Living Raw Food: Get the Glow with More Recipes from Pure Food and Wine

399 Pages·2009·5.09 MB·English

by  Sarma Melngailis

Living Raw Food
Get the Glow with More Recipes from Pure Food and Wine
Sarma Melngailis

This book is dedicated to everyone at
Pure Food and Wine and One Lucky Duck.
I love you!

Contents
Introduction
What is Raw Food?
My Raw Story
One Lucky Duck
Raw Food/Real World
This Book
Tools and Techniques
Ingredients and Basics
Part I: Quick and Easy Raw Food
Milks, Shakes, and Juices
Family Meals
Simple Sweets
Part II: Off The Menu
First Course
Second Course
Desserts
Cookies and Bars
Cocktails
Afterword: Living Raw Food
Raw Food and the Rest of the World
Raw Food/Real Life

Sources
Thank You!
Searchable Terms
About the Author
Other Books by Sarma Melngailis
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
John Botte
INTRODUCTION
This is about living raw food. Not just eating it, but living it. Whether you’re die-
hard 100 percent raw, mostly raw (like me), increasingly raw, or just raw-
curious, making this transition involves much more than just food. For many
people, it ultimately becomes a new way of living.
In my case, the discovery of raw foods affected my whole outlook on life. It
was as if a fog lifted and revealed a level of energy, lightness, and clarity that I
didn’t even know was possible. Almost immediately, I felt better than ever
physically, as well as unbelievably happy. Along with all that came an added
bonus: a direction and purpose for my life and work. It was like clearing away
tall weeds and finding a path I didn’t know was there. Now, rather than just
aimlessly wandering around the woods in circles for the rest of time, I had a
place to go—a mission. This was exciting!
I didn’t quite know how that mission would be defined or what it would
entail, but I did know that opening a restaurant was only the first part. That
restaurant, Pure Food and Wine, and the accompanying juice bar, opened in the
summer of 2004. The second part turned out to be a book, Raw Food/Real
World, published one year later. Both of these projects were created with my
then-collaborator Matthew Kenney. In early 2005, we parted ways, and I
continued toward the development of subsequent parts, which included both a
wholesale business and an online store. By this time, the big-picture goal
underlying all these ventures had crystallized for me—to make really good raw
food, to make it fun, and to make a healthy, organic, and earth-happy lifestyle
appealing to the biggest audience possible. In other words, I want to encourage
and facilitate healthier eating by making it really yummy and attractive, as well
as accessible. What is considered healthy is very often relative and subject to the
latest scientific findings, but it’s pretty hard to argue that eating more natural
food that hasn’t been processed using unnatural means is a good thing. Of course
I also think that eating more fresh plant foods and fewer animal foods is a good
thing.
Living Raw Food is yet another part in this undertaking. I might be grandly
ambitious and fantastically idealistic, but even if only a few people here and
there (or even just one) are inspired to trade in their Fritos and Big Macs for
more fresh fruits and vegetables (or swap out Double Stuf Oreos for One Lucky
Duck chocolate macaroons), and they feel better as a result, then I still consider
that changing the world, and that makes me feel really good.
What Is Raw Food?
Many people (myself included) talk about eating raw as something to be
discovered, as though it’s a brand-new innovation or a revolutionary and
alternative way of living. However, while it still is somewhat alternative, it’s
hardly new at all. In fact, it’s more like turning the clock backward, and a very
simple concept. What’s so revolutionary about eating only plant foods that grow
naturally from the earth and are fed by sunlight? What’s so crazy about eating
plant foods that haven’t been sautéed, boiled, roasted, flame-broiled, grilled over
flaming coals, fried in sizzling-hot oil, zapped in a microwave, or otherwise
manipulated into a state of altered molecular structure? Why not leave the
molecules as they were meant to be?
Raw food generally—and at least in this book—refers to a vegan diet that
goes beyond just steering clear of animal products. There’s no cooking in the
traditional sense (in that nothing is heated above approximately 118 degrees
Fahrenheit), and ingredients are not chemically processed, pasteurized,
homogenized, genetically modified, hybridized, or otherwise compromised. The
basic premise behind a raw food diet is that cooking and processing foods
generally decreases their digestibility and vitamin and mineral density, as well as
their overall health-promoting qualities.
The creativity in raw foods as a type of cuisine comes from blending,
soaking, marinating, slicing, dicing, drying at low temperatures, and
incorporating fresh herbs and spices. This can be done in quite innovative ways,
all while preserving the food’s integrity. Part of that integrity has to do with
letting enzymes survive the food preparation process. Apparently (though I’ve
never tried this myself) if you split enzymes under an electron microscope,
you’ll find an actual electronic charge, which is why many refer to enzymes as
life forces. Why would anyone want to destroy these little life catalysts? When
your food comes with its own living enzymes ready to do the heavy lifting in
digestion, you won’t have to draw as much from your body’s enzyme reserves.
When you eat raw food, there’s no more food coma. The effect of easier
digestion is that you end up with energy to spare to put toward other uses, such
as allowing your body to heal itself, or any activity you can think of that is more
fun than digestion.
My Raw Story
Many people who write enthusiastically about raw food do so because it helped
them recover from some kind of disease, chronic condition, or depression,
because they lost a significant amount of excess weight, or a combination of
these things. Others have been long-time vegetarians or vegans, and going raw
was just the next step. None of this was the case for me. I just fortuitously
stumbled into it one summer evening, became intrigued, and gave it a try.
Reading everything on the subject that I could get my hands on, I was quickly,
easily, and thoroughly convinced of the sheer logic of it all. I also felt as though
I’d taken mind-altering happy pills. With all my newfound energy, I promptly
clambered onto the raw food wagon.
All this happened at exactly the perfect time in my life. A few years earlier,
I’d left an all-consuming career in finance to attend New York City’s French
Culinary Institute, where (at that time) it was all about making stocks, cream
sauces, the perfect omelet, and chocolate soufflé. I graduated with all these skills
(as well as an additional ten pounds), but I had no clue what I wanted to do with
them. Eventually, I found myself working in the restaurant business with a
relatively well-known and very talented chef, Matthew. We lived together,
sharing a love for restaurants, cooking, and food in general—all kinds of food.
In the summer of 2003, we happened to be in between work projects when we
came across (and then immersed ourselves in) the world of raw food. When