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[jlatino]

Once again am wondering if there is someone locally who can help teach me how to plan meals for the week.

This is very important to me. I prefer to keep 85% of my meals raw and I do quite a bit of jucing. But I found myself sometimes without appeitite becasue I look at my meal and see myself bored to death!

There has to be SOMEONE here on the eastside that can be recommended .

I am just so use to cooking everything for 38 years. That tasted great and now.. well bland comes to mind.

I need simple, without too much work, and tasty.

try try again.

Michael.

[jlatino]

I very recently met a woman who was very proud of her ability to be a vegan;however, she revealed to me that she was a junk food vegan and pretty much lived off of sugar and STUFF.

Say it ain't so for the members of this website. There has to be some suggestions as to how to plan meals for the week. Or does everyone simply run up to the health food store everytime they are hungry and buy something organic to eat. Or is everyone else in the same spot as me and don't know how.

Speak up even if you have nothing to say let me know someone reads these

Encourage me... please!

[vimjerry]

If you want raw food that is easy and tasty for lunch at work, let me suggest the following. You can make a raw soup base and then each day add different spices and chopped up veggies. You can make enough base for the week and modify it each day. Victoria Boutenko's Book "Eating Without Heating" has several good base recipes, one is tomato based and the other celery based. I like chopped avacado on the tomato but you can used chopped celery, green and red peppers, anything with a crunch to it. My wife and I use Mrs. Dashes Vegetable "Salts" to season the base soup differently when we want a different tatse. I love the Lemon Pepper "Salt". So you can make up the base soup on Sunday night and season it differently each day and add different choppped veggies also. You can also make up a batch of carrot/nut burgers and eat that on crackers, lettuce leaves, or celery sticks. That recipe is also in the book I mentioned above. Finally, I suggest you attend our RAW food potluck on the first Thursday of the Month at 7:30 pm. held at Unity of Livonia. If you want to meet Victoria Botenko in person she will be at Unity of Livonia on October 18 at 6:30 pm. For $10 you will get a light meal and her handouts on Green Smoothies. Of course, all of her books will be available for sale also. Call 313 541-0162 to RSVP for that event. AT either event you will meet people where you can discuss meal planning in much more detail.

[jlatino]

Thank you for the great reply.

I will place that thusday night into my Treo.

I will try the soup for this coming week.

Michael

[gtthomasbass]

Hello,

I too am new to raw food (just since @ thanksgiving) and would love to find a source of raw food choices. (Please someone open a raw food restaurant or even have a pre-paid subscription for people to pick up food from you or something!! Thank you for that great idea Fileche.) I have been to the great vegan/raw food pot lucks! I got a couple of ideas from those (and great food too!).

I have made and enjoyed the raw celery soup receipe from Victoria (thank you for the meal and the idea Jerry). Pretty easy to make and it can be a fast "drink up and go" food. The batch I made lasted 3 days between my husband and I both consuming it. We had the veggies cut up to put on top just like you had, Jerry.

I also made a stuffed green pepper dish (Thank you for the idea Joy). Presently I make 4 at a time but I can see where it could easily be expanded to make more if you make that decision. To make the "stuffing" I use diced up/shred apple, olives, pumpkin/sunflower seeds, carrots, mushrooms, parsley, raisins, cabbage (what ever items you decide to use at your home, of course). mix those together in a bowl with cinnimon and apple juice. I cut the tops off the green peppers and clear out the seeds (like I use to do when I use to make the "regular" stuffed green pepper dish). Then fill the green pepper with the stuffing and I am done.

I must admit this is more of a sit down knife and fork dish for my home. But I am going to try this same stuffing mixture and make a wrap of it with leaves of kale or mustard green etc next week to see how that works. That will make it more of a finger food and easier to carry with me.

The other dish I tried was the Victoria tomato salad. I made a BIG bowl of this dish and we were able to "graze eat" it for 3 days also. It was really good. I basically followed the book receipe (I love the fact that I can change things in the receipes to my taste and not have to worry that it will not "rise" or something, like you have to watch out for when "cooking" food.)

I diced the tomatoes, added avacado chunks, olives, parsley, celery and pumpkin seeds. The dressing I used was a mixture of honey (I will use blended raisins next time to make it truely Vegan), olive oil, lemon, seasalt, dill, apple cider vinegar and pepper. I have no idea if those things should "really" go together. I just threw things in and it actually worked out fine. (I have no idea if I could EVER recreate it since I do not measure but I will just keep trying.) I tossed all of this together with the salad.

My other dish was the Guacamole dip Victoria has in her book. My husband is better than I am, he ate it on romaine lettuce leaves. I "cheated" and used sesame blue tortilla chips with it. Again, I like it because it can be refrigerated and used to graze eat from whenever we are hungry.

Finally, the green smoothie's are great. I like Victoria's choices or ones I throw together into the blender, depending on what I have in the house. For example, bananas, strawberries, mustard greens, water and apples.
Again, I make a batch and keep it in the refrigerator for as long as it takes us to drink it. I have heard that "fresh" is the best but that frozen organic is acceptable. I may become a "raw food expert" in the future but for now I figure I will start slowly and attempt to always have at least one meal a day (33 %) that is raw until I work up to 100% raw. (I am a work in progress. As soon as you start up that "subscription meal making" it will be easier to improve my average. SMILE).

I wish us all good luck and good (raw) eats!