1. Eat more fresh fruit and vegetables. Fruit and veg should be the cornerstone of any healthy diet. Try having some fruit for breakfast and/or a salad with your dinner.
2. Get some exercise outdoors every day. It doesn’t have to be too much, but try and do a little every day – a walk in the park, cycle to the shop, etc.
3. Replace junk food snacks with healthy snacks. Fresh fruit or dried fruit and nuts can make great snacks. Replace unhealthy chocolate with healthy raw chocolate.
4. Grow your own sprouts. Sprouts are highly nutritious, full of enzymes and are easy to grow in your kitchen. Some good seeds, beans and grains to try: sunflower seeds, rye, mung beans.
5. Learn how to make tasty healthy food. Get yourself a good raw recipe book, or go on a course. If you know how to make delicious food which is healthy, you are more likely to be able to stick to a healthy diet.

On Jan 10th, Jolita and myself are running an introductory raw food workshop. We’ll teach you how to make lots of healthy raw foods, including a raw lasagne and raw curry, along with healthy cakes and chocolate. A small group size allows time for your questions. Visit the Funky Raw website for more information about this class.

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Raw Food for Real People by Rod Rotondi is a new book which I like a lot, it covers everything from pizza to lasagne, hummus to falafel, the sections include crackers and bread, breakfast, appetizers, soups, entrées and deserts. Every recipes is described clearly plus variations and ideas for experimenting are given.  It also includes guest sections from Brian Clement, Robert Young and Gabriel Cousens plus general raw food prep techniques. You can read my full review of it here.

Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen is another book which looks amazing. I don’t currently own this book, but it is a book I want to get a some point, it covers all the standards including soups, raw cheeses, raw milks, lasagne, burgers,  pies, cakes, and more. More details on Amazon.

Raw Magic by Kate Magic Wood is another amazing book, again with full colour all the way through and beautiful photos. There are both sweet and savoury recipes but all of them contain superfoods. The first part of the book contains detailed information about the nutrition and uses of superfoods including maca, cacao, goji berries, purple corn, camu camu, suma, hemp and more. The recipes are divided into the following categories: dips and dressings; salads and savouries; crackers, breads and burgers; puddings & breakfasts; cakes & biscuits; sweets & spreads; chocolate; and drinks.

Raw The Uncook Book  by Juliano is an older favourite of mine, it is full colour all the way through and has some very inspiring photos of the food but the recipes can have long lists of ingredients and be a little complicated.

The book starts with “Learning to un-cook” which includes equipment, sprouting, juicing, etc. The recipes are divided into soups; salads; breads; snacks, appetizers & side dishes; sushi, pizza; main courses; desserts; drinks & smoothies; dressings, sauces, marinades & condiments; and the raw dairy (vegan).

And finally Evie’s Kitchen by Shazzie – it’s aimed at parents for making food for children, but adults seem to love it too. About half the book isinformation on raising raw chidren and the other half is recipes.

Shazzie covers everything you might need to know about consciously raising your child – natural birthing, breastfeeding, vaccinations, co-sleeping, communication and more. There is a whole chapter devoted to the nutritional needs of babies and children.

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I often get asked these kind of questions, including if shop bought soya milk or almond milk is raw. The answer is unfortunately no. To make soya milk, the soya beans are first cooked, and other milks are usually pasteurised.

The good news is that it is relatively easy to make you own milk with most kinds of nuts or seeds. Hemp milk is particularly nutritious with good quantities of omega 3 fatty acids, but it doesn’t keep too long. Almonds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and mature coconuts all make good milks.

Instructions to make your own milks:

1. Soak your nuts or seeds, preferably for about 8 hours, but less will do if you don’t have time. Mature coconut doesn’t need soaking.
2. Drain the nuts or seeds and rinse in clean water.
3. Add to blender with enough water to cover plus about half as much again. (The more water you add, the thinner the milk will be. The less water, the thicker the milk, but if you make it too thick, your blender might have difficulty blending.) If you are using coconut, you can use the coconut water which adds a delicious sweetness to the milk.
4. Blend until relatively smooth.
5. Optional for most nuts and seeds, necessary for hemp seeds: strain the milk through either a nut milk bag, cheesecloth or sieve.

If you prefer sweeter milk, you can add some dates or other soaked dried fruit or a few tablespoons of lucuma or other raw sweetener.

Once you have your milk, you can either drink it as it is, or use it to make a milkshake or smoothie.

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As you may already know, I follow a non-vegan raw diet. I regularly include a small piece of cheese made from unpasteurised goat or sheep milk in my diet and more recently I’ve started to include a very small amount of fish, this is tending to be once every couple of months. The reason I do this is that it seems to cover any nutritional deficiencies in my diet. I believe that cravings are a sign of nutritional deficiencies and when I eat a small amount of animal produce I no longer get any cravings.

No animals in the wild are vegan – even cows eat insects along with the grass they consume and our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, Bonobos, eat insects and occasionally small mammals. I actually think eating insects would be a lot more natural for us but this is difficult when living in the city but when I’m living in a situation closer to nature then I plan to try and replace the animal produce I currently eat with insects.

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Five years ago, Rod opened his first raw food restaurant, Leaf Organics, and has since opened several more raw restaurants. With that experience, he is well qualified to write this book in which you can learn how to prepare your own restaurant quality raw dishes. The book begins with Rod’s journey to raw food, which includes his experiences of living in Jerusalem and Sinai. Combined with the fact that Rod is from an Italian American background, this adds quite a variety of influences to his recipes.

Then there are sections on transitioning to a raw diet, guest sections from Brian Clement, Robert Young and Gabriel Cousens plus Rod teaches us how to use knives, how to open coconuts and how to grow sprouts, including a detailed sprouting chart.

Then come the recipes. From pizza to lasagne, hummus to falafel, the sections include crackers and bread, breakfast, appetizers, soups, entrées (what we call mains in the UK) and deserts. Every recipes is described clearly plus variations and ideas for experimenting are given. Finally, there is a section on feeding children a raw diet.

Just reading some of the recipes and looking at the colour photos makes my mouth water, I’m very much looking forward to trying some of them out.

185 pages, printed on 100% post consumer waste recycled paper. ISBN: 978-1-57731-673-2

You can buy this book now at Amazon.

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For starters we shared a “cheese tasing plate”. Three types of raw vegan cheese, bread, crackers, marmelade, apple slices and celery sticks, beautifully presented. The macadamia nut cheese was very much like dairy cheese whilest the two cashew cheeses were more like patés, all three were delicious.

For main course I had Pad Thai, couldn’t fault it, lots of flavour, well presented and a good portion size. Jolita had the lasagne which was also delicious. We also had a side dish of greens and flowers, although the dressing was far too salty.

By now we were both pretty full but wanted to try some desert, so we opted to share a coconut cheesecake. Again, it was delicious, very creamy with a raspberry sauce. Although for the price, the portion size was a little small.

If you’ve not been, I definitely recommend you give SAF a try. 152-154 Curtain Road, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 3AT. www.safrestaurant.co.uk

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Food for the day:

For breakfast I had a mix of sprouted seeds (hemp, sunflower and pumpkin) with soaked goji berries, figs and apricots

Throughout the day I had about 5 kakis, 8 satsumas, a few dates and cacao beans plus an orange and some carob pods I found along the way.

When I got back I had a custard apple and then a large salad with wild greens I picked during the walk, courgette, olives, a tomato, some fresh dulse, sprouted rye and some onion basil and olive cracker.

More photos on Flickr.

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I’m in Tortosa in Tarragona Province and I was very supprised to see Booja Booja raw ice-cream for sale on an organic stall in the market. There were two organic stalls, one with fresh fruit and veg where I got some delicious cherimoyas (custard apples). The fruit here is just divine, eating lots of kakis (persimmon) at the moment. Tomatoes with lots of flavour, so different to the UK!

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The individual nuts were falling out of the outer shells onto the ground. I picked up a nut and found that unlike most nuts it was very easy to open with my finger nails. The nut looks a bit like a pine nut, and surprisingly it also tasted a bit like a pine nut.

I’ve done a little research and found that beech nuts (also called beechmast) are high in tannins and shouldn’t be eaten in large quantities. Soaking them for 8 hours or more and then rinsing them removes some of the tannins and probably makes them easier to digest.

We opened and then soaked the ones we collected and made pesto with them, not quite as creamy as when made with pine nuts but still delicious.

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