Day 23 (AKA: Don’t read Julia Child’s “My Life in France” while on a raw, vegan diet)

You might ask yourself what kind of masochistic person would choose to read a book that extols all things rich, buttery, meaty, winey and flaky when she herself is eating nothing but raw foods?  Me.  I’m the masochist.  I guess I really didn’t think too much about it when one of our lovely customers at the store let me borrow “My Life in France”.  I forgot how when Gary and I saw Julie and Julia, we non-smoking vegetarians left the theater craving a steak, red wine and a cigarette.  Julia has that effect on you I suppose.

So, I really should have thought about it before I jumped into this lovely book while still on our raw diet.  Despite my occasional drooling while reading her book, the raw diet overall is great (really, I mean it!).  We’ve invested in a couple of cool new kitchen gadgets-namely the Excalibur Dehydrator (the 2500 series) and just yesterday we got our used Vitamix (“Vitaprep”) which Gary has enthusiastically starting making smoothies faster than we can even drink them.  We’re both feeling really good and in fact, Gary said his sinuses are clear for the first time in his life.  Wow!  Shows how much food we normally eat that can congest the body (and we eat pretty healthily normally).  All these wonderful and exciting things aside, I still shouldn’t go to bed with visions of buttery sole meunierre and croissant in my head.  It just messes with me.

Being on day 23 of the RDA, we’ve definitely experimented with a number of raw recipes and I’d like to share a few favorites with you:

Green smoothies-this is Gary’s answer to how to ingest at least some sort of dark leafy green that on their own, doesn’t do it for him.  Since you blend them with fruit, the bitterness of the greens are masked.  The Vitamix is pretty magical for making really smooth and creamy blended things (see pic of the greeness we drank for breakfast today).  There are some easy and yummy recipes for green smoothies at: http://www.gorawhavefun.com/.  You’ll also find some interesting short articles about all things raw and good for you.

Raw “spaghetti”-Gary didn’t like this one as much as I did but we’ve had several guests over for raw dinners and this dish has gotten rave (or “rawve”) reviews.  I like to make the pesto recipe following and mix it with the tomato sauce.  http://www.living-foods.com/recipes/rawspaghetti.html

Living Pesto-who doesn’t love a little rich and basil-y pesto?  In my opinion, this is just as good as pesto with cheese and in fact, we even sell a raw aged parmesan at the store that we could add in if we were so inclined.  http://vegweb.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=13119.0

Sunburgers-You do need a dehydrator for these little hearty guys but they are super good.  I’d been craving something hearty and chewy and these definitely helped: http://www.veggiewave.com/sunburgers

Spiced apple tart-Oh damn is this ever good.  My mom was visiting in town and she had it for dessert and for breakfast the next morning.  And my mom is NOT a raw foodist at all.  The website calls it a pie which I find a bit misleading so I like to call it a tart.  Seems to be more accurately descriptive:  http://kellysfacesmells.blogspot.com/search?q=spiced+apple+pie

Organic energy bars-Kim from our store gave me this easy and quick recipe:  1 1/2 cup dates (pit those bad boys before blending), 1 cup nuts (I used walnuts and macadamias), 1/3 cup shredded unsweetened coconut (you can dehydrate your own or buy non-raw stuff at the store) and 1 tbls vanilla extract.  Food process everything, spread onto a parchment paper covered baking sheet and chill for at least 1 hour.  They are really good and Gary and I ate a lot of these yesterday.  I mean a lot.

We’ve still continued to have a lot of salads-usually one a day.  The base we use mostly is this incredible organic sprouted salad mix from Growing Power in Wisconsin.  It’s by far the best salad mix I’ve ever had-baby kale, chard, lettuces, arugula, mustards, spinach as well as pea shoots, sunflower sprouts and radish sprouts.  You must try it!  We then top it with lots of other veggies-most of which are not local but they are organic.

We did “cheat” slightly on our RDA by having a beer on Sunday night to toast our two year anniversary of Green Grocer Chicago being open.  This was a big milestone for our little business so we felt it appropriate to have a little cheers!

February 4th, 2010 No Comments posted in Uncategorized

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