Since making the gradual transition to 100% raw a couple of months ago, I have not bought any new gadgets. I was already a salad aficionado so I had good knives already. And my blender, juicer, and food processor were collected through the years just because I love to prepare food in general.

But recently I succumbed to the temptation to add a spiralizer to my repertoire. I see so many recipes and videos for these beautifully spiralized vegetables! I am not one who misses pasta as I wasn’t eating much of it anyway in recent years, but couldn’t resist this fun-looking little gadget.

Here then are my first attempts at spiralizing a zucchini.

Zucchini "Noodles" with spiralizer

Success! It was a little tricky. All the cautions were true about making sure the zucchini is cut completely straight on both ends and to insert it into the post in the exact center. But it was a lot of fun and tasted yummy. I pureed an easy sauce of tomatoes and onions and warmed it a teensy bit on the stove so it wouldn’t be ice cold. Delish!

The spiral slicer also will do paper thin slices, which come out attached together on a long chain:

I have learned that this is useful for dehydrating “chips”. Looking forward to eventually getting a dehydrator!

Ahh… hummus. The very word invites images of crisp crackers, crunchy chips, and neatly wrapped tortillas filled to the brim with this creamy, savory bean goodness.

But what does the raw foodist do who craves this garlicky sensation? In comes the humble zucchini!

Any search engine will bring up tons of recipes for “raw hummus”. You will note that some do contain the traditional garbanzo bean, but simply in sprouted form. In my eagerness to try this I recently bought a bag of dried garbanzos… and they are still sitting in my pantry. I can’t explain my hesitation except that maybe I am not ready for the complications of learning the sprout techniques yet. Or maybe I don’t want to mess with anything quite yet that might interfere with the digestive cleansing that I am sure is going on in my body.

So imagine my delight when I came upon raw hummus made with zucchini instead of garbanzos at all! I grabbed a can of raw sesame tahini from my local health food store and here is the result. Success! It was a new concept for me to dip raw vegetables in hummus, but I loved it. Previously hummus was just another excuse for me to eat bread or other flour grain products.

Zucchini Hummus

2 medium zucchini, peeled and chunked
1/2 cup raw sesame tahini
1 clove minced garlic
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt & pepper to taste
and whatever other traditional hummus spices you like! (I used cayenne, parsley, cumin, coriander)
1-2 T olive oil

Puree all in food processor while drizzling in the olive oil until it achieves the consistency you like. Garnish with some parsley and/or paprika. Ooo la la!

For the past couple of months as I’ve been adjusting to life without dairy or grains, I have not experimented with all the fabulous raw recipes out there. I guess I wanted to just keep it really simple at first, besides the fact that I love salads so much that I really can eat 2 every day and never get bored with them.

I watch all the wonderful videos and read all the excellent blogs, and I know that so many of you long-term raw foodists have come up with amazing looking raw dishes that mimic old standbys like pasta, meatballs, bread, crackers, cookies, desserts, etc. Many of those use a dehydrator, and I’m not totally comfortable with jumping into that yet. Part of me wonders if it can really be healthy to suck all that good water content out of naturally healthy foods, but yet another part of me is drooling over being able to eat crackers and cookies.

But when I look at the addictions I have been able to overcome in these past several weeks, I can’t help but be nervous about indulging in these altered goodies. Because to me it does seem like an indulgence. A treat to have occasionally but certainly not to consume as one’s daily diet. So I have put the dehydrator recipes on the back burner for now (the back tray? ha ha). Maybe one day when I am more entrenched in this raw food lifestyle and I have released all the weight I want, then I will revisit the dehydrator foods.

In the meantime, there is a raw food concept that is compelling enough for me to try right now.  Noodles!  Noodles made of zucchini are the most common but you can find other vegetables used as well. Even if you don’t have a handy little spiral slicer gadget, you can use a simple vegetable peeler to create long strands of fettucine-type noodles.

For the raw sauce, there are tons of recipes for tomato based sauces. I just so happened to have some lovely raw pine nuts and a nice bunch of basil that I had just picked up from my local produce stand. Voila, my pesto was born!

Zucchini "Noodles" with Pesto

Pesto

1/4 cup raw pine nuts, soaked for an hour or so
handful of fresh basil (I don’t know how else to measure fresh herbs!)
a few leaves of baby spinach
1 clove of minced garlic
salt
1-2 T olive oil
squeeze of lemon juice

I whirled this in my mini hand blender since it was such a small amount. I would use a food processor for a larger batch. It was an experiment and I didn’t want to waste my pine nuts if it turned out horrible. But much to my pleasure it was delicious! I didn’t even miss the parmesan cheese that traditionally goes in pesto.

My daughter and I gobbled this up, so I guess this made enough for 2 servings. The picture shows one serving. Definitely a keeper! I think this is cause to buy a spiralizer as my next gadget.

I have learned a lot in the past few weeks. Mostly to juice your vegetables, and smoothie your fruits. (Did I really  just make a verb out of smoothie?). At first I was juicing a lot of fruits. At the beginning I was feeling light-headed by the afternoon and thought I was just detoxing. But maybe it was the sugar high I’ve since learned about.

Now I think I’m going about this in a better way. I juice mostly vegetables as my first food of the day. And I completely gave up coffee, incidentally, yay me! So the first thing I do after getting my kids off to school is make my wonderful juice that I just crave in the morning.

I always start with one apple, 1/2 lemon, and a hunk of ginger. To that I add either 1 cucumber or 1 zucchini. Then some greens. Either a handful of kale or collards or a broccoli stalk. The satisfaction I get from drinking this breakfast cocktail is immeasurable. It is such a high!

An hour or two later and I am ready for my smoothie. I have experimented with lots of combinations, but a basic lately is one banana, one pear or nectarine, a couple handfuls of spinach or collards or kale, a tablespoon of either coconut oil, flax oil, or soaked flax seeds, and enough water to make it the consistency I like. Sometimes I’ll toss in some frozen blueberries or mango just to give it that cold slushiness and of course the added nutrients.

Actually the last couple of days I’ve been using a Sugarbaby Watermelon as the basis for my green smoothie. It is filled with black seeds, which I found out are high in protein and other good-for-you things. My blender just grinds the seeds all up, and the watermelon makes a nice sweet slushy smoothie.

As for the rest of my day, I am finding I don’t even require as much food as I used to. At some point in the afternoon I have a small salad, usually an avocado and a tomato chopped up with some onion and the juice of 1/2 a lemon. It is delicious and filling. For dinner I always have a big green salad with bell peppers, onions, sometimes tomatoes, cucumber or zucchini, and chopped cashews (unless I had an avocado that day, then I omit the nuts).

Speaking of which, I know it is controversial how much fat you’re supposed to (or can safely) eat in one day. I’ve lost 18 lbs so far (yay! only 66 more to go!) and have not really limited my intake of nuts, seeds, olive oil, or avocados. I’ve just been playing it by ear. That 18 lbs came off in about 2 months. Is that fast, is that slow? I’m not sure. I have never obsessed about my weight so don’t really pay attention to others’ testimonials about the rate of weight loss. Maybe I would lose weight faster by really limiting the fats in my diet. I always keep in mind that, to me, weight loss is a side benefit of going raw. That I am mostly doing it for the radiant health and being free of disease. At least that’s what I keep telling myself, ha ha! Well if anyone has any thoughts on the fat-content issue, please share! For now I will continue to follow my instincts. To me it is such a huge accomplishment to give up cheese that I really need to pat myself on the back and allow a small amount of those healthy fatty foods that I love, like avocados and nuts! :)

So to recap, that’s how I’ve been eating for the past month. 100% raw. Juicing in the morning, smoothie shortly to follow, a small salad in the afternoon, and a big salad in the evening. And no late-night snacking, another accomplishment! That nasty habit is gone forever!