Fresh and Delicious MarinaRAW

It's been a few weeks since I've tried any new raw recipes, or even tried to eat raw. I just kind of lost interest with all the effort.

But tonight was the perfect night for a raw meal. It was still pretty warm when I got home and I'm trying to eat lighter after an over-indulgent weekend.

I had a bunch of roma tomatoes and some seaweed noodles so I decided to try and make a raw marinara. There are two different recipes in my raw book, so I made up my own based on the ingredients I had and what sounded good.

I've tried to make cooked marinara with fresh tomatoes in the past and failed. But I think the secret is the addition of sun-dried tomatoes. It adds the depth of flavor you'd get from canned tomato paste - without the BPAs (the resin in the cans that gets broken down by the acidity of the tomatoes).

So, here's how I did it:

MarinaRAW
2 1/2 cups chopped roma tomato
5 sun-dried tomatoes - soaked for 45 minutes in warm water
1 tsp canola oil
1 clove garlic diced
4 large basil leaves chopped
a few grinds of crushed red pepper
a few grinds of sea salt

Put all the ingredients in the food processor and pulse until well-blended. Makes two servings.

I was surprised how thick it turned out. I ate it over the seaweed noodles with a light sprinkling of nutritional yeast (which kind of reminds me of parmesan cheese). For some reason, I bought the green tea-flavored seaweed noodles, which were kind of weird. I think the plain ones are much better.

I also made a huge salad with more tomatoes, basil, arugula and shredded carrots. For the dressing, I combined a tsp each of canola oil, dijon mustard, agave syrup and juice of 1/4 large lemon.

It was the perfect summer night dinner! Do you have a favorite summer night dinner?