The Basics for Raw Food Recipes
November 4th, 2009 | 
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In this day and age, everybody wants to improve their looks with a thinner waist line. For that, people may need some directions for finding healthy solutions to lose weight. The best choice someone can make in order to lose weight and gain health, energy and vitality is switching to a raw food diet.
People discover each day the benefits of raw food recipes. When switching to a raw food diet you will see improvements to your daily behavior like improved sleep, some anti-aging benefits, increased vitality and health. Owing to such advantages, the popularity of raw food diets is bound to increase, because we all want to improve the way we look and the way we feel about ourselves, don’t we?
In the beginning people didn’t cook their food and they consumed it raw. Eating like this helped them keep very healthy. Our bodies are built so that we can consume raw foods. The only thing we need to do is to rediscover the way we were in the beginning and enjoy all that nature has to give us. Consuming raw foods helps our bodies because they contain enzymes that help digestion. These enzymes are destroyed if the fruits and vegetables are cooked. Our body digests the foods through its own enzymes, but the enzymes in our body also give us energy. Therefore, when we use the enzymes in our bodies for digestion and not the ones in fruits and vegetables, it means that our energy levels and vitality are decreased.
Basic guidelines for planning your healthy raw food recipes recommend that you should include in your diet mostly fruit and vegetables, which are our most biologically conducive meals. Something that can help you in planning your raw food recipes is the categories in which fruits and vegetables are divided.
Fruits can be divided in sweet fruits (tropical fruits, persimmons, sweet grapes), acid fruits (lemons, citrus), sub-acid fruits (apples, pears, tart grapes) and fatty fruits (avocadoes, durian). Melons constitute a separate category of fruits. Some of the vegetable categories are non-starchy greens (spinach, cabbage), fruit vegetables (cucumbers, tomatoes) and root vegetables (carrots, celeriac). Another category of vegetables includes lettuce and celery. The vegetables named here can be found as items on a list of raw low carbohydrate foods. All these fruits and vegetables are the common components of raw food recipes.
Now that the categories have been established, here are some rules of combining them in order for you to avoid fermentation in the intestines, indigestion, water retention and toxicity. Sweet fruits are to be eaten with other varieties of sweet fruits only or with sub-acid fruits. Don’t eat acid fruit with anything other than celery and lettuce. Avocadoes and olives should be eaten with non-starchy vegetables. Melons should be eaten alone or not eaten at all. These are combinations that you should try. But there are a few combinations that you should try to avoid like starch and acid (tomato and potato), protein and protein (avocadoes and nuts), sweets and starch (maple syrup and rice). Think about these combinations when you are developing your own raw food recipes.
Raw food diets are not all about fruits and vegetables. Organic foods can also be included in the diet. Organic cheese is very nutritious and can be included in raw food diets because it does not involve a cooking process that destroys enzymes. You should make sure that the organic cheese you buy is organic, and not a scam. The process that is followed by farmers to obtain organic cheese consists of letting nature take its natural course, from harvesting the milk from the cows and letting it coagulate with no help from additional catalytic agents. Incredible products made from raw ingredients and that may include organic cheese can be found here, on rawbakery.com.
Amelie Mag
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Posted in food recipes
What are some basic food ingredients that every recipe usually calls for?
Every time I want to cook something from recipes i find online it seems im always missing one of the ingredients. What are some basic food ingredients that alot of dishes need that I can buy at the grocer and keep stocked in my kitchen? Or what do you usually keep stocked in your house to make lunch and dinner or desserts?
I think I usually need butter, eggs, brown sugar, corn starch, salt, ground pepper (white & black), olive oil, dried herbs (thyme, rosemary, bay leaf), nuts, etc.
References :
My once every 6 months grocery replenishment list is:
flour
sugar
powder sugar
brown sugar
shortening
oil
baking powder
baking soda
any herbs or spices I happen to be out of
salt
Canned milk
powdered milk
variety flours
canned meats
then there is my every 2 weeks shopping list:
eggs
fresh milk
cream
butter
fresh veggies
fresh fruits
And my holiday shopping list:
coconut
cocoa
marshmallow cream
marshmallows
cream cheese
dried fruit bits
nuts
baking chocolate
chocolate chips and other chips
maraschino cherries
chopped dates
sweetened condensed milk
cake flour
References :
My basics are eggs, cheese, olive oil, garlic, onions, lemons, tinned tomatoes, tinned chickpeas, dried lentils, wholemeal flour, sea salt, potatoes.
My herb and spice basics are ground cumin, chilli powder, paprika, dried thyme, dried basil.
I also have fresh herbs in pots outside my kitchen and the ones I use most are spearmint, parsley and bay. It’s easy to buy small pots of fresh herbs in the supermarks and just keep them on the kitchen windowsill or outside. I also snip leaves off and freeze them in plastic bags.
Hope this helps
References :
It depends on the types of recipes you cook and whether you’re doing mostly cooking, baking, or both. A good starting set of ingredients might include:
* Flour (I prefer whole wheat because it’s healthier and only keep a little white on hand; you can normally substitute even when the recipe doesn’t say so);
* Sugar (white and–if you do a lot of baking–brown, although you can substitute white + molasses for brown if you need to);
* Salt and pepper;
* Baking soda and baking powder (although if you’re out of baking powder you can substitute with a mixture of baking powder plus cream of tartar);
* Oil (canola, soybean, and corn are examples of mild-tasting oils; olive oil is nice to have for cooking, but you’ll probably want something else for baking or if olive-oil flavor doesn’t mesh well with some particular dish). I also like to keep some butter on hand but usually substitute oil for butter to make recipes healthier (but not if the recipe really needs a solid fat). Shortening is cheaper but usually made with hydrogenated oils, which I try to avoid for health reasons; same with margarine. You can get whatever you like.
* Vanilla, if you do a lot of baking;
* Any seasonings you regularly use; common ones include cinnamon, Italian seasoning (or individual herb such as oregano, basil, and thyme), garlic powder, onion powder, and any other ones you like or that your recipes frequently call for.
Beyond that, it depends on what types of things you like to cook. I make a lot of Italian (well, Americanized Italian) food, so I always keep lots of flour and Italian seasoning on hand in addition to these items:
* Tomatoes or tomato products (tomato sauce and pasta sauce, although you can make the latter from the former if you want),
* Fresh and frozen vegetables (onions, spinach, zucchini, broccoli, carrots, and whatever is available or in season),
* Pasta noodles (especially spaghetti and lasagna)
* Olives
* Mushrooms
* Cheese
* Nuts
I also like rice, so I stock that as well. (It’s easy to cook–even the "real" non-instant kind–and throw in some vegetables for a quick lunch or dinner.) I’m vegetarian, so I don’t eat meat, but if you do, you may want to have some on hand, as well.
There are also some other things that are nice to have, like corn starch (useful for thickening up runny sauces), vinegar (useful for dressings or for combining with milk to make fake buttermilk, if you don’t have that, for baking), cocoa powder (if you do a lot of baking and like this flavor), and perhaps more I am forgetting.
But mostly, it depends on what types of food you’re making. Take note of what ingredients you’re frequently lacking, and make sure to get them for next time–or find a substitute if you happen to have one lying around in your kitchen. (For example: no nutmeg? Try cinnamon. There are a lot of tricks like this you can use in a pinch; the front pages of many cookbooks have this information, or you can try a Web search…or a Yahoo! Answers question.
)
Good luck! Hope this helps.
References :
I am an avid home cook and baker.