I personally haven’t eaten turkey for 23 years and have been known to bring a chickpea loaf as my contribution to Thanksgiving dinner. Complete with a milk-based soy sauce gravy! And always cooked mashed potatoes. And often a cheesy broccoli casserole too.

As this is my first raw Thanksgiving I decided to attempt some raw versions of traditional fall dishes. To be honest, I don’t know how I feel about these dishes I’ve made yet. I really prefer just eating green salads all the time!  But tomorrow is the big day so we’ll see how it goes!

Cranberry Sauce

Sweet Potato Casserole

Napa Cabbage Salad

Pumpkin Pie

Edit, late night Thanksgiving Eve: I just can’t stop. I keep finding more recipes to try! Now I’ve made a nut cream for the pumpkin pie, and a “tabouleh”-like dish. The cream is made from cashews, macadamias, and dates.  The tabouleh is actually made from “riced” cauliflower instead of bulgur wheat, pulsed in the food processor until it resembles rice. It turned out great and I’m sure will become a staple at my house. Here are the pics for now, recipes to follow in another post!

Cashew Macadamia Cream

Mideastern Cauliflower Salad

I’ve made or bought my share of mock foods over the years. Being a vegetarian for so long you can’t help but try all the different varieties of fake meats out there. And my chickpea loaf and lentil burgers are to die for. To be honest, beans and all their subsequent dishes are the thing I miss most about the raw food diet. I always thought I couldn’t live without cheese… seriously! But now it turns out I miss my beans the most. Especially because I always thought they were healthy, while deep down I instinctively knew that cheese was not.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you know me by now, I’m just a simple salad kinda gal. But every once in a while I get that urge to make a mock dish. You know, a “fake” something or other. Usually pasta, meat, or cheesy stuff that these glorious raw food chefs dream up.

Today the beautiful Angelina Elliott of She-Zen Cuisine posted this mock meatloaf dish in her Facebook feed, and I couldn’t resist! The Kitchen Goddess playfully calls it “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Meatloaf,” and it was every bit as delicious as she claimed. In fact, I’m ashamed to admit that I ate the whole thing! Well okay, I halved the recipe, but still! These mock foods are dangerous to me!

Edit, a couple of days later: I didn’t gain any extra weight so happily it seems that raw dishes are much more forgiving if you over-indulge. 

Angelina Elliott's I Can't Believe It's Not Meatloaf

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Meatloaf
By Angelina Elliott

Ingredients:
• 2 cups walnuts
• 1 red pepper
• ½ cup sweet onion, minced
• ½ cup celery, minced
• 1 tomato
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 tsp onion
• Dash of oregano
• ½ tsp of miso
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Add all the above ingredients to a food processor, pulse chop until evenly distributed. Place meatloaf on a platter and shape into a loaf and serve.

*Angelina’s note: “This actually looks like real meat loaf and is absolutely delicious!”

This past weekend I experienced what every new raw foodie anticipates. The first family party since going raw. Up until this point I had been comfortably secluded in a protective bubble of learning and discovering at my own pace. Trying new things with only myself as the critic. The occasional phone conversation or email with my parents about my amazing discovery. But mostly just eating my beloved green salads and green smoothies every day and being in simple bliss!

But now with this family party looming, I had to choose between packing myself a nice personal salad and foregoing everything else, or preparing some delicious raw dishes with the hope that people will want to try them. I chose the latter and with much success!

Zucchini Hummus with cucumber sticks for dipping, Avocado-Tomato Salad, Chocolate Cheesecake, and Chocolate Balls.  The hummus was a no-brainer. Always a big hit at other family parties, the cooked bean variety paved the way for my new raw zucchini kind.  The Avocado-Tomato Salad was thrown together at the last minute because I was hungry right before the party and wanted to eat some immediately upon arriving. (I was going through a phase where I had to eat avocado every day, LOL).

Then come the desserts. A big deal is always made about raw desserts. Some people become raw foodies just because of all the fabulous guilt-free desserts! Up until this point, I had not crossed that threshold of the much revered “raw dessert.” So what the heck, I thought, it’s been three months of raw food… time to indulge in something reckless!

I chose a cheesecake made of cashews on a walnut-date crust with a raw chocolate ganache for topping. And the much-loved “chocolate balls” made with raw cacao powder, raw almond butter, sunflower seeds, and other delights. Those balls reminded my sister and me of the wonderful childhood treats my mother would lovingly bestow upon us. Except that she used carob powder and peanut butter and were not technically raw, but yummy and healthy all the same!

I will post recipes in a later post. Meanwhile here are some pics.

Avocado-Tomato Salad, Raw Cheesecake, Zucchini Hummus

Raw Chocolate Balls