Living Raw

Raw Food Pyramid. Dehydrated Foods.

These are the foods that put us in the mind of cooked food textures, the breads, crackers and wraps. These foods serves as the foundations of Quick and Easy raw meals. With enough of them in your dehydrated pantry, the raw-food lifestyle is easy to maintain.

But these foods are dense and concentrated. So they’re higher on the pyramid because they, ideally, should be only a small percentage of the raw food diet. And if you’re going to consume a lot of dehydrated foods, make sure that you drink plenty of water.

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Preparation Techniques. Marinating.

Marinating vegetables is a way of achieving the some of the texture of “cooked” without using heat. The chemicals in the marinade, usually salt or citric acid, cause the cell walls of vegetables to breakdown. And that breakdown gives the food the texture of something lightly cooked.

Other means to created the cooked texture below the killing degrees of 108 and above include Dehydrating, Freezing and Massaging.

My favorite marinade is made with Nama Shoyu (unpasteurized soy sauce). The proportions are as follows: 3-4 parts water to 1 part Nama Shoyu, a pinch of cayenne or chipotle, and a few drops of olive oil.

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SPOTLIGHT INGREDIENT. KELP NOODLES.

These noodles are wonderful in Asian-inspired raw foods. Plain or marinated in Nama Shoyu (unpasteurized soy sauce) the are an asset.

Left alone, they have little taste but big texture – somewhere between crunchy and wet-but-dry – kinda weird the first time you try’em. But they grow on you. And as soon as you marinate them in something, or dress them in something, they take on a whole new attitude.

Whenever I come across a dish that calls for coconut noodles (more work than I want to consider), I pull out my kelp noodles and use those instead.

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RAW IN SIX WEEKS. 

This is the beginning of a new series. If you want to go raw, here’s an easy way to get there in six weeks. It’s not about limiting yourself, it’s about adding new options that taste and feel good. Once your body get used to the increased energy and good feeling it will want more of the good stuff and you’ll not even notice that it’s replacing some of the other stuff (that’s better off gone).

The six weeks to raw will introduce raw food as follows:
Week 1 – Raw Breakfast Ideas
Week 2 – Large Green Salads before a cooked lunch or dinner entree
Week 3 – Raw Snacks
Week 4 – Raw Lunch Entrees
Week 5 – Raw Desserts
Week 6 – Raw Dinner Entrees

Follow and eat along. See how good it can feel. Start now because summer is the best time to go raw – it’s warm enough, fresh fruit is available, and you don’t need all the heavy comfort foods that go along with the colder seasons.

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