Starting with Dessert – Intro to Raw Food

This post is about the foods I use to introduce people to raw food.

The foods I use are the raw versions of foods people recognize like chocolate, granola and salad dressing. There is one food that I use, Onion Bread, that most people haven’t heard of, but it is the most well-received item in my repetoire (the only folks who don’t like it are people who hate onions).

I introduce foods with ingredients that will help people reach their health objectives at a cellular level like my Beauty or ViagRaw granola, chocolate or smoothies. This works on everyone teens, adults and men. And for kids, I introduce fun foods like making noodles out of zucchini. The machine is like toy that makes magic transformations.

I find that it’s important to not give a raw-food virgin something that only a die-hard raw foodist would appreciate. So no dandelion-green-and-wheatgrass green smoothies. And I don’t want to take something that they recognize and make it unrecognizable. I tried taking my son to a raw restaurant, he ordered “pizza” and what he got was a flax cracker with a nut spread and a salad dumped on top. He was so offended by the bastardization of pizza that I haven’t been able to even bribe him to go with me to another raw restaurant.

Newbies need to be met where they are. Not everybody wants to eat to live or is ready to give up their conditioning for food that’s “good for you” – so you can’t take your enthusiasm for cleansing raw food and automatically assume that someone can acquire the taste instantly. Remember your first taste – hopefully it was something raw that tasted great – and be gentle with whomever your introducing to raw food.

Oh – and my Best Dressing!

This dressing put salad back on the horizon for me. I was a fat kid and my parents tried to make me eat salads (the old-school salads with chunks of pale unappetizing iceberg lettuce, slightly browning on the edges, and pieces of tomato and grated carrots – yuck – with a low-calorie French dressing). I vowed never to eat salads again. When I went raw in 2005, I stood my ground and didn’t eat salads. Then one day, my friend Brenda introduced me to this dressing that I now call the “Best Dressing” or the “Best Dressing Ever” (depending on how I feel) and it rocked my world. I’ve been eating it ever since on salads, almost everyday and I never get tired of it.

The Best Dressing

1/2 cup Tahini
1/2 cup Nama Shoyu (unpasteurized soy sauce)
3/4 cup Apple Cider Vinegar
1 cup Olive Oil
4-8 cloves Garlic
Basil – Fresh or Dried (at least a tablespoon)
Oregano – Fresh or Dried (at least a tablespoon)