Raw Food Tuesday ... and the Coconut Butter Winner!

I have long-ish picture-heavy post of raw eats planned for tonight, so I won't make y'all wait 'til the end to reveal the Artisana coconut butter contest winner. I'm no Ryan Seacrest, after all ... but I will do a little drumroll ... (insert drumroll sound here) ... and the winner is Jess the Domestic Vegan! Congrats Jess.

Jess was randomly selected using Random.org's number generator, but you wanna know something weird? I won my first ever blog giveaway — a big ole box of Liz Lovely cookies — on Jess's blog back in May 2008!

Okay, onto the food. Today (Tuesday) was my monthly raw food day. I skipped last month because I just didn't have time on the first Tuesday of the month. But today, I started my morning off fresh with this bowl of Rawsome Breakfast Mix:

I know it just looks like a big ole blob of fibrous fruits and veggies (and it is), but it's made from apples, pears, celery, raisins, almonds, and spinach. Everything is tossed into the food processor and chopped into tiny bits. The recipe came from my new VegWeb app for the iPhone, but you see it here on the VegWeb site.

Raw food never fills me up for long, so I bring plenty of snacks to work, like this platter of celery, carrots, and Artisana Raw Walnut Butter:

And some yummy Coconut Butter-Stuffed Mejool Dates:

Lunch was one of my go-to raw recipes — Gena's Raw "Peanut" Noodles from Choosing Raw:

There's actually no peanuts in this dish, but you'd never know if I didn't tell ya. Somehow Gena's homemade Asian dressing tastes peanutty without the help of any nuts. For "noodles," I used zucchini, cucumber, red bell pepper, carrot, soybean sprouts, and mushrooms.

There was a long lull between work and yoga at 6:15 p.m., so I whipped up this Super Banana Sundae to hold me over until dinner:

This recipe is also on the VegWeb app and here on the regular web. Mine looks more like banana soft serve soup than banana soft serve as I put a little too much water in to aid in processing. But it tastes delicious nonetheless. The sundae is topped with a raw cacao-agave syrup, pineapple, and blueberries.

After yoga, I was famished until I threw together this Creamy Corn Soup:

Also from the VegWeb app, and the recipe is here. This simple soup of fresh corn, avocado, red bell pepper, cashews (which I subbed for the recommended walnuts), and Bragg's was super-duper good. I wish I had another bowl right now. I'll most certainly be making this again.

On the side, I had this Salad with Creamy Lime-Basil Dressing:

Another VegWeb recipe (available here). This was just okay. The dressing has a base of almonds and sunflower seeds, which give it a special creaminess. But my salad mix contained arugala, and I've learned that I don't care to mix arugala with a creamy dressing. I'd have enjoyed this dressing more on some crunchy romaine.

That's it for raw day this month. I feel great after eating all that nutritious food, but I'm really looking forward to having toast in the morning. If nothing else, raw food makes me appreciate cooked food so much more!