The always-interesting, style-inspiring raw chef Ani Phyo has a new uncookbook coming out in the spring! She promises lots of full-color photos and I can’t wait. In the meantime, look at how pretty and fashionable she is (not to mention that she is ethically cool too: a recycling vegan who lives in Portland!). I wanna be her when I grow up.
As a vegetarian, I know that it’s important to include lots of beans in my diet, to make sure I get appropriate levels of protein and fiber. As a picky eater, I pretty much avoid beans. Oh sure, I’ll eat green beans now and then, and I’ve had baked beans in the past, but I’m not much of a cook, so I don’t really explore new foods very often.
But I recently checked out The Daily Bean, by Suzanne Caciola White. Filled in 175 recipes for black, white, red, and garbanzo beans, plus lentils, this book is pretty interesting. The standard fare is there: burritos, salads, soups, pastas…but she also makes bean pancakes, pies, and puddings. Right now, I’m considering a fairly simple-looking black bean salad; we’ll see how it goes.
Once the weather turns colder, I might turn my attention to soup. (I’m also not much of a soup eater, to the consternation of pretty much everyone I know). I like pumpkin and Rachael Ray, and I found a recipe of hers that looks pretty tasty and easy: pumpkin black-bean soup. I actually have this particular recipe on a DVD, so I’ve seen it in action, and it looks very simple to make. I can’t find an online version of the video, but I did find someone else’s version of the soup on youtube, so I thought I’d share it:
If anyone tries either of these recipes, please leave me a comment and let me know how the soup turned out!
In my quest to become a raw foodist, I just discovered Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen by Ani Phyo. She makes eating raw and living green seem simple, delicious and desirable. The executive chef of SmartMonkey Foods, a raw food company, Phyo has been a raw foodist and vegan for years. Her recipes seem easy and delicious, and she has come up with creative raw (vegan!) versions of her favorite cooked foods, such as pancakes, burgers, steak, and cheesecake.
One of the recipes I’m most excited to try is donut holes. I love donut holes, but not the lard, fat content, high calorie, processed-ness that comes with donuts. So I’m stoked to try a healthy version. The ingredients are:
Donut Holes
1 cup almonds, dry
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 vanilla bean, scraped
1 cup dried pineapple, chopped
1 cup pitted dates
5 Tablespoons dried shredded coconut
Her website has links to more YouTube videos of her “uncooking” demonstrations. Enjoy!
Carol Alt’s The Raw 50 is actually a recipe-based sequel to her first book, Eating in the Raw, which I have never read. I just happened to stumble across this book at work and thought it looked interesting, even though I’ve never really been into raw eating. However, after glancing through these recipes and reading Carol’s suggestions and the testimonials of raw food eaters, I’m more than intrigued. First off, I guess a definition of raw eating is in order. Essentially, these are foods that have been uncooked and unpasteurized, and when warmed, are done so at very low temperatures. For a more complete explanation, click here. I guess the next question is, what’s so great about it? Well, this is how Carol explains the importance of raw food:
I explained things to Christine the best way I knew how. I told her the body needs nutrients to make enzymes to digest food. The body does this because its most essential function on earth is to digest and utilize food and water…The problem with cooked food is that it no longer has any enzymes of its own. So in order to digest cooked food, the body pulls nutrients from the most readily available source, itself. The body then produces enzymes to digest the cooked, nutrient-depleted food, which no longer has the nutrients to replace the nutrients in the body that were used to make the digestive enzymes. It’s a big vicious cycle! As a result, the body begins to break down and age.
But Carol’s not the only one advocating the raw food lifestyle. The book’s forward was written by Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, also a proponent of the plan, and the book is sprinkled with testimonials from people who say the eating plan changed their lives and cured a variety of ailments: cancers, leukemia, irritable bowel syndrome, allergies, depression, and thyroid disorder, not to mention aided in weight loss, increased energy and fewer mood swings. The very last testimonial is by Amanda Sager, who (with the exception of being vegan–I still eat dairy) could easily be describing me:
In college, Amanda exercised regularly and ate what is commonly considered a “balanced diet.” She had been a vegetarian since age sixteen and became completely vegan at twenty, but Amanda knew she was still not right with food. “I always had this feeling that my diet was not working. I was overweight, puffy, and pale. My emotions were all over the place, and I was often depressed without good reason or explanation. My energy level was low, and I felt somewhat trapped by my eating habits. It’s frustrating to think you are following the healthiest diet and then realize you are not,” she says.
I have a family history of thyroid disorder, and I’ve been tested over and over (in fact, I had blood work for it today) and the results are always the same: I’m perfectly fine. But if my thyroid is functioning, then why am I chronically exhausted, cranky, and cold? Why did my hair start falling out? Why is my metabolism practically nonexistent? And most of all, why can’t any of the myriad of doctors I’ve seen answer any of these questions? I eat a “healthy” diet: whole grains, fruits and veggies, no meat or high fructose corn syrup, no juice or soda, very little caffeine and trans fats. So I always assume that I have the food part taken care of. But maybe not. Maybe there really is something to be said for eating raw and keeping enzymes in balance. Another thing that I noticed in these testimonials is that not all of these people eat raw 100% of the time. Many of them are 90% raw, but are always prepared when they eat cooked foods and try to make up for the enzyme imbalance.
This doesn’t, by any means, seem like an easy way to eat. It’s expensive, and, according to Alt, requires some specialized tools: a good blender, a juicer, a dehydrator, a coffee grinder (to process small foods), an instant-read thermometer, a spiral slicer, a mandoline, a vacuum storage system, canning jars, and cheesecloth. Still, I’m open to the idea of gradually replacing some of the cooked foods I eat with raw meals and see where it leads me. I definitely intend to read the first book and see what it says, but in the meantime Alt also has a raw foods website: rawnutrion, which looks as though it aas quite a bit of information.