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:

Cauliflower is the New Chickpea

My raw eating efforts have been few and far between lately, but I'm still trying to eat as many fruits and vegetables as possible and I've still been experimenting in the kitchen to keep myself entertained!

In fact, I made up a new hummus recipe and it was really good! And, it just happens to be raw... :)

I got the idea from the raw zucchini hummus. I had bought a whole head of
cauliflower because I wanted to try and make the raw mock mashed potato recipe, but then I
decided that sounded kind of gross. So, I decided to try and find a more creative way to use it.

Yummy Spicy 'Peanut' Raw Noodle Dish

Not only did my dear friend Kate get me started on this raw journey, by lending me her raw diet book, she also gave me tons of helpful tips. One of them was to get some kelp noodles - stat!

I found them at Jimbos a few weeks ago and first tried them with pesto. When Kate said they were kind of crunchy, I wasn't sure what she meant until I tasted them. It was great to have noodles that weren't zucchini and didn't taste like part of a salad. But, the crunchiness was kind of weird.

This time, I tried them with a spicy "peanut" sauce, which was a perfect combo! I also soaked the noodles in warm water for about 10 minutes and I think that softened them up a little. This is one of my favorite raw dishes so far!

Living the Raw-ish, Vegan-ish Life

Over the past few weeks I've been trying to find some balance with my new way of eating. I've managed to do another few days in a row of eating all raw, but that's as far as I've been able to go so far.

But otherwise, I've still been eating vegan - except for a few times lately where I broke down and ate some cheese. I've had to lighten up about that a little. Once was at a work event where the only non-meat option was a veggie sandwich with goat cheese spread all over the veggies. The other time was a veggie burger I ordered and started eating when I realized it had cheese in the patty. Oh well, I've come to the conclusion that a little cheese here and there isn't going to kill me! Though I do want to try and avoid it as much as I can. 

So, on the raw front, I've made a few more fun things - chips and two different kinds of hummus.

Falling Off the Raw Diet Wagon

After getting back from San Francisco last week, I was ready to get back on track with my raw diet.

I started on Tuesday and made it all the way to Saturday when I broke down at a birthday party and had a few beers, a veggie taco and some buneulos. Then on Sunday, I kept the party going with more cooked food and champagne at brunch, and finished the weekend off with a giant bean burrito from Santana's.

And last night, after eating raw all day, I broke down at the Padre game and had wine and a whole bunch of cooked stuff...

This raw thing is harder than I thought it would be!

My First Raw Meal...Or..How to Eat Two Zuchinnis and a Bunch of Kale in One Sitting

If you missed my last post, I'm thinking about going raw.

Well, maybe not totally and forever, but I'd at least like to give it a try. I've been doing a lot of reading about it and health benefits seem amazing.

I'm not sure long I could do it for, but I'm thinking about starting with a week-long challenge.

For now, I've been experimenting with a few raw dishes. My first attempt was fettuccine pesto and a kale salad. The fettuccine is actually zucchini, but the pesto was pretty close to the traditional sauce - just veganized (and a little lighter). I added some chopped asparagus to bulk it up, but you'd never know.

They were both actually pretty good for first tries!

I got the ideas for the zucchini pasta and the kale salad here: http://www.learnrawfood.com/ and the pesto here: http://yeahthatveganshit.blogspot.com/.

Here's how I did it:

A Seed Sprouted, An Idea Planted

This weekend my friend Kate lent me the book "Living on Live Food." I've never thought about going "raw," but figured it might have some good vegan recipes.

Before the recipe section of the book, the author explains all of the benefits of going raw - weight loss, glowing skin, shiny hair, feeling younger, healing yourself of pain and disease... who doesn't want all that?

A few pages in I started thinking seriously about giving it a try. Then I realized how hard that would be to do every day. Eating vegan has been challenging at times. Do I really want to make life more challenging? Hmmm, not really... But, I do want to feel my best!