David Wolfe's Super-smoothie

Got Milk? Watch This!

Tomato Soup for the Soul

Coz chicken is murder!

Here's my version of the ubiquitous tomato soup. No brainer, really. Blitz a few ripe tomatoes in a blender, along with a dab of olive oil and a little garlic (I love garlic with everything!). Chilli powder, if you must. Transfer to a pot and gently heat it (but not to a boil - you should be able to comfortably put your finger in the tomato soup while the gas is on, for it to still count as "raw"), if you wish. Serve immediately with basil (I could only manage dry basil) and croutons (I made them toasted, rather than fried).

Something Sweet...That's also good for you!

Here's my version of a raw energy bar.

Ingredients:

1. 1 cup of seeds (I used pumpkin and watermelon)
2. 8-10 dates
3. A little orange zest
4. Dash of honey

To make:

1. Divide the cup of seeds into three batches. I wanted varied texture in my bar and not everything ground up into a fine paste. So, what I did was put in each batch in a blender at a different time. So that all the seeds are not evenly ground up.
2. Throw in the first batch of seeds (1/3 of the cup) into a blender and dry-ground them till its a powder.
3. Into this powder, throw in the second batch along with the dates, orange zest, and honey. Blitz once again.
4. Finally toss in the last batch of seeds. I wanted these to remain as whole as possible.
5. Add a little honey or more dates, as required, till you are happy with the consistency of the final mixture. I refrained from adding water because I didn't want a soggy bar.
6. Lay out the mixture in a plate.
7. Leave it to dry in the sun for a couple of days (or a dehydrator). This step is only if you are planning on keeping the bars for a few days. If you just want to eat it immediately, dig in!
8. Chop into pieces or roll it up into a ball, as desired.

Marinated Beets

I come from a family that always over-boils their beets. Apart from a glorious rasberry lip sheen, I never figured what exactly I was gaining by eating those beets.

So, I had a couple of beets to spare, and decided against making another smoothie, as usual. We don't get berries here, so using beets to give a deep dark maroon color to your smoothies is just a brilliant tip I read on a smoothie blog. Just a quarter of a beet will tint whatever else you've dumped into the blender a rich, seductive berry shade. Anyways, this post isn't about a beet drink!

Ingredients:

1. Raw beets,
2. juice of one whole orange/lime,
3. olive oil,
4. coriander,
5. thyme
6. Sunshine (if available)

To make:
I'm not much of a measurer. Just do what feels right.
Toss it all up and leave in the direct rays of the sun for a couple of hours. Its amazing how tender raw beets can get! Didn't feel they were raw at all!

David Wolfe on Water

David Wolfe on detox and weight loss:

Hit the jackpot with 63 back to back David Wolfe videos on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=DBC06AFD92E8E041


PS: Supersize Me's Morgan Spurlock on reversing diabetes within 30 days on a 100% raw diet:
http://www.rawfor30days.com/sr3/morgan_spurlock2dc.html

Foodie Paradise

I'm a gawker. That's right. A Food Gawker. If you like food of any sort, I guarantee you will <3 this site:
http://foodgawker.com/post/category/vegan/

Filtered to Vegan recipies in the above link. Go to the root and there are pages upon pages of deliciousness to tempt you. I still find cooked meat attractive to look at - though I will not eat it anymore. So I go gawking on this site for things like fish, barbacue, cakes, chocolate, etc.

Here's another bundle of delish pictures and vegan blogs:
http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/2010/07/best-vegan-blogs.html

When I feel like a pig want to gorge, I usually turn to http://thefoodpornographer.com/. Anyone into Bento lunches - this blog is great. She used to eat junk like a pig, but sadly, she's stopped.

And finally - and this one's cheating cause its not raw or vegan by any stretch - The Times presents the 50 Best Food Blogs:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/real_food/article5561425.ece

~RG

For Starters....

From a former blogging addict who's other blog is now lying dormant and deceased somewhere, I had to ask myself: Do i REALLY want to start another blog? Well, i don't really HAVE to. I just WANT to. See, I've always been drawn to documentaries that are critical of our current food production industry. Animal cruelty in factory farms as well as the ecological impact of rearing animals for human consumption (It takes 2500 liters of water to produce one pound of meat, I hear), to the McDonaldization of food mass factory production of lifeless food, GMO and pesticide usage in farm produce. Watching these, I cut out meat from my diet. But I still ate fish and consumed dairy...and still ate cooked food.

Then I saw Food Matters.In it, one guy in particular - David Wolfe - seemed to resonate with me. While he talked, all i could think of is: I want his glow, his joy. (I always found him good looking. I later learnt that he has Persian roots and both his parents are medical doctors...Ooh..Imagine the gene pool if we were ever to make delicious raw babies.;-)) David, ferociously, uncompromisingly and rather convincingly, promotes 100% raw food 100% of the time.

Says Chocolate Boy coz he's made a living preaching of and selling raw cacao.

Then there was Super Charge Me (Similar to the McDonalds' slamming Morgan Spurlock Super Size Me - only this time the presenter, a cute chubby Jenna Norwood shows what happens when you go completely raw for 30 days). Then I watched Raw for Life. The momentum was growing. So I started reading up on rawism through forums. David Wolfe's book The SunFood Diet System is amazing - a raw food manifesto + self improvement digest all rolled into one. Download it here.

So that's when I thought - WHY NOT?! Try it. What do you have to lose? So here I am:

• No sugar
• No salt
• No meat
• No dairy
• No cooked stuff

What i subsist on:
Juices:
half a pound of green leafy vegetables (spinach, coriander, dill, other ones I don't know the names of...Just go by whichever veggie looks really dark green in color) + 2-3 oranges
4 carrots + raw pumpkin + 2 tomatoes
1 kg of watermelon
I carry a liter of juice or smoothie to work with me, apart from my breakfast smoothie (No milk).

Raw fruits/veggies

Salads - I'm very salad inept. I just throw in whatever I have at home. The dressing's usually:
Pesto/Green chutney + lime juice + Olive oil
Olive oil+ orange juice+black pepper

As I mentioned, I am about 80% raw. In that, I am still transitioning away from cooked foods. For instance, I ate upma (oil free) for breakfast. Then a kilo of watermelon (BTW, foods in the melon family you should always eat alone -meaning don't combine with other raw foods - Its called mono meals.). And now for dinner a salad of raw papaya, carrot, cabbage, corn etc.

What have I gained so far?

• Incredibly soft skin
• Brighter eyes
• TONS of energy!!

Was it all easy peasy?
NO. You WILL get a powerful detox a few days into your raw diet. Meaning, all the gunk in your system - that you accumulated on your cooked food diet - will force itself out of every orifice imaginable. You'll possibly get headaches (Lord, I did!), runny nose, mucus, body odour (I'll let you be the judge of that - I don't think I smell), and possibly even lack of sexual desire. Now, now. Its only TEMPORARY. You've abused your body eating all manner of crap over many, many years. You cant seriously hope that there would be no remnants of that in your body. Let's put it this way - You have this crap inside of your body whether you go raw or not. The question is, would you like it to stay hidden and inside your body forever. Or would you like to get rid of all that junk once and for all and then begin afresh eating only wholesome (raw) foods? Your entire body- every single cell, tissue, organ - is completely reborn in seven years. In seven years, you are a new you! What kind of a body do you want in the next seven years - the same old? Or one with more energy, more clarity, more inner peace?

Will get into that later. But that still doesn't answer the question: WHY a new blog. Well. As I was Internet-mining for data on raw foods and raw foodies in my part of the woods, I surprisingly came up empty handed. There are no websites, meet up groups etc dedicated to a raw food lifestyle in Mumbai. Heck, even India, maybe. So, here's my stab. Hopefully, when someone else is also on this miraculous journey, they will have something that Mr Google will throw back at them.

Love,

RG