Recipes For Success On Your Raw Food Diet

When one first goes on a raw food diet, they may find it quite easy to eat whole fruits, vegetables, salads and nuts for the first few weeks. Just the fact that preparation is much simpler than a cooked food diet, not to mention the way it will improve their health is a wonderful incentive to do well with it.

Within the first week of starting a raw food diet, most will begin to feel the positive effects to their health and wellbeing. That becomes incentive to stay on the diet knowing it is helping to somewhat detox your body and improving your health. After a while though you may feel that you are eating the same things repetitiously and may tire of it.

If you are planning on staying on a Raw Food diet for more than a few weeks, or even years, you will find it necessary to look for a variety of different recipes. You may be really gung ho at first about starting your raw food diet, but if you don't vary your foods or eat the same things all the time you may get bored and give up. You will find if you research and learn what nutrients come from what, you will be able to put together a balanced raw food diet that you can be happy with. If you don't, you may start craving unhealthy foods again, and you don't want that.

If you do your homework, you will find there are raw food diet recipes that can be substituted for much of the different types of cooked dishes that you now enjoy. You don't have to live on just salads! There are appetizers, main dishes, and a vast amount of desserts you can make. Smoothies made with whole fruits and green veggies are both delicious and packed with vitamins, minerals and nutrients essential to good health. You can make raw food diet bars that are pleasing and filling. You can even make vegan pizzas by using a nut base for the "dough".

You should start out your raw food diet with a plan to cover all of your nutritional needs. There are websites for people who want to track their success in losing weight, or just those who want to keep track of what they eat. These sites often offer a printable spread sheet so you can keep track of and monitor what you are eating and what nutrients you may be lacking in your raw diet. You can make a food diary and follow it for a couple of weeks until you are certain you are eating healthy in your raw diet. One such website is fitday.com. Check it out; you may be glad you did.

In the case where you find you are lacking certain nutrients, you'll have to do your homework and find a raw food source that contains what you lack. There will be some foods that contain a certain nutrient you lack that you don't care for. This is where the raw food diet recipes will help you. There may be a certain combination of the food you don't like, prepared with other foods you do like so you don't really taste the one you don't like. When there's a will, there's a way, so to speak.

Your nutritional needs may not be fully met on a raw food diet, so in that case, you may have to find another raw source. Raw food diets generally don't have enough calcium for our body's needs. What the Government recommends in the amount of calcium we require is not agreed by many. Some raw fooders believe that meat eaters lose absorption of calcium into their bodies due to a substance in animal products that blocks it. There is nothing however that confirms this claim.

You may find some die hard raw fooders who use raw dairy products to supplement the calcium they are lacking. This is very dangerous however, as salmonella, e-coli and other dangerous and often deadly bacteria's may be present due to the lack of pasteurization. Some may go outside the box for this and use a calcium supplement although not raw, safer. There are certain fruits and vegetables very high in calcium that could simply be eaten more of such as broccoli, cabbage, oranges, raw almonds to name a few. By adding extra of these raw foods in the daily diet you should cover the deficit.

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Vegan Parmesan Cheese

There are many delicious options if you're looking for a vegan parmesan cheese to adorn your pastas, top your pizzas and make your yummy food that much yummier. These dairy-free options can either be store-bought to homemade - and the homemade recipes just take 2-10 minutes, depending on which one you decide to make. I typically opt to make parmesan at home, since it's faster than running to the store!

However, sometimes running to the store is just that much more convenient if you're out and about, traveling or couldn't be bothered to lift a finger in the kitchen. Enter store-bought vegan parmesan!

Galaxy Nutritional Foods has a soy-based vegan parmesan alternative that is widely available in health food stores. It has a realistic texture to dairy parmesan, is cholesterol-free (like all vegan food!), very low in calories and fat, and is a half-decent source of calcium, too.

Parma! Vegan Parmesan is a raw alternative to the soy-based parmesan that Galaxy Nutritional Foods created. And the ingredient list is minuscule - only 3 ingredients, just like the two recipes I share below! You really can't go wrong with walnuts, nutritional yeast and sea salt. While it won't trick anyone into thinking it's dairy parmesan, it tastes great in its own right, and makes an excellent and healthy topping for pretty much anything.

Both products can be found in many health food stores, as well as online at stores like veganessentials.com.

Okay, so that covers the popular store-bought vegan parmesan brands. What about homemade?

For starters, I'm of the opinion that a good vegan parmesan only needs 3 ingredients. The two recipes I'll show you just have 3 ingredients each, and they each have very different but equally awesome flavor profiles.

Keep in mind that these incredibly simple recipes do not taste exactly like dairy parmesan. The point of these recipes isn't to mimic - it's to recreate the experience of eating parmesan, to give your bite of pasta that familiar salty-cheesy taste without containing any actual cheese.

The first recipe is great if you're a nooch (nutritional yeast) fan and aren't too keen on raw garlic. With the simple ingredient list of nutritional yeast, toasted sesame seeds and salt, it might seem like an odd trio for a parmesan recipe, but rest assured it's quite awesome. The nooch is what adds that "cheesy" taste, the toasted sesame seeds add body and depth, and the salt is what really makes it reminiscent of parmesan.

Vegan Parmesan - Version 1
1/4 c. white sesame seeds
2 tbsp. nutritional yeast flakes
1/4 tsp. salt

Heat the oven to 350 F and place the sesame seeds on a dry baking pan, toasting for 4-8 minutes until they turn golden. Watch them carefully so they don't burn! Alternately, you can toast the sesame seeds on a dry skillet on the stove top.

Process the toasted sesame seeds, nutritional yeast and salt in a food processor, processing just long enough to break the seeds down into smaller chunks, but not long enough to completely break it down into butter. You don't want a paste, you want a crumble. Serve as you would dairy parmesan!

The next parmesan recipe is great if you aren't a big nooch fan, or if your pantry simply lacks this vegan staple. Salt, brazil nuts and raw garlic give this parmesan a savory quality and lots of bite.

Though the brazil nuts make a great texture for this parmesan, feel free to swap them out for another type of nut, such as almonds or sesame seeds.

Vegan Parmesan - Version 2
1/2 c. brazil nuts
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 tsp. salt

Process all ingredients in a small food processor until combined but still crumbly. Do not over-process or you will have paste, not parmesan. Serve like you would dairy parmesan and enjoy!

I highly recommend attempting a vegan parmesan recipe in your own kitchen. It's such a simple process, and there's tons of wiggle room in the recipes themselves if you want to switch it up and do something different. Aside from tasting really yummy, these nut- and seed-based cheeses are nutritionally superior to the dairy kind, containing important minerals like selenium (from the brazil nuts), calcium, magnesium and copper, with no cholesterol or "bad fats". Good taste and good health can be in the same sentence together!

Allysia is a certified raw food chef and health enthusiast who enjoys concocting tasty vegan recipes in her tiny kitchen. You can find her at her website The Real Meal.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Allysia_Kerney

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Yummy Vegetarian Recipes For You

There are various vegetarian recipes that people can enjoy and relish for a long time. One of these is roasted vegetables and a vegetarian should prepare sweet potato, Yukon gold potatoes, red bell peppers and squash. Once they are combined in a large bowl, red onions are added. In a separate bowl, rosemary, thyme, olive oil, salt, vinegar and pepper are stirred together and are used to coat the vegetables. All of these are spread evenly on a large pan that is used for roasting. In a pre-heated oven, these vegetables should be stirred every ten minutes so the vegetables will be cooked thoroughly.

Vegetarian recipes should never be boring and pasta lovers can savor the taste of hearty vegetable lasagna. First, lasagna noodles are placed inside a hot pot and are boiled for ten minutes. Afterwards, they are drained and rinsed with cold water. Next, vegetables such as onions, garlic, mushrooms and green peppers are cooked and stirred in a large saucepan. Pasta sauce is added and is left to boil. After fifteen minutes, the heat is reduced and it is simmered for fifteen minutes. Next, eggs, ricotta and two cups of mozzarella cheeses are mixed together.

The oven is heated to 350 degrees and one cup of tomato sauce is greased at the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking dish. Meanwhile, one half of the lasagna noodles as well as the Ricotta mix; Parmesan cheese and sauce are layered together. All of these have to undergo a second layering and are topped with two cups of mozzarella cheese. Before this vegetable lasagna is served, it is baked and uncovered for at least forty minutes. This vegetarian meal is left to stand for fifteen more minutes and vegetarians can partake of this delicious meal afterwards.

One of the simplest vegetarian recipes is the easy cheesy cream of broccoli soup. All that is needed is a ten ounce broccoli that is frozen, a 10.75 ounce condensed cream of mushroom soup, eight ounces of processed cheese, one and one-fourth cups of milk and pepper and salt to taste. The broccoli is prepared and drained of excess water. Then, cream of mushroom soup is added as well as one can of milk. This is stirred in low heat. Cheese is then added and is stirred until it melts. To add flavor to this soup, salt and pepper are added.

One of the most unique vegetarian recipes is Carrot raisin salad. For this salad, three shredded large carrots are needed as well as a cup of raisins and one cup of walnuts. Additionally, two tablespoons of shredded coconut, one half cup of mayonnaise, two tablespoons of sour cream, one tablespoon of cider vinegar, and one half teaspoon of white sugar are added into the mix. To top it off, one-fourth celery needs to be chopped. All of these ingredients are combined in a medium bowl and whisked as well. The dressing is stirred into the carrot mixture. Finally, the salad is chilled before it is served.

Ralph Wilhelm-dude17111 is an online researcher and marketer.
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ralph_Wilhelm

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