasn’t dehydrator-dependant, I didn’t give any other criteria.

Both of these beautiful bloggers mentioned Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen as a good place to start (they did mention others, which I hope someday to acquire). I was in a bookstore 24 hours after getting off the plane (no, I don’t have a book problem) and was ready to get raw with Ani (in a rated G kinda way you dirty freaks). I won’t go into a long review of this book as they are all over the vegosphere, but I will say that if you can get past the photos of Phyo jaunting about on nearly every freaking page, this is a great book. You can make the majority of the recipes with little or no special equipment (assuming you have a powerful blender and/or food processor). I get a little peeved when food authors have a budget for photos but in lieu of showing us food, we’re forced to look at some sort of photo shoot gone wrong.

For our first Raw Tuesday we began the day with these:

Comprised mostly of ground flax seeds, both Brotherfish & I found them to be really yummy, for like four bites, then they seemed really intense. Thick. We decided that the serving sizes were maybe a little askew and had our leftovers the next day for breakfast, but halved, and coupled with lots of fresh fruit was very good.

For lunch we had the Spanish Scramble. I have no picture of this because I totally forgot to take one. But if you want, you can watch Phyo making Spanish Scramble :

Rather than serving it on a bed of spinach leaves, we ate it rolled up in fresh collard greens. It was pretty yummy, though I think next time I will serve it with lots of fresh tomato and cucumber slices to lighten it up a little.

We also made the Fresh Mango Cobbler and it was freaking amazing! Loved it! Even the not even a little health-conscious members of my family loved it. Like most raw desserts it reminded me of “dough”, but in a really good way.

Our first Raw Tuesday was lots of fun! I do speed work on Tuesday mornings (running, not race car driving), and I run first thing in the morning. I drank a big glass of almond milk before I went, and I felt fine.