Raw Food Made Easy

It seems like just yesterday that I was doing my once-a-month raw food cleanse, but that's only because last month's cleanse was pushed back a week from the usual first Tuesday of the month. Last time, I spent TWO HOURS in the kitchen prepping nut cheezes, spreads, and sauces. But this time, I wanted to make things easier on myself. So I started with this lovely and simple Green Smoothie:

I say it was simple, but now that I think about it, this smoothie was a pain in butt. I got the bright idea to add coconut water and fresh coconut meat to my usual fruit and kale smoothie. That meant hammering and prying at a coconut last night (I could only find the kind with the hard shell at my local Asian market, but next time, I'll drive to Whole Foods for a young coconut with the shell already removed). The meat was so hard to cut out that I abandoned the task halfway through. I didn't get much reward from all that work.

But this morning, the smoothie was easy as pie (although is pie really that easy?) to throw together in the blender. I used the coconut water and meat, banana, strawberries, pineapple, mango, kale, and a bit of flax seed.

I was starving by 10 a.m., but luckily I packed some carrot sticks and Rosemary Guacamole from Ani's Raw Food Kitchen:

The recipe calls for fresh rosemary, which is a pretty interesting addition to traditional guac. It complemented the avocado quite well, but I'll probably stick to traditional guac from now on. I omitted the olive oil in Ani's recipe because, um, who puts olive oil in guacamole?

Lunch was this Dolmas Salad from One Week Raw:

It did require a little prep but not too much. Dolmas are those lemony rice-stuffed grape leaves, and this dolmas paté — made with a parsnip and nut base — actually tasted a lot like the real thing. One Week Raw is a free raw cookzine that you can download here.

Since I'm hungry every two hours on raw day, I snacked on more guac and carrots, as well as a ruby red grapefruit and a Key Lime Pie Larabar (great flavor!). The Larabar kept me satisfied throughout my spinning class at the gym.

But afterward, I was famished. So I dove into this Pine Nut Pesto Over Zucchini Fettucine:

I recently saw this over on Breedale's blog Perpetually Changing. She used Ani's Pistachio Pesto recipe as a guideline, but subbed pine nuts for pistachios. So did I, since I couldn't find raw pistachios anywhere. I also added nooch because I think that's the secret ingredient to an awesome vegan pesto.

Here's a bonus picture of my kitty Polaris, about to steal a bite of my raw pasta:

Now it's nearly bedtime and I'm kinda hungry again. I may snack on a fresh peach and drink some herbal tea. But I'm really yearning for tomorrow's breakfast — a big bowl of Barbara's Bakery Cinnamon Crunch Shredded Oats with hemp milk. If nothing else, raw food day makes me appreciate cooked food and grains so much more!