Day 23

Today I want to share with you one of my favorite things... My green juice recipe! This juice is full of nutrients and tastes great too! For those of you who own a juicer (and for those of you who don't, I recommend the Breville 800 - it's worth every penny!), juice the following ingredients:

- 2 celery stalks
- 5 large kale leaves
- 1 apple (I recommend Fuji)
- 1" of fresh ginger
- 1 whole lemon, peeled

Juice and enjoy this green sweet treat:

I also tried another recipe today from Ani's Raw Food Desserts: Oatmeal Raisin Cookies!

These are made from raw oats, dates, raisins, and cinnamon with a pecan on top! They took seconds to make and less than that to eat. Super yummy!

Bon Apetit!

Day 22

It has been 22 days and I decided it was time to weigh myself. Drum roll please :::: I am officially down 3 lbs! YEE HAW!

To celebrate, I experimented with my most impressive rawcreation to date: raw pizza. My friends Blair & Natalie came over for girls' movie night to try out the goods and gave it the non-raw-vegan-food-eater stamp of approval!

Pizza was my absolute favorite food prior to becoming vegan (and after becoming vegan with cheese-free style pizza), and I tragically thought it would never be a part of my life once becoming raw. Wrong. So wrong....

This little diddly was based on Ani's Raw Food Essentials Garlic Margherita Pizza (page 219). I got a little fancy and dressed it up with some extras (raw olives, marinated mushrooms, rawsage).

Most of the pizza crusts in Ani's books require dehydration, but this one did not (Instant Pizza Crust, page 109)... Next time I am going to try the dehydrated version as this one was a bit thick. Overall, this was a great creation and a pretty one too!

Cheers!

Day 18

Today, once again, I skipped the recipe books and free-styled my dinner. It ended up strange but good. And my tummy was happy after. My creation is going to be called Green Goo. Here's what I did:

Take 1 corn on the cob ear, de-cob (is that a word?) and place in a bowl.
Food process the following ingredients:

• 3 roma tomatoes
• 1/2 red onion
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 small jalapeno - seeds removed
• 8 leaves of basil
• 1 small zuchini
• approx. 4 cups spinach
• 1 avocado
• 1 lime, peeled
• chives
• cilantro
• chili powder
• cumin
• No salt seasoning (I recommend Braggs Kelp style)

* Special note - the better the ingredients, the better the dish. I recommend using as much local, organic, fresh produce as possible. (Special thanks to Dad aka Tim Cheney for contributing the majority of the ingredients above from his organic garden.)

The items above make a pretty green paste, which you mix with the corn, sprinkle nutritional yeast on top for a "cheese" flavor and VOILA! You have Green Goo!


Had I been a real rawfoodpimp and had some in stock, I would have eaten this with raw chips or crackers. Without, it still made my tummy very happy and full.

Cheers to being a rawkstar! MEOW!

Day Fifteen

Yay for 15 days on the raw diet!

I took a slight break from rawsomeness this weekend while on a whitewater rafting trip on the Main Salmon. Thankfully, Mountain River Outfitters rocked my cazbah and made vegan meals for me... I was super thankful for them catering to my high maintenance diet!

Today I am back in the game and since I am super stocked full of kale, herbs, lettuce, and spinach from my dad's organic garden, I took a break from Ani's Uncookbooks and freestyled tonight's menu. Here's what I made:

• I started with chopping a whole bunch of dinosaur kale
• Added shredded carrot
• Chopped onion
• Chopped chives
• Food processed fresh basil and sage (from Dad's garden... Love you Dad!)
• Sesame seeds
• Sesame oil (not raw, but adds great flavor)
• Rice Vinegar
• Mirin (sweet rice seasoning)
• Avocado
  

I munched on all this between two pieces of raw celery-flax-sunflower bread from one of Ani's books along with some ketchup (not raw) and dijon mustard. I paired it with a glass of carrot, apple, celery, beet, ginger, kale, and lemon juice and my tummy did a happy dance tonight!

Cha cha cha!

Day Eleven

Day Eleven marks the celebration of the "Grilled Cheese and Tomato Sandwich." One might think that being raw would not include such wonderous things as a grilled cheese sandwich. Ani Phyo says think again, my friends.

During my weekend adventures, I snagged a copy of Ani's latest and greatest uncookbook... Ani's Raw Food Essentials. Flip to page 189, and you will discover "Grilled Cheese and Tomato."

This fabuous meal is actually composed of two of Ani's recipes to make one superfabulous dish.

You start with Zucchini Bread (I cheated and made her sunflower bread on page 24)... Made from celery, flax seeds, and sunflower seeds - all food processsed and then dehydrated to make bread.

Then you make "Cheeze Sauce..." from page 103. This was so yummy I brought it to the office for show and taste. It received excellent reviews from my favorite open minded office peeps. It's made from blended cashews, garlic, sea salt, and lemon juice.

Combine the two dishes above with a sliced tomato and voila:

This dish is super quick and so scrumptious, I took a bite before I remembered to take a pic of my creation! The best part is the cheeze sauce, which is thick, tasty, and seriously tastes like melted cheese. Seriously.

Bon Apetit!

Day Ten

I'm back in the blog saddle aka bladdle and am going to take a break from my sister from another mister Ani Phyo to recap my Tour de Raw of Los Angeles over the 4th of July weekend. LA hosts a plethora of exclusively raw restaurants (yes - raw restaurants do exist to my excitement). Here's a quick recap:

• Thursday Lunch - Googled "raw" on the GPS and found Sunpower Natural Cafe in Studio City. The extra friendly server recommended their Raw Supreme Pizza - Crunchy sunflower seed crust with marinara sauce, cashew cheese, savory SunPower "sausage", tomatoes and marinated peppers and onions. I died just a little bit as I devoured this. SO. GOOD. ON. THE. LIPS.

• Friday Night - Visited Planet Raw in Santa Monica. Pretty sure I have never been so full as I was after my raw party here. Tried their "Signature Elixirs" (a delicious concoction of wine, fruit, honey, nut mylk, etc.) - YUM! Started with spring rolls & bruschetta, continued the frenzy with their Cheezy Kelp (tasted like warm angelhair pasta in a cream aka "kream" sauce - DELISH), and Macho Nachos... Yes - all of these items were raw! Then, we shook out some room for dessert... chocolate tiramisu. Double Yum. This place was super posh and I left in pain from the large amount of yumminess I crammed into my tummy. So much for the "Raw and Skinny Plan.

• Saturday Night - Visited Mooi in Silverlake. This place was super quaint with their menu pasted inside the cover of Doctor Seuss books... Crushable. For apps, we enjoyed sliced tomatoes with pumpkin seed pesto, wild foraged greens, and the main event included corn tamales with sour cream and cacao mole (yes - all raw... RAW RAW RAW!!!). Dessert was the most fabulous part... Some sort of "cheesecake thing" with nuts and chocolate and (sigh) it was pure heaven.
  

• Sunday - Euphoria Loves Rawvolution in Santa Monica. This place was quite zen-like and full of happy chai milk shakes, chocolate mint shakes, fun rolls and a "snickers" ice cream cookie for dessert. My tummy thanked me.
  

LA is a gracious host to raw lovers... Dear non-LA's of the world: Look out! The Rawvolution is headed your way!