I have had an opportunity to review a new book in the raw food cookbook series “The Complete Book of Raw Food” called
Raw Food Quick & Easy: Over 100 Healthy Recipes Including Smoothies, Seasonal Salads, Dressings, Pates, Soups, Hearty Creations, Snacks, and Desserts (The Complete Book of Raw Food Series) by Mary Rydman.

Mary Rydman, a former commuter airline pilot, has been a raw foodist for some 20 years and shares her favorite and simple recipes in this cookbook.

The recipes are indeed quick and easy while they add a delicious sparkle to your raw food cuisine repertoire. The book is 100% text so do not expect to see photographs of her various recipes. This is fine as the recipes are not complicated and thus need no further elaboration.

Contents:

• Author’s story
• Soaking, Sprouting and Storing
• About Dehydrating
• The Raw Kitchen
• Is it really raw?
• Simple ways to boost your nutrition intake
• Eating according to our biological design
• Food and emotions
• The Recipes
• The 5 element smoothie and other breakfast foods
• Beverages
• Dressings
• Sauces and Gravies
• Salads
• Dehydrated Crackers
• Soups
• Raw Dairy
• Pates
• Sides and Hearty Creations
• Snacks and Finger Foods
• Desserts
• Ice Cream
• Sources

For my review I chose to make one of the recipes on page 59 in the “Sauces and Gravies” chapter.

Spicy Seed Sauce

Advance prep: 6 hours to soak seeds

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds, soaked
• 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds, soaked
• 1 tablespoon onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/4 teaspoon dried marjoram
• 1/4 teaspoon dried basil
• pinch cayenne pepper
• water to blend to desired consistency

Directions

Blend all ingredients well in a blender or food processor. Serves 4.

Changes I made:
I forgot to use onion! It tastes fine without it. I used fresh basil and marjoram. I also added some fresh oregano. I added some grated ginger and lemon juice as well. The juice helps inhibit some of the oxidation. I added some goji berries as well!

My review of the recipe
I used this dressing on avocado chunks and it was simply delicious! It comes out sort of creamy. I added in some whole seeds and goji berries to add a bit more interest.

I found that it made quite a lot some I froze about half of it in an ice cube tray.

Once frozen I will pop these out and put into a freezer baggie!

I would recommend this book to both a raw foodist as well as anyone who would like to build some variation into their use of fresh vibrant vegetables. I would suggest that in the next edition, the author craft an index so as to ease rapid navigation.

Product Information:

• Title: Raw Food Quick & Easy: Over 100 Healthy Recipes Including Smoothies, Seasonal Salads, Dressings, Pates, Soups, Hearty Creations, Snacks, and Desserts (The Complete Book of Raw Food Series)
• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Hatherleigh Press (August 25, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578263069
• ISBN-13: 978-1578263066
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces

Being a foodie and a gardener, eating raw food is both a challenge and a delight. While I can easily eat an entire meal out in the garden, nibbling on raw green beans, chard, zucchini, herbs, all fresh from the plant, there are times when my mouth screams out for the umami (savory) that cooked meats seem to have cornered the market on.

This is when consulting a cookbook on recipes for raw food that have some umami kick really pays off.

I have only begun to explore the great many recipes in The Complete Book of Raw Food, Second Edition: Healthy, Delicious Vegetarian Cuisine Made with Living Foods * Includes More Than 400 Recipes from the World’s Top Raw Food Chefs, edited by Julie Rodwell and written with the input of a great many cooks, chefs, and people just like me and you who have developed so many delicious recipes.

This book is a fantastic resource for both the novice and the experienced “un-cook” and raw foodist. It touches on the critical importance of quality ingredients, covers the more esoteric ingredients that raw food cuisine has inherited from decades of vegan cuisine.

It covers the various tools and methods one may or may not need to turn out some of the recipes, juicer machines and various ways of usng your juicer.

It has a great section on sprouting as well as what they call “greening” – the growing of greens in a substrate, plants like wheat grass.

It also covered the basics of dehydrating and the various machines to choose from.

The recipes fall into these categories:

• Salads & Dressings
• Soups
• Snacks & Sides
• Smoothies, Shakes & Juices
• Bread, Crackers & Chips
• Raw Milk & Cheese Substitutes
• Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner Entrees
• Spreads, Sauces & Dips
• Cookies & Other Sweets
• Pies & Cakes
• Ice Cream & Puddings

The Japanese figured out a very long time ago where to turn for vegetarian umami- mushrooms are exploding with it.

I turned to a delightful recipe for marinated portobello mushroom on page 130. It is quite simple, I know, but there is something about this marinade that made the mushroom palatable even chilled. I had to modify the stuffing because we have lethal nut allergies in our home.

As you may have picked up from my about page, we practice raw food from a non-vegan perspective. We have our own dairy goats and we drink their milk raw and I make various raw cheeses. I used raw chevre for the stuffing in this recipe. Technically its all raw and 100% nut free! Just not vegan.

Portobello Mushroom – Marinated and Stuffed

Ingredients

• 24 portobello mushrooms, washed and stemmed

• For the Marinade:
• 1 pint olive oil
• 1 small onion
• 2 – 4 garlic cloves
• 1 – 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons chopped dill
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 1 teaspoon mustard seed
• 1 1/2 teaspoon celtic sea salt

• For the Stuffing:
• seed spread or nut cheese
• sliced tomatoes
• lettuce
• sprouts
• onion

Directions
Wash and stem the mushrooms, put them topside down in a dish (or baggie like I did), poke holes in caps.

Blend or just mix marinade ingredients then pour over the mushrooms. Allow to marinate several hours (I use the fridge – best to inhibit nasties).

Serve as desired. I stuffed/topped it with raw chevre (goat cheese) and dill, sprinkling of salt.

You can warm it up a bit in a dehydrator if you want it to be a bit less chilly.

My entire family LOVED this and they are not accustomed to eating these sorts of foods. I kid you not when I say that my 2.5 year old toddler begged for more, smacking his lips!

Give this book a try, definitely worth the price of $19.80 or so.

Product Details

• Title: The Complete Book of Raw Food, Second Edition: Healthy, Delicious Vegetarian Cuisine Made with Living Foods * Includes More Than 400 Recipes from the World’s Top Raw Food Chefs
• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Hatherleigh Press; 2 Rev Exp edition (August 5, 2008)
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds

I recently had the opportunity to test out the Champion Juicer on some of our garden greens and other veggies. It has a 1/3 horsepower 240 volt 50 Hertz motor and has several parts that help you make juice, nut and seed butters, ice cream and there is even a grain grinding attachment! The Champion was invented and went into production back in 1955 and has been made by the same family since then!

Champion Juicer Specifications

• Stainless Steel motor shaft
• 1/3 horsepower motor
• All parts are 100% FDA nylon and stainless steel
• Weight: 12 kg
• Height: 25cm
• Length: 43cm
• Depth: 17cm

Juicing is a HUGE topic. I will try to boil down the juicing rationale to a couple of words: Extraction of all goodness from fruits and veggies, easy making of organic and homegrown ingredients (both juice and pulp) for recipes.

Believe it or not, many of us, having been raised on soft processed food diets, do not have the correct habits of chewing food long enough to properly start the digestion process. Further, some of the foods that have fantastic nutrients like the greens we grow in our gardens (and not even the “organic” ones in the stores grown on depleted Big Organic Ag farms) pass right through us without releasing their cell contents because our teeth and our gastrointestinal enzymes can not break the cell walls.

There are important considerations while juicing – minimizing oxidation (exposure to oxygen which degrades certain nutrients) and minimizing heat (heat kills Vitamin C and other nutrients).

Juicers like the Champion Juicer fracture the plant cell walls, releasing the cell contents into the juice. Those juices are the essence of the plant and should be used immediately to further insure against oxidation.

Short of working at -20 C in a Nitrogen enriched environment (to exclude oxygen), you can choose a juicer that minimizes both of these factors.

Things to keep in mind.

I have very much enjoyed getting to know this machine. For some people, who have had this juicer for decades, its all old hat. Other people may have multiple juicers and also find it all old hat. There are also a lot of people like me who have never tried out a juicer and can find it all sort of intimidating.

I have non-motorized hand-push citrus juicers and they are ok. My hands are dry to begin with and when I get citrus juice and the oil from the peel as I push down on it on my hands it stings terribly.

We had also bought this large bulky “juicer” for fruits and veggies. This one was made by Waring Pro and is the centrifugal type with a spinning basket.

It had limited use because the basket never extracted enough juice. The pulp was always VERY juicy but somewhat hard to get at in the catchment container. Once again, I was having to dig into acidic orange pulp or into soppy carrot pulp, etc, to try to then crush out, by hand, more of the juice. Lots of good juice was left on the table.

This is no small thing because the extent to which the juicer extracts liquids from the ground fruit or veggie is one of the major discriminators between juicers.

The Champion Juicer is called a centrifugal juicer by some but I think that is a misnomer. By no means is it analogous to the Waring Pro centrifugal juicer and there are MANY juicers out there just like the Waring Pro.

The Champion Juicer has a rotating screw that grinds and then forces pulp against a screen. Juice is separated from the pulp which is then ejected out the end. Centrifugal forces are not the main mechanism of action here.

I have found the Champion to be VERY effective at extracting juice from carrots, leafy greens, apples, oranges, and other fruits and veggies quite effectively the first time through the screw.

It Is VERY easy to feed the dry pulp back into the chamber as many times as you wish, to wrest the final microliters of possible juice out! You just hold your hand under the pulp spout, catch the pulp and then put it back into the feeder spout!

I am very happy to recommend this juicer with all thumbs up. Its a fantastic machine that absolutely gets the job done. Its also much easier to clean than the Waring Pro and similar juicers!

Let me know if you have any questions and also if you have any special ways you like to use your Champion Juicer!

Below are a series of photos I took while using the machine to make a spinach and carrot juice for some pasta I was making. I will include some details about how to assemble and then how to use the machine.

These preceeding steps take a while to explain but hardly any time at all to actually do!

You are now ready to juice!

To clean you just take it apart and flush all parts with warm water. You might want to get a vegetable cleaning brush to LIGHTLY brush the screw blades to remove any stubborn bits.

I have the fortune of reviewing two of Matthew Kenney’s books, Everyday Raw and Entertaining in the Raw

Today’s review is of Everyday Raw, recipes that you can build your home raw cuisine from while Entertaining in the Raw is filled with more elaborate recipes that you might wish to save for special occasions or at least allot some time for building a deeper raw food pantry (will be reviewing that book in another post).

Kenney has a writing style that projects a vibrant abundance and passion for food in general and for the clarity of raw food specifically. In his voice and his recipes, you pick up on his deep experience with raw food recipe development and production in both the home and restaurant settings.

I am looking forward to exploring many of these recipes and sharing them with my family, we are all at varying levels of transition or experimentation. My only restriction with this cookbook is the use of nuts. We have severe nut allergies so we have a zero tolerance of any sort of nut product. I certainly can not fault Kenney and other chefs who create delicious foods with nuts, nuts have a great many virtues. I just have to find a way to engineer my way around them in these recipes.

For today’s review I chose to make Eggplant Bacon, from a wide range of interesting recipes. I pulled out a few recipes from each chapter below to show the diversity of these delicious offerings.

I loved the way the eggplant bacon recipe turned out, interesting flavor and texture. Eggplant bacon is healthy and interesting garnish to add to your raw pantry!

Everyday Raw by Matthew Kenney

Contents:

everyday handbook

• tools
• key products
• skills

blended & squeezed

• mango raspberry
• raspberry-agave lemonade
• the muscle

snacks

• citrus maple granola
• chocolate-ginger macaroons
• super goji-cacao-maca bars

unbaked

• herb crackers
• golden tortilla chips

starters

• eggplant bacon
• cucumber-white grape gazapcho
• savory crepes

spreads, dips & sauces

• red chile-pineapple dipping sauce
• mango guacamole

salads

• creamy sesame dressing
• blood orange-crispy fennel salad

larger dishes

• portobello fajitas
• baked macaroni and cheese

desserts

• agave caramel
• frozen goji berry souffle

ice cream

• almond gelato
• mint cacao chip

As I mentioned, I tried out the Eggplant Bacon recipe, featured below.

Eggplant Bacon (page 58)

Ingredients:

• 1 large eggplant, thinly sliced
• 1 tablespoon sea salt
• 1/2 dried chipotle chile, soaked at least 2 hours
• 1/2 cup soaking water from the chipotle peppers
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons nama shoyu
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• pinch black pepper
• pinch cayenne

Directions:

To make the thin sheets of eggplant I used a horizontal peeler.

It worked like a dream!

Once you have sliced your eggplant, sprinkle it with the sea salt and allow to sit for 1-2 hours.

In the mean time, blend the other ingredients in the liquid container of your Vita-Mix.

Layer your eggplant sheets between paper or cloth tea towels and press out excess moisture.

Submerge the squeezed eggplant in the marinade. I put them in a baggie and purged as much air as possible (as I would with any marinade). Marinate 30-45 minutes.

Carefully lay out the eggplant sheets onto your dehydrator trays and dehydrate until crispy (24 – 48 hours).

Yields 15 – 20 bacon pieces.

Here are some shots of how I used this eggplant bacon with zucchini and some raw sprouted hummus that I will blog about another time.

Product Details

• Everyday Raw by Matthew Kenney
• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith (March 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1423602072
• ISBN-13: 978-1423602071
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds

At my other food blog, Nika’s Culinaria, I have reviewed quite a few fantastic cookbooks over the years. I adore picking up a new book, reading it and then cooking a few recipes from it and showcase the results I got (Modern Indian Cooking by Hari Nayak and Vikas Khanna, My Whole Grain Manifesto – take back your inner grain!).

As I am new to the world of raw cuisine, I have no raw cookbooks and have been very slowly building some of the basic knowledge and methods people have developed for presenting raw foods in such a way that interest and excitement is maintained.

Thus, I have been extremely fortunate to be able to get my hands on a 5200 super Vita-Mix for this review and for a tasty exploration into a new culinary world.

I had been using a regular off the Wal-Mart shelf sort of blender for years but only VERY sporadically. Until a month or so ago, it had sat on my shelf, very dusty and lonely. I cleaned it up and started to make smoothies and other mixtures for raw living foods such as flax crackers.

It wasn’t but a few uses before that poor blender (more like counter bling than an actual appliance) began to puff out clouds of smoke (am NOT exaggerating). I have killed food processors in the past (was pureeing turkey for some turkey wellingtons – long story) so I was resigned to failure as I saw the white puffs and smelled the acrid stench of burning electronics.

The one green smoothie I made in that blender came out with large kale bits that were quite intact when my body was done with them (ahem, a few hours later). The old blender could not get the kale and other greens sliced up enough for it to be used by my body.

As is suggested by many raw food proponents, there is abundant nutrition locked up inside of the leafy greens such as kale. As we are not ruminants, with the 3 or 4 stomachs and the bacterial flora needed to break down cellulose (plant cell walls) those nutrients are hard to digest and access.

Its not our “fault” as humans, its just that our primate evolution didnt include the ruminant digestive system.

We have evolved and adapted to eat those animals who do have the multiple rumens but the meat is only a subset of the nutrition that comes from eating plants.

Its like the sunshine has been captured by plants (grasses) and then filtered through the ruminant’s digestive system into their meats. Our adaptation has not included the ability to extract our entire needs from meats (like true carnivores such as cats) but rather, our biochemistry requires additional inputs from plant sources to make a complete toolbox for our growth and function.

Leafy greens are great for us but its like the nutrients are locked away, behind the plant walls. A Wal-Mart blender can not break the plant walls sufficiently so a lot of that kale goodness in my green smoothie was flushed away.

The Vita-Mix, with it’s robust turbine, was able to liberate abundant amounts of goodness from those greens, making my green smoothies truly whole foods. Its hard for me to express how important that is.

Green Smoothie Goodness

If you are not familiar with the sort of hack that a green smoothie is, listen in. You take hard to chew green chlorophyl tasting challenging greens like kale, which many people usually cook the dickens out of, and blend to liquifaction with a variety of fruits. The smoothie you get doesn’t taste “green” at all and is filled with all the fiber of whole foods (no juicing here).

I once tried juiced wheat grass and got an instant migraine and had an explosive flash to the smell of a newly mowed lawn. That is a flavor that does no smoothie any good. With this green smoothie method, that flavor is essentially eliminated.

The smoothie I share today has an additional bit of goodness, freshly grown salad sprouts, some of which were quite spicy!

I grew these two SproutPeople sprout mixes: Italian (red clover, cress, garlic) and French Garden (red clover, arugula, cress, radish, fenugreek, ad dill) .

As a result, this smoothie was spicy without adding any dried spices!

I also used pink grapefruit which added a very dominant flavor to the smoothie, you might prefer to try this with sweet oranges. Am thinking, if you don’t mind or even crave tart, that blood oranges would be resplendent in this smoothie! Am going to try that when they come in.

Nika’s Spicy Leafy Fruity Green Smoothie Explosion

Ingredients:

• 4-5 medium sized leaves of curly ORGANIC kale
• 1 cup freshly sprouted organic French Garden Garden Sprouts, drained well
• 1 cup freshly sprouted organic Italian sprouts, well drained
• 3/4 cup washed and drained blueberries
• 1 pink grapefruit, peeled
• 1 ripe banana, peeled
• 1 small apple, cored but not peeled
• 1/4 of a cantalope, skinned and cubed
• 5 large strawberries
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup organic coconut juice, as needed

Directions:

Put kale and sprouts in the blender, including a 1/4 cup of coconut juice.

Blend this a bit until the kale has been partially broken down.

Add the rest of the fruit and also add coconut juice IF liquid seems to be needed.

Blend again! Keep it blending until leaves are no longer seen but not any longer than that.

Serve the smoothie and then rinse the blender jar, add warm soapy water and blend to clean, EASY PEASY.

Enjoy! Those dark bits are blueberry skins that are REALLY persistent but full of goodness. If your smoothie sits a bit, blue will spread out from those blue bits, further infusing the smoothie with blue yum.