I've been raw (about 95%) since March (after 15 years as a vegetarian, then 15 years as a vegan). I plan to add some more cooked foods (or not!) into my diet for the winter, but still plan to be around 70%+ raw.
I used the summer to experiment and learn different raw-food techniques (dehydrating, making wraps, making crackers, etc.).
Raw foods can be very simple (like the recipes in Jennifer Cornbleets "Raw Food Made Easy for One or Two People"), or you can go 'gourmet" and use lots of equipment (and some raw recipe books--I don't/can't call them 'cook'books!--use a ridiculous amount of hard-to-find ingredients and recipes with lots of steps to them). People often start with more dehydrated and denser raw foods, but gradually evolve to eating more simply). I use my Vitamix daily at least once (for a green smoothie in the morning--I have a lot of recipes for those in my blog here:
http://thecathenation.com/forum/blog.php?b=1595 . Green smoothies are how I began going raw ) if not 2-3 times. I also use a dehydrator for dehydrating nuts after I've soaked them, and for making crackers and marinating foods and heating foods--below 115 degrees).
I have a juicer, but I don't use it. I'd rather have the whole fruit or veggie, blended up in my Vitamix. The very few times I've wanted juice, it's either fresh-squeezed citrus, or I blend up the ingredients in my Vitamix and strain through a nut-milk bag (which seems to get out more juice than using a juicer!).
There are LOTS of recipes online, and youtube has some good videos (René Oswald and Ani Pyo both have a lot of videos there).
Here's a link to two raw food ebooks (one is a primer for getting started, the other has recipes). They are FREE to download, and are pretty good:
http://purejeevan.com/rawfoods101.html
If you're really interested in this, I highly recommend René Oswald's "Transitioning to Living Cuisine" (available as a spiral-bound book or as an e-book. Sometimes, she does a special when you can get both for the same price, which is how I got mine). She does a wonderful, gradual approach to going raw, in 7 steps, and even though I'd read at least two dozen raw books before getting hers, I still learned alot.
Some good books with easy-to-make, tasty recipes are Jennifer Cornbleets "Raw Food Made Easy" (already mentioned), Nomi Shannon's "Raw Gourmet", Ani Phyo's "Ani's Raw Food Kitchen" and Rod Rotondi's "Raw Food for Real People". (I recommend to stay FAR AWAY from Juliano's "Raw" and Bryan Au's "Raw Food in 10 minutes". The first has extremely complex recipes, with many hard-to-find ingredients. The second is annoying--Au has a HUGE ego, it seems--and the food isn't very healthy, IMO. Also, some books, like Igor and Valya Boutenko's early book, have HUGE amounts of nuts and oils in many of the recipes. NOT a healthy way to go, IMO.)
Another resource is to check out
www.meetup.com and see if there is a raw-food meet-up group near you. I found one 2 hours from me, and I've been to two of the monthly potlucks already.
Here's a recipe for "Sunburgers" from Ani Phyo's book "Ani's Raw Food Kitchen" :
Chop finely and put in a bowl :
2 stalks celery
1/4 cup yellow onion
1/2 cup red bell pepper
Add 1 tsp sea salt (I substitute with about 1/2 tsp miso--which is one of the few soy products I do eat!)
2 tsp oregano (last time I made these, I subbed mexican seasoning. This is where you can play around to get the flavor you prefer. One great thing about raw foods, is the recipes are very forgiving. And you can taste as you go, since the flavor of the finished product doesn't change drastically from when you are first mixing things up, except for some flavors --like salt and garlic--intensifying with dehydrating)
1 cup ground raw sunflower seeds (preferably soaked4-6 hours, then rinsed and allowed to dry)
1/2 cup ground flax seeds
1/4 cup hemp seeds (optional: my addition)
2 Tbsp chia gel (optional: another addition)
Mix well, then add:
1/2 cup water
And mix again
Form 3-4 patties (I have a 'hamburger press'--that cost about $3.95--that I use to make these, and they look a lot like Amy's veggie burgers.)
Eat as is, or dehydrate at 105 degrees for 3 hours (this gives them a bit more of a cooked texture and intensifies flavors a bit. This is how I eat them.)
Serve two large romaine leaves as "bread".
HTH!
last night I was watching Secret lives of women on the We channel and they have this women talking about crazy kind of lifestyle diets, but this one cough my attention, and i kind want to try some of her recipes, I found the website and later today I'm going to check it out.
