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!”

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.

Recently I made a yummy bowl of goodness that I just have to share.  This literally kept me satisfied for 6 hours before I started feeling hungry again.  Is that a good thing?  You would think that eating raw requires you to eat more often throughout the day.  Who knows, maybe I ate too big of a portion.  I need to work on that.

If you have been reading my posts about raw kale, you know that I have discovered the simple dressing consisting of fresh lemon juice and olive oil and sea salt.  The rubbing technique for kale requires those 3 things to break it down well.  And so of course it just follows that once I toss in some other vegetables, that is the dressing for the whole thing.

(Well it didn’t follow at first…. a couple of weeks ago when I first started eating that dish, I would add in my usual Marie’s dressing (the best non-junkie dressing I can find without breaking my wallet) once I had the kale all rubbed down and the other ingredients added.  After a few days of that, I realized I actually love the fresh taste of the lemon juice and olive oil, and have more recently been foregoing the addition of other non-raw dressing.)

So I decided to try that same dressing with something a little different than the kale/lettuce salad.  Broccoli!  I went searching through my fridge and realized how low I was on groceries, but I pulled out everything raw I could find to make this dish.  Here is what I came up with:

Chopped Broccoli Salad

(I don’t know what to call these recipes… they all seem to conjure up the word “salad”.  Is every raw dish considered a salad?  I will have to come up with some better names)

Laura’s Bowl of Broccoli and Radishes
 (okay, that name is silly but I will solve this naming problem another time)

A couple of big handfuls of broccoli florets
4-6 radishes
1/2 onion
handful of raw cashews

1/2 lemon, juiced
1-2 T olive oil
sea salt/pepper

Writing raw recipes is so simple because there are not a lot of steps.  Just mix everything together and voila!  One thing to note is that I chopped everything small using a small hand chopper.

Another thing to note is that I don’t use exact measurements.  Another beauty of raw food, just use the amount you want to eat!

This dish was so yummy that I can’t wait to make it again.  I do need to come up with a name though that doesn’t have the word “salad” in it! 

Here is another version with chopped yellow bell peppers instead of the radishes, and sunflower seeds instead of cashews. You can see that I often just whip up a meal with ingredients on hand. It’s so fun!

Chopped Broccoli Salad

 This is not so much a recipe as a technique. I learned this from Jennifer Cornbleet. She has a youtube video where she demonstrates her recipe called Mediterranean Kale. This technique is amazingly simple and yet fantastically effective. And deliciously raw! I will call my version simply Kale Salad.

Kale Salad

big bowl of kale, thinly sliced or chopped small
1/2 lemon
couple T of olive oil
1 clove of garlic
sea salt
whatever else you want to add!

Put the kale into a big bowl. Drizzle the olive oil and fresh lemon juice over the kale. Sprinkle with the salt. Rub and massage it with your hands for a minute or two until it reduces in size and starts looking “cooked.” Add the other ingredients, toss, and serve.
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If you watch Jennifer’s video she will demonstrate the process of making thin strips (chiffonade) of kale. I didn’t have the large leaves on hand, only a bag of curly kale. So I just chopped it up into finer pieces. It worked great!

She explains that the oil, lemon, and salt start to break down the kale and soften it up, much like cooking would do. You then rub it and massage it with your hands to break it down even further. It is a fairly tough green, and that’s why most people think it must be cooked. I am not a huge fan of cooked vegetables in the first place as I don’t like the mushy texture.

Ms. Cornbleet’s recipe consists of adding chopped red bell pepper, pine nuts, and sliced olives to this dish. Sounds yummy but I didn’t have those ingredients on hand. Today I made this dish and simply added a clove of minced garlic and some chopped red onion. Delicious! I am eager to make this again and again, varying the ingredients. Try it with your own ingredients and tell me what you think.

Edit: 8/14/09
I have been eating this type of salad for weeks now and have really been enjoying it.  Here is a picture of my raw salad that I eat every day. It consists of kale, red leaf, romaine, tomatoes, onions, radishes, and chopped raw cashews.

Many years ago I made a recipe from a cookbook called Butternut Squash and Swiss Chard Stew. It had such an odd-sounding name but yet something compelled me to try it anyway. It turned out terrific! But it was a lot of work and I never made it again, although I’ve occasionally thought about it.

Recently at Publix I was in the prepared soup aisle, and butternut squash soup by Pacific Natural Foods caught my eye. I don’t normally buy prepared soups because they are too easy and enjoyable to make from scratch. But I figured why not splurge $4 if it will save me some of the daunting work of that stew I remembered making long ago. And those Pacific Natural Foods soups have all good ingredients, so no worries there.

Using that old cookbook (yes, I still have it!) as a guideline, today I came up with my own quicker version. It turned out really yummy. At some point I will post the version made completely from scratch, but until then here is today’s shortcut version:

Laura’s Butternut Squash and Swiss Chard Stew

1 container Pacific Foods Butternut Squash Soup
1 bunch Swiss Chard, chopped
1 onion, chopped
a few cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can Great Northern beans
oil for sauteeing (I use Fresh Shores Coconut Oil for added nutrition, but use your favorite)
salt & pepper

Saute the onions for a minute, add the garlic, stir, then add the Swiss chard. Season with salt & pepper to taste. Saute for a few minutes until it turns bright green and starts to wilt down somewhat. Add the tomatoes and beans, and combine. Pour in the container of butternut squash soup, and stir. Simmer for 15-20 minutes, and serve.

Chickpea Salad Recipe

Chickpeas are so versatile. They are good in soups like minestrone, yummy in Indian food like Chana Masala, and I rarely make a salad without throwing in a handful. Years ago I used to make a chick pea loaf with gravy to substitute for turkey at holiday dinners (great with mashed potatoes!). I will be sure to post that recipe at some point. Oh, and how could we forget the basis for hummus and falafel!

Another great thing to do with chickpeas is mash them up slightly and make a cold salad like you would with tuna or chicken. My daughter and I love this! Then spread it in a pita or flour tortilla, add the lettuce and tomato and cheese and whatever else you love in a wrap, and voila!

I like to use a pastry cutter because it’s easy and because I happen to have one in my drawer. You could probably use a potato masher too, and I saw a friend of mine just use a fork one time to mash them up. You don’t want them too pureed, just crushed up but still chunky for good consistency.

I feel silly even posting a “recipe” because everyone knows how to make tuna salad. Just chop up some onions and celery, add some mayo, and mix it all together. For the chickpea salad I also throw in some cayenne pepper but not too much. Just for a little flavor (and health benefits) but not overly spicy. Parsley is good in there too. And don’t forget the salt and pepper to taste!

Whole wheat pitas stuffed with Chickpea Salad, shredded lettuce, alfalfa sprouts, shredded cheese, and dressing.