In Kris Carr’s book, Crazy Sexy Diet (click here for my book review), she lists countless benefits for following a low-glycemic, vegan diet that’s high in raw produce.  While I don’t plan on making any drastic changes in my diet, several of the 40+ recipes in the back of the book caught my eye, and I was inspired to try Raw ‘cooking’ for my first time.

I tried 3 recipes from the book, and while one of them was a complete disaster, two of them are new favorites of mine that are unbelievably easy, nutritious, & delicious!

 

Today’s post has two of the three recipes I tried…and stay tuned because the best is yet to come!

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Recipe 1: Prana Marinara Sauce (Success!)

This recipe is FANTASTIC.  You simply put all of the ingredients in a blender.  The sauce is ready in under 5 minutes, and there’s practically no chopping involved!  You just need to break up the bell-pepper into blender-friendly chunks, and nothing else needs to be cut.  Although the color of the sauce isn’t very flattering, the smells coming from the blender were reassuringly delicious – sweet peppers, tart tomatoes, and fresh basil. Mmm!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Recipe:

Add the following ingredients to a blender in the order suggested below, blending a bit after each addition. Blend until all ingredients have been added and sauce is smooth & thick.

  • Seasoning Mix (1 Tbsp Olive Oil + salt/thyme/oregano to taste)
  • 1 cup cherry tomatoes
  • 1 yellow bell pepper
  • 1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes
  • 1 cup fresh basil

That’s it!

 

This is great over pasta, but we took it a step further and also made our own Zucchini noodles (which Mike actually preferred!). I googled up some instructions and made these accordingly:

 

 

Adapted from AllRecipes.com

Ingredients:

  • 3 zucchinis, well-scrubbed
  • 1 tsp salt

Directions:

  • Using a potato peeler, cut the zucchini into thin noodle-like strips
  • Toss with the salt and allow to drain in a colander for 30 minutes
  • Then, blanch the zucchini by placing it in boiling water for 1 minute, then immediately rinsing it in cold water. (note: I hate waiting for water to boil, so I cheated and heated the water in the microwave. After removing the water from the microwave, I placed the zucchini in the hot water for about 90 sec. before the cool rinse)

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Recipe 2 :Apple Sprout Smoothie (Mess!)

    I don’t make it out to my favorite juice shop often enough, and I don’t own a juicer either… so I was excited to see this blender-friendly recipe for veggie juice.

It started so promising, with such a beautiful array of produce. But when I cut into my cucumber it was rotten inside and I had to trash it.  And on this fateful night, the market on the corner was all out of cucumbers. I also didn’t have the coconut oil the recipe called for.  Lastly, in the final turn of events, the recipe called for “broccoli or sprouts”, and I chose broccoli.

Perhaps this was just a string of bad luck and bad decisions ruining a perfectly good recipe, but I won’t be trying this again to find out. I’m also not including the recipe in this post, since I hope to save any fearless readers from attempting this disastrous kitchen experiment.

The texture of this drink was so unappealing – like partially digested apples.  Perhaps, it could have been saved by a strainer, but with a smell so bad, why bother?  The entire kitchen smelled vegetal.  I thought this was even worse than my previous kitchen disaster, which Mike and I now refer to as “fart salad” (a fruit salad killed by an indian-inspired seasoning of cumin and other spices).  At least after washing off the spice, I ate some of the fart salad.  This I couldn’t eat.  As much as I HATE wasting food, this was my first recipe of the year that went down the drain…

    I’d love to hear from you!

    Have you ever made something that was completely inedible?

    Have a favorite  blender-friendly veggie juice to share?

    Have you ever tried RAW cuisine?