It’s all over the papers: gas and electricity prices are rising, and rising fast. Which makes now a great time to think about eating more raw food! Yes, when you eat raw food you save money on fuel used for cooking. And you get more nutrition out of the food, which helps with the rising food prices.

You might not think of winter as a time to start eating salads, but raw food isn’t just about salads. Using chilli and other spices you can make raw food that makes you feel warm inside. Also, raw food doesn’t mean cold food; food should be at room temperature (not straight out of the fridge), but you can warm food up gently. Soup is a good example of this, you can make a raw soup and warm it gently, using much less energy than if you were cooking it. You shouldn’t let your food get over about 40 degrees C, think about body temperature (37 deg) if you have trouble remembering.

Here’s a spicy chilli sauce recipe you can use to heat up any raw dish:

Grind up coriander seeds and cumin seeds. Add some fresh chillis, garlic, flax oil (or other oil), garam masala (or other spices) and blend (or grind, probably could do this in a pestle and mortar if you chop the chillis first, and save even more energy).