Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Raw Week, RawR!


I'm almost done my raw week.  It's been easy in a lot of ways (the food is just as delicious as any "normal" food), and in other ways a bit of a challenge (detox symptoms, having to throw out lots of food that spoiled unexpectedly fast, the whole nut soaking thing, the whole raw food extremism thing)...

It's actually going to be bittersweet easing back into regular food, I think.  I don't feel any huge inclination towards it at the moment, even though I know that someone as flighty and spacey as me really does flourish better on the standard vegan fare.  But that said... I should get onto the food of this week, more or less a meal by meal replay of all the lego-bright dishes I got to have the time of my life constructing.

Okay, so this is technically a pre-raw warm-up (haha, warm up, is that a pun?).  I made a carrot/tomato/miso soup to see how I'd feel about it all, thick with pumpkin seeds and bowl-licking good, and so....

I jumped in headfirst.  Would you look at that?  It looks like a deep-sea fish it's so pretty.  A lot of green, but worth it.  The sprouted chickpea hummous in those wraps kept me going for snack times for the first few days, and the minty cucumber dressing from Vegan World Fusion doubled as a salad topper and a soup, before spoiling way too fast as these enzymic dishes are wont to do.  Alas, alas!

Avocado was also a life-saver, as I never felt warmer or more satisfied than after a meal that incorporated it.  I mashed this one up with rice vinegar, soy sauce and ginger, and made showy crunchy (astoundingly good) sushi rolls.  And a fruit salad with loquat and date syrup beside it.

Breakfast of day 2: the incarnation of my oatmeal habit!
Raw oats ground up in a spice grinder, with a heavy pinch of ground flaxseed, half a mashed banana, berries and lots of salt and cinnamon, left to soak overnight.  I'm keeping this one!  I'd been getting tired of regular oatmeal and this is perfect for summer and very laid back.  You have to choose fairly soft fruit for best results, but again - peaches, berries, tropical things - all available right now!  It's very nutty and satisfying to have for breakfast.

Lunch day 2: Zucchini bites with spicy hummous, a salad of shredded carrot, red pepper, soaked walnuts and red wine vinegar (yum!!), and broccoli tossed with cucumber dressing.

Dinner that night was my first green smoothie.  I will admit I thought it the concept very strange at first, at least before I took my first sip.  Is it totally an unabashedly weird that I love the taste of green things in my smoothie now?  It adds a neat texture and a resonant kind of garden note that makes it more of a meal to me.  Especially wonderful with banana and pomegranate juice, I might add.

I'm skipping breakfast reports because they're all variations on the raw oat groat thing, but...
Lunch day 3: A curried miso carrot dressing on spinach with avocado chunks and dried pineapple pieces - ZOMG.  Genius.  And some cucumber dressing in a bowl trying to be soup as I attempt to slurp it all up before it goes bad.  

Dinner 3: My attempt at flatbread without a dehydrator resulted in (of course) a lot of prematurely fuzzy food, but there was a small grace period where it was semi-firm enough to eat as bread and I made little sandwiches with homemade sumac tahini cheese, and some green beans tossed with organic stone-ground mustard and lemon.

Dinner day 4: pizza!
(lunch seems to be missing from the record)
The pizza is topped with sage-y sundried tomato marinara, green pepper, onions, pineapple, almond cheese, and artichoke hearts.

Lunch day 5: Possibly in the top 5 sandwiches I've ever eaten, is this Haiku Wrap from Juliano's contribution to The Complete Book of Raw Food.  It has avocado mashed with garlic, ginger and lemon topped with wakame, mustard, pickle, burdock, bell pepper, onion, corn and shoyu - and it's a magical, magical combination.  (carrot slaw with sprouted peanuts keeping the sammiches upright on either side).

Dinner 5: Another one of those raw standbys I never understood (like the green smoothie), was the zucchini pasta thing, but you know what?  It's pasta-like, and not salad-like as I thought it would be!  Really good, actually, enough to repeat it later.  And the things that look like eggs are crunchy turnip slices topped with nut cheese.

Lunch 6: Cabbage burrito-wraps with cumin and chili sunflower pate inside (along with corn and tomatoes and green onions and things).  With a side of Pringle lookalikes (but really it's delicious turnip) and nut cheese again for my new favourite take on nachos.  Soaking the slices in cold water gives them the perfect chip shape and makes them sweeter, too!

And that's not to say there were no sweets!  I made some tahini-geranium cookies, that I could upload but they look pretty much like little brown discs.  The brownies are gorgeous, though!  I ground up some sprouted and dried buckwheat into flour and combined it with dates, ground almonds, walnuts, carob powder, salt and vanilla and proceeded to nom NOM NOM them up because they were so amazing!!  I highly recommend the buckwheat flour thing, I have a container of the sprouts in my freezer right now and it gives things a more cake-like texture than the usual wodgy raw dessert texture.

And here's a plate full of desserts I took to a raw potluck last night.  Clockwise from the top left are salty sunflower seed cookies, then those buckwheat brownies with a banana-fudge frosting, then coconut-cashew-agave crusted pear tarts with gojis on top, and finally like orange & clove oatmeal raisin cookies!  So much fun, and so easy to just make a few servings of anything, and experiment all over the place!  I definitely got into the habit of whizzing up just a single cookie for after lunch sometimes when I needed something for my sweet tooth.

Potluck food itself was possibly the BEST vegan thing any non-vegan has ever made for when I came to dinner.  It was a sundried tomato-cashew romesco sauce over marinated eggplant and it was mindblowingly good.  I think it was from a book by the same people who did Raw Food/Real World, if you wanted to try it, and you might want to add extra orange juice like my friend did and eat every indulgence-soaked aubergine triangle with additional gusto for having done so.  :)

Day 7....
....   it's day 7?  It's the end of the week?
Do you realize I didn't realize that until about halfway through writing this post and counting up the dates?  Oh my goodness, I suppose that means I'm done and I should ground myself now.  Part of me wants to keep going, and in fact... *goes off to buy bananas for a few minutes*

* a few minutes later *

Well... on the way down the stairs to the market, oh what do I smell but buttery wafts of rice and faint hints of curry? and whoa-p, there goes MY 100% raw convinction!  That, and charred hot dogs on the street as I walked... and I'd like to feel like myself again, I think. :D

A few things I noticed, though, to sum up the week...

* it doesn't necessarily have to be expensive at all to eat raw.  I stuck mostly to almonds and sunflower seeds for nut protein, which can be relatively cheap.  And I didn't indulge in the condiments like nama shoyu and special apple cider vinegar or anything.  If anything it might have been cheaper due to me not buying coffee all the time.  OH YEAH I QUIT COFFEE FOR A WEEK.  !  Craziness.

* nut soaking liquid is super mucilagous and gross, and I'll probably soak most things now if I think of it beforehand.

* white wine was okay to drink, as was whiskey (although I'm pretty used to whiskey).  Red wine on the other hand, made me terribly achey for a whole day after drinking it, and then the ache turned into a kinda "detox ache" that I've still got in my calves when I bend over too far.  

* a couple drying racks set in front of a sunny window was my dehydrator, and it worked pretty well for cookies and buckwheat sprouts.  Terrible for bread though, and I wouldn't even try crackers.  Oh yeah, and sun tea!  Tasty stuff!  And not even that long to make, maybe a few hours in the sun for amber-steeped liquid.

* I caved once, for a bunch of artichokes I got for free, but wouldn't you?  All succulent and dipped in lime & olive oil???  I'd never tried artichokes before and it was my chance right there, so I don't feel bad.  And they are, by the way, not nearly as hard to make and eat as advertised and mysteriously sweet and I ate the stems too, YUM.

* Guess that's it!  And I'm so making pizza, man, like, soon.

19 comments:

LizNoVeggieGirl said...

Great recap and food!! Raw or not, your latest culinary creations ALWAYS look amazing.

nora said...

Wow, your raw week was so successful! I was considering making that cuke dressing from veg world fusion, but never got around to it since i quite mine early! i think the raw oats look the best! my raw week helped me realize that, while raw food is intriguing, i'm a cooked food kinda gal. it's just...better. ahaha

Anonymous said...

I didn't think your food could get any lovelier or more colorful, but it totally just did! Everything looks totally awesome and I feel really gross and bloated just thinking about how gross and bloated I'm gonna feel after finishing this bowl of ice creem. I want to do raw all over!

Jes said...

Wow, what a crazy colorful raw week! I've tinkered with the idea of raw every now and then but I generally don't have the time or right ingredients when I get the urge. But your food looks so darn good...maybe soon!

MEM said...

Congrats on your raw week, it looked like a bunch of interesting "cooking"...

Maybe I missed this, but...how did you feel physically during the whole thing? Any different?

Sal - AlienOnToast said...

wow it all looks awesome, I'm not sure if I could have stuck to it for a whole week!!

mucilagous - that is my favourite new word!!

Anonymous said...

Everything is so colorful and pretty! It looks like you had a very successful raw week. Kudos to you, I don't know how well I would succeed. I eat a lot of raw foods, but there are certain cooked things I love too much to stop eating.

Gina said...

I got sad at first because I thought it said sun tea! Nasty stuff! I practically *gasped*, I love sun tea....so I'm glad to see you actually thought it was tasty, and I just need to check my prescription, haha.

Everything looks so beautiful!! I love being raw, but I almost always spend the day fantasizing about the cooked food I can have when the day is over.

Sarah said...

that all looks great!!

Unknown said...

that carrot dressing looks awesome! did you use a recipe? i wanna try it!

The Voracious Vegan said...

I'm trying to eat mostly raw now and I have to say that this post is stunning, beautiful and VERY inspiring! I want to eat just about everything you posted!

Ahem, banana fudge icing? Oh please share the recipe for that one!

Sheree' said...

I am moving into a higher raw diet and your aray of goodies is unbelievable!

Anonymous said...

Oh my goodness gracious, these are really exotic and fresh ideas for raw food recipes! No longer restricted to collard wraps, green smoothies, or date balls! Whose cookbook did you use?


-Natalie

T said...

Everything looks totally bizarre and delicious! Seems like it would really bring a lot of variety into one's diet and cooking habits to try going raw. One of these I will give it a shot.

To me the sushi and fruit salad look the best! Loquat syrup? yerm.

Steffi said...

I'm a amazed you managed an (almost) raw week... can't even do that for a day...

aTxVegn said...

Wow, such awesomely amazing foods you prepared! I would totally eat raw like that for a very long time. I'm really digging those breakfast oats.

Judy's Nutrition said...

Wow, congrats on a very full, tasty, beautiful, healthy raw week! I love all the food you posted, and you have inspired me to try some of your ideas. Aren't green smoothies great? I was the same way before trying one - 'how in the world could spinach in a smoothie taste good?'. But that's the thing with raw food, and maybe even with all food: you really do have to try it before forming an opinion, cuz you just never know!

Hannah said...

Now I'm tempted to try eating more raw food- You make it look so easy and delicious!

Gies Peas said...

That raw avocado sushi looks delicious, I can't wait to make it and eat it! Im inspired to try araw week too, maybe...