Raw-licious

I’ll admit that I’ve been very intrigued with the “raw food” diet recently. I even bought a cook book on raw foods with a Border’s gift card that Miss Healthypants gave me for Christmas.

I’ve found the raw food diet attractive for a couple of reasons.

First, every food item used in the raw food diet is something that you should be eating. Everything is healthy and good for you. Also, I’ve really been surprised at the creativity regarding the recipes -- It’s not just nibbling on raw vegetables like a health-conscious rabbit.

So, this past weekend I “did” the raw food thing.

The verdict: I’m still doing it today. I liked it.

I’ll admit that some things worked better than others, but hey, that’s life in general. For example, here are two smoothies I made:
They’re very pretty, aren’t they?

The green one is a cilantro smoothie and the fuchsia one is a beet/pomegranate smoothie. Strangely enough, the cilantro smoothie was just about the best thing I’ve ever tasted and the beet one tasted like kerosene. So, there you go.

To make the cilantro smoothie, blend one bunch of cilantro, one peeled cucumber, one granny Smith apple, about one cup of fresh pineapple, a big handful of fresh spinach, one peeled grapefruit, a big dash of cinnamon with enough water to make it blend. (I added a small scoop of protein powder) It makes a full blender full.

And lookie here what I made for lunch: Hummus with caramelized onions on whole-grain crackers.
It’s very pretty, right?

To make the hummus, soak cashews, sunflower seeds and garbanzo beans in water overnight. Blend them with marinated sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, lemon juice and tahini. (I used very few garbanzo beans because raw, soaked beans taste too “beany”).

To make the “caramelized” onions, blend four dates with a tablespoon of soy sauce and a little water. Pour over sliced red onions to marinade. They’re really really good!

Normally, in raw food recipes, one can make crackers by blending sprouted grains and nuts into a puree, then spreading them on waxed paper and dehydrating it overnight.

I’m not about to go to the trouble of spouting a bunch of grains and nuts, puree-ing them, then dehydrating it. Please. Not when I can just buy these super-healthy 13-grain crackers. And especially since I don’t have a dehydrator (and I doubt I’d go to all this trouble even if I had one).

Yeah, the crackers are baked, so kill me.

Today for lunch I had guacamole and the hummus on the crackers. I have a big container of the cilantro smoothie for later.

I tried some raw food items previously but didn’t like them. It makes a difference to actually follow some recipes and, bottom line, if the food isn’t appealing or tasty I’m not going to eat it just because it’s healthy.

Oh, and for breakfast I had a Venti half-caf from Starbuck’s.

Yeah, the coffee isn’t “raw food” but one can only go so far.

Really.