Poco Mountain Girl

I love experimenting with raw, living foods! Fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds are full of living enzymes and nutrients. Enzymes help out incredibly with digestion, and eating nutrient-packed foods cuts down on the sheer volume of what we need to eat. Many of us consume so many empty calories that our bodies are still crying out for food -even when we’re stuffed. Enter those fierce cravings.

Some foods – even though raw – need a little help to become truly alive where the enzymes and nutrients are activated and can actually be assimilated by our bodies. Nuts, seeds, beans and grains are all examples of this, so I always soak these for at least a few hours, or even sprout them over a few days before I eat them or use them in a recipe.

It’s really amazing how tasty live foods are compared to food that has been processed. Processed foods practically always need lots of salt, sugar, or other additives to make them palatable to us. Raw foods – the way God and nature intended them – are full of flavor in themselves, or mixed with other complementary raw foods. Sometimes we just have to wean ourselves off the salt and sugar long enough so we can actually begin to taste the food – not the additive.

Here’s a little recipe I came up with for lunch. I looked in my fridge and on my counter (I usually have something soaking or sprouting) and decided I’d like a wrap-type of thing with some sort of creamy spread inside. And of course, fresh tomatoes. It’s all about the tomatoes. So I plugged in my trusty Vita-mix (you can use a regular blender) and Zia and I tossed in the following:

1 cup soaked sunflower seeds and/or unhulled sesame seeds (I used both, but more sunflower than sesame)

1 small zucchini

6 sun dried tomatoes, soaked, along with ½ cp soak water

2 T olive oil

1 green onion

2 cloves garlic

1 ½ tsp cumin

pinch of cayenne pepper

splash ume plum vinegar (or substitute lemon juice with a little sea salt)

In just a few seconds, we had a creamy, tasty, raw dip. I piled some freshly chopped tomatoes on a collard green, put on a dollop of this dip, sprinkled some kelp on top and rolled it up. The dip is super flavorful and tastes a lot like hummus. I think it would be great with veggie sticks, chips, spread on crackers, toast, or in wraps and sandwiches. I’d even put it on top of a salad, but that’s just me. It would definitely be great in a sushi nori roll with some really thin vegetable sticks.

Give it a try if you want to experiment with raw food….or if you just want a yummy snack!

P.S. Be sure to check out the “Healthy Eating” section of the sidebar for more info, recipes, and blogs on eating raw.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 23rd, 2011 at 2:12 pm and is filed under Happy Healthy Hippie Food, Making Stuff, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.