My Shot at Raw Foodism

I said I would try a raw food recipe, and I didn't lie! I'm really excited about this one, too, because it's one of my favorite foods... HUMMUS! Hummus recipes in general are really straight forward and pretty easy if you know how to assemble a food processor, but this one was a little different because for the first time ever I had to "sprout" something. I could describe sprouting to you, but I would probably end up telling you a whole bunch of bull because I really don't know anything about it. All I know is I have sprouted bagels in the freezer from Whole Foods that are delicious and I spent three days growing little tails (of sorts) on my dried chickpeas in order to make this stuff :D. My chickpeas look like tadpoles!



After their little tails grew long enough I had to dump them in hot water for a minute then rinse them off. I through them in a blender with some lemon juice, water, tahini paste (sesame seed paste), cumin, garlic, and a little salt. After this stuff pulsated for a little bit, I'm not going to lie, I was getting a little nervous. My hummus looked grainy and thin, and I didn't even put as much water in as the recipe called for! Oh dear... I let my food processor hum away for a little while and it never really did get too smooth but a little time in the fridge thickened it a bit. I tried the stuff on some bread you'll hear about later and it didn't really taste like hummus to me. I couldn't quite place it for some time, but the taste reminded me of something... some kind of vegetable I thought. It dawned on me later. It tasted like sprouts. Go figure. I feel like raw hummus, assuming I didn't completely botch this recipe, has to be an acquired taste, only something a true veggie lover would enjoy. It wasn't my favorite, certainly didn't trump regular hummus in my book, and I probably won't bother to make it again. Sprouting can, however, be done with multiple types of food and I'd be interested to try some of those, I've had bagels and bread that were "sprouted" and they didn't taste odd, oh well.

Some other cool things I came across while looking at raw food diet sites:

• Decadently Raw: These YouTube episodes feature Meg McMurray, who creates and demonstrates raw food recipes. The recipes themselves look pretty good, but sometimes the videos are hard to understand or Meg is a little awkward...
• Raw Flax Crackers: I LOVE FLAXSEEDS. They are awesome in smoothies, granola, yogurt, and (as I recently discovered) excellent in pancakes. If you own a dehydrator there are tons of flax cracker recipes out there. One I glanced at was http://vegetarian.about.com/od/beverage1/r/rawflaxcrackers.htm. I'd be inclined to look for something sweet or a recipe with other nutty ingredients, cause it's really the deep nutty flavor of flax seeds that make them so divine :)
• It makes most sense to me to stick with recipes that normally are raw food or nearly raw food recipes, that way you're setting your taste buds up for success, right? Pesto is almost completely a raw food recipe, I'm pretty sure the only ingredient that's not is parmesan cheese... http://vegetarian.about.com/od/morerecipes/r/Veganpestorec.htm, this is one I came across that skips the cheese.
• Avocados are absolutely delicious, guacamole is one of my favorite foods and is probably considered a raw food (but again, what do I know?). I came across a number of recipes that use avocados as a thickener, even desserts!!! (See Decadently Raw's episode 4: s'more pie) I want to give it a try, but in the mean time, why not use avocados in a more convential way? This recipe looked pretty good, http://vegetarian.about.com/od/rawfoodsrecipes/r/rawburritos.htm, but I would argue with the claim that it's a burrito...
• Back to the flax seeds... obviously the "logical order" to these bullets is the order in which I find them... and the idea of smoothies, this is a cool recipe that is for "raw oatmeal" but to me sounds more like a tasty breakfast smoothie: http://www.thebestofrawfood.com/raw-food-breakfast-recipes.html
• This one's kinda iffy, I read someplace that raw food diets don't include raw fish like sashimi, and this recipe has smoked salmon which seems like a stretch. It does have, however, a good example of a bread option. Sprouted bread is really good, I've had Ezekiel sprouted whole grain bread and bagels which are both delicious. I also really like smoked salmon, so this one looked recipe looked good: http://www.thebestofrawfood.com/raw-diet-recipes-bagel.html. I also liked that the ingredients were simple, if you want to experiment with a raw food diet, this seems like a reasonable place to start because it doesn't require any special foods or appliances.
• FOUND A GUACAMOLE RECIPE!!! And it's pretty ordinary, so I don't think you really have to change your typical guacamole recipe in order to fit a raw food diet. The one I came across though is listed here http://www.thebestofrawfood.com/raw-food-diet-recipe.html. I like my guacamole with a bit of a kick, I use a recipe that has cumin in it. If you're into experiementing I'd play with a couple spices instead of leaving your guacamole so bare, cumin is an awesome one!