"Tara", I said to my roommate as we were driving home one evening, "I want to do some sort of crazy diet after Ironman Florida."
"Okay!" She replied, without batting an eye, because that's just how roommates are.
Very quickly we decided to experiment with raw foodism. Raw foodism is a food lifestyle that is quickly gaining popularity. It involves eating raw food (mainly fruits, veggies and nuts), sprouted grains, and dehydrated food. Nothing can be heated over 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Real raw foodists follow the diet because they believe heat destroys the enzymes in food and also can make foods harmful to the body. Us? Well, we're just doing it partly for the novelty aspect (cheese made from nuts? Lasagna made from zucchini? Sign us up!)
Our household has always been really, really nutritious (aka we've never owned sugar, wheat or milk of any kind, which is probably why we're still single, sigh...) and green smoothies, kale chips, and quinoa are daily staples. So for us to make the raw leap really isn't that big of a deal. Tara was given a raw "cookbook" (oh, the irony!) for Christmas last year and we've always oohed and aahed over the inventive recipes. But most of them seemed pretty time intensive (who remembers to sprout grains for 48 hours prior to dinner?) so we never tackled any of them. This time, however, we got down to business.
Last week we poured through the "cookbook" as well as online recipes and created a spreadsheet of all our meals and recipes for the next two weeks. We divided up the "cooking" duties and made our master shopping list. When we printed out the final list, it seemed a bit daunting:
It took three stores (Costco, Safeway, and our local natural food store) and we found everything! (Well, everything except Irish Moss. So much for our raw pumpkin pie) We were prepared for a large bill but were still shocked with the final tally. You can definitely do a raw food diet if you're on a budget, but you can't do the fun recipes that we planned! After our trip our fridge was packed beyond belief:
So, what have we been cooking? So far, we've tackled:
Ani Phyo's Donut Holes which are AWESOME (Here's me creating a mess of them in the kitchen)
Soaked (for 48+ hours) wild rice with corn and tomato:
Rye Flatbread (which is made with celery, flaxmeal, cocoa powder, oil, and caraway seeds yet magically dehydrates to a delicious flatbread/cracker that tastes just like rye!) I'm not posting the recipe but you can get it from Ani's Raw Food Essentials. We don't have a dehydrator but we put the oven on the lowest setting and prop the oven door open a bit (yeah, not the greenest, but our only option).
And one of my favorite recipes, Raw Pea Soup. I make this with thawed frozen peas. This soup is AMAZING. You'd swear there was cream in it. It tastes so unbelievably good and is so healthy. Go make it. Now.
Raw Pea Soup
16 oz peas (can be thawed frozen)
1 cup plain soymilk, nutmilk, or dairy milk
1/2 cup water
3T lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste.
Put all in a blender and whir! Eat hot or cold.
And of course, we had to try the Raw Lasagna:
Made with only zucchini as "noodles", nut "cheeze" and a raw tomato sauce. I know what you're thinking: "FrayedLaces, you done jumped into the crazy pool!" But as odd as it sounds, this really does taste like lasagna.
Mmm...layers of raw vegan goodness
So, how long are we planning on doing this? We've scheduled 2 weeks, which takes us conveniently to Thanksgiving. But already we're hooked on some recipes and plan on incorporating a lot of raw recipes into our normal diet. It'll be interesting to see how I feel over the next two weeks as well as if I lose any weight. I'm not tracking calories, but snack on a lot of dried fruits so I'm definitely getting adequate calories. But I'm oddly never truly hungry. Regardless, it's a fun (and healthy!) post-Ironman experiment!
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