Cheap, Fast and Satisfying?

[Susan Morris]

Hi:  Dinner is in three hours and I am all out of ideas.  We have been mostly raw for 6 weeks.  We spent the first month making a lot of elaborate meals that mimicked the SAD diet - raw veggie burgers, raw burritos, raw lasagne, lots of nuts.  This week we are eating mostly smoothies for breakfast and lunch and salads for dinner.

But it's a busy day, and it will be a busy evening, and we are tired of salad.  I need something fast.

I have on hand.  I can make a quick trip to the store if something is needed:

Spaghetti squash

corn

cauliflower

onions

garlic

lemons and limes

peaches

What can I make that won't take a lot of time?

Thanks!

[deanna]

Maybe pick up some zucchini peal ribbons for pasta .. top with onions .. garlic ...olives if you like them and make a pasta sauce with tomatoes fresh and sundried .. or a pesto with basil and pine nuts ...

[Gisele Landry]

I'm thinking something with a Mexican flare: finely chopped corn, peaches, cauliflower, onions with a lime cayenne dressing. If you go to the store:  cherry tomato halves and finely chopped fresh herbs would be great  - avocado in the salad or the dressing and served on romaine leaves.

Bon Appétit...

[Wendy Geesey]

fast raw food= fruit... peel and eat or just wash and eat... just one more thing I love about the 811/fruitarian diet- so fast and easy :)

[Susan Morris]

Thank you for the responses!  The words of encouragement are most helpful and gave me the confidence to make it work!

It helps a lot because after 35 years of cooking SAD nearly every day, sometimes I just look in the fridge and think, "What in the world am I going to prepare today?"  There are lots of cookbooks and there are thousands of recipes online, but somehow it doesn't always work with what is on hand.

We ended up making a cold soup out of 4 ears of corn and 3 tomatoes.  We added 4 cloves of garlic and cilantro.  Then we made a dish by peeling and seedling  a spaghetti squash and processed it into a food processor until it was the texture of rice.  To that we added a pitted and chopped peach, the juice of one lime, cumin, curry, coriander, and turmeric.  A sort of raw curried rice.  Sounds weird but it worked. The kids had a bit of trouble with it.  They are having a harder time adjusting to raw food than my husband and I are.

It used up a lot of what we had on hand.  We buy a lot of produce from Bountiful Baskets, which is great, but often I don't know what to do with certain items like potatoes, and hard squash like spaghetti and butternut. 

Last Saturday we broke down and had a cooked vegan meal of all the leftover vegetables from Bountiful Baskets that we didn't know how to prep raw.  Acorn squash, potatoes, and green beans.  At the time I couldn't find a recipe that we like for any of those ingredients.  Then the rest of the weekend we were fighting cravings for more cooked food.

All in all we are doing pretty well on the raw food lifestyle, with the exception of figuring out what to do with the more  challenging  produce.

[Patty Cason]

One of the best books I have found is a small book called Raw Food for Busy people by Jordan Maerin. Its inexpensive, no fancy pictures. But it is great for SIMPLE recipes....especially helpful in the beginning. As you do this longer and longer you get better at just throwing stuff together to make something...which it sounds like you are already getting good at! 

[Susan Morris]

That was the first raw food book I bought!   I'm still trying to figure out what to do with potatoes.  We keep getting them in our co op basket.  There is a raw spinach and potato latke recipe floating around on the net that we have yet to try and there is a raw potato chip recipe that we tried but we didn't like it.  We tried pureeing the potatoes with herbs and flax seeds and dehydrating it, and it turned out a little strange but okay.  Sort of like potato leather, lol!

[Jaleen Lubker]

Hi Susan, Hard/winter squashes can be grated and used like carrots. Also, they puree well to make a delicious soup base.

As far as potatoes go, the raw starch is a bit hard on the body. I don't personally have them as a raw food. They are really better digested when cooked. My favorite thing to do with green beans is slice them on a long thin angle & marinate them all day. They are very delicious this way. You can even dehydrate them at about 115 degrees for a few hours, if you want something warm.

Susan Morris said:

Thank you for the responses!  The words of encouragement are most helpful and gave me the confidence to make it work!

It helps a lot because after 35 years of cooking SAD nearly every day, sometimes I just look in the fridge and think, "What in the world am I going to prepare today?"  There are lots of cookbooks and there are thousands of recipes online, but somehow it doesn't always work with what is on hand.

We ended up making a cold soup out of 4 ears of corn and 3 tomatoes.  We added 4 cloves of garlic and cilantro.  Then we made a dish by peeling and seedling  a spaghetti squash and processed it into a food processor until it was the texture of rice.  To that we added a pitted and chopped peach, the juice of one lime, cumin, curry, coriander, and turmeric.  A sort of raw curried rice.  Sounds weird but it worked. The kids had a bit of trouble with it.  They are having a harder time adjusting to raw food than my husband and I are.

It used up a lot of what we had on hand.  We buy a lot of produce from Bountiful Baskets, which is great, but often I don't know what to do with certain items like potatoes, and hard squash like spaghetti and butternut. 

Last Saturday we broke down and had a cooked vegan meal of all the leftover vegetables from Bountiful Baskets that we didn't know how to prep raw.  Acorn squash, potatoes, and green beans.  At the time I couldn't find a recipe that we like for any of those ingredients.  Then the rest of the weekend we were fighting cravings for more cooked food.

All in all we are doing pretty well on the raw food lifestyle, with the exception of figuring out what to do with the more  challenging  produce.