Start with what you know - Delicious Tomato Mango Salsa

Today I would like to mention a very very popular raw recipe that most people already know.  Basic tomato salsa!  There are as many variations of this recipe as there are people who make it.  It has always been one of my favorites and one of the very first raw recipes that I felt totally confident making. 

Sometimes I make this and don't even have anything with it.  I just eat it like a soup.  I have also spooned this into the center part of a romaine lettuce leave and eaten it kind of like a taco.  Makes a great side dish to.  I use the same basic ingredients but change it up to keep it interesting.  Something that I have found to be a very delicious addition to the basic mix is mango!  Yum.   Here is a picture of my pretty salsa, and the recipe.  I added some flax oil to this recipe to boost my daily intake of essential omega 3's.

Delicious tomato mango salsa!

Three large tomatoes

Half of one very hot Jalapeno, minced

One handful of cilantro, sliced into pieces

Juice from one Lime

One red onion cut very small

Sea Salt to taste

One Milano Mango, diced

One Avocado, diced

One tablespoon of flax oil

The question of the day is:  what kind of salsa do YOU like?  what could you add to it to make it extra yummy to you?

Purpose of this blog and the Jalapeno Nacho Cheese Salad

I have so many ideas swimming around in my head.  So much experience and know how that has been accumulated over these three years since I started my raw journey.  With this in mind, one of the first things I would like to state is that raw will look different to each individual!  The purpose of this blog is show what it looks like for one person, me, so that I can share with my readers my personal triumphs and challenges.  Hopefully you will be able to identify with these challenges and say, "Hey, me to, I've felt like that."  Even though I believe myself to be a complete snowflake, unique in every single way, I also feel that no matter what I'm going through, there is someone out there who has gone through or felt a very similar way.  The thing that makes my experience mine is simply that it is my experience.  i.e.  Have you experienced this? ...yes, but have you experienced this as ME?  Ah ha!  There it is folks.   So as I move along here, please take everything with that proverbial grain and make the experience yours.  Nothing ever has to be perfect, including you, because as some like me believes, you already are.  Awesome.  Now I'm questioning weather I think I'm saying this to other people or myself.  A little of both is a pretty good answer.  Ok, so back to the raw foods.

Here is a tip - I buy these clear plastic squirt bottles to have on hand.  They are a dollar and some change each.  I use them for easy storage and use of liquids such as: dressings, nut cream toppings, dessert toppings, nama shoyu, flax oil, etc.  I usually have one or two dressings, maybe a sour cream topping, nacho cheese topping on hand for easy access and use.  I just pull it out and squirt.  No opening of lids, dirtying a spoon, replacing the lid.  Just use one hand to pull it out and squirt some on. This is a pretty big tip because one of the most common resistance points that I hear people tell me about raw food is that they can't do it because it takes too long.  Which is a really good lead in to the next paragraph.


Today I made myself a delicious raw plate from leftovers I had in the fridge. I cut up a small head of lettuce and put a couple of scoops of a sunflower seed pate.  The pate is flavored to taste like refried beans and has chipotle chili and sundried tomatoes in it.   I topped this with two squirt bottle toppings I had sitting in the fridge: sour cream, and jalepeno nacho cheese.  I squirted these liberally over the lettuce and sun seed pate.  When this was done I decided to give the dish a little more color and texture so I quickly chopped one tomato and a little bit of red onion and placed it in the center of the plate over the pate and lettuce.  There!  This took less than 7 minutes to put together, including rinsing out the colander I washed the lettuce in, and the cutting board and knife I used on the tomato.

Here is my jalapeno nacho cheese recipe:

One cup of cashews (soaked for one hour)
Juice from one lemon
4 tbs of red star nutritional yeast
One chopped red bell pepper
Pinch of salt
1/2 to 1 Jalapeno to taste
2 tbs of Agave (optional)

The very beginning of my journey and the spicy thai salad

This blog has been a long time in the making.  First of all I want to thank you for being here!  I have accumulated some really wonderful and valuable knowledge and experience regarding raw foods over the past three years.  so I'm very excited to finally tell my story here!  Please join me as I tell all about my raw food journey, the ups and downs, the questions, the answers, the trials, and yes, even the errors :)

I had had a couple of raw food run ins a few times in my life before I actually decided to dive in and work it for myself on a daily basis.  My first real commitment to working the raw food experience was in January of 2008.  I had just moved into a studio apartment in the Haight/Ashbury district of San Francisco.  It would just be me and my cat living here.  It really felt like a new beginning to I decided to make that energy work for my diet as well.  I had accumulated a few books with raw recipe's and advice to start with.  I remember there were lots of ingredients and equipment that I was unfamiliar with, some of which I didn't even know where to get.  I had a lot of learning to do!  I decided to start with Almond mylk and green smoothies.

I started having green smoothies in the morning.  At first I used green smoothie recipes.  It took longer because I would actually measure the ingredients.  I admit that it did take a little while before I gained experience about what tasted good together and what didn't and in what proportions.  Now I can just get an idea and throw stuff together and know that it will turn out awesome.

The almond mylk is a staple that I highly recommend starting with.  At first starting raw can be hard because, well for me, I have an uncontrollable urge to snack.  It was very convenient to go to the fridge and pull out a ready made cool and filling healthy beverage.  This really hit the spot for me many a time.  Also, Almond as well as other nut mylks have so many options for variation!  I experimented quite a bit with adding different fruit flavors to my mylks, as well as vanilla beans, spices like cinnamon and nutmeg, and even cacao!  I have now been making it for a few years and usually have some on hand in the fridge.  I guess that experience has made this process effortless for me.  You can get here to. (if that is what you are looking to do)   Almond mylk can be substituted in many cooked food recipe's to.  So if you are just starting out and still in conversion this is a perfect way to get the ball rolling. 

Some of the green smoothies called for this stuff called Kale.  huh?  It is this course leafy green stuff.  At first I can say I didn't like it, but it is a really good marker of my relationship with raw foods.  At first I could only stand it in smoothies and only if the fruit completely outweighed the taste of it.  It was hard for me to imagine that people actually eat this stuff as salad with only a little dressing on it.  I certainly was not there yet.  A little later I learned to make this massaged kale salad.   Basically the kale would be dressed in lemon juice kneeded until it went limp and the texture resembled cooked kale.  I really liked this salad.  Later I learned of a salad recipe where the the kale was just dressed and tossed...no massaging.  I was getting closer to just eating the kale right off the plant.  Currently, I have such a love for kale I kinda put it in everything...well almost ;)  I have discovered that my body really craves this stuff.  I think it is because kale is so nutrient dense.  I have learned to prepare kale in a lot of ways and add it to many dishes.  Seriously, Love the stuff and if you had told me I would have felt this way about it when I first started.  I would have made a sour face at you and asked Kale??  No way, ick.  Anyway, that's my experience.  Hope you find it valuable.   I will surely be describing some really wonderful kale dishes in future blogs.

Here is what I made today.  I ran one green cabbage, one red cabbage, and two carrots through the shred option in my food processor.  The photo to the left is the result.  Made quite a bit! 
 







Yesterday I made a creamy spicy thai dressing.  I added some parsley leaves and avocado to my cabbage/carrot base and tossed it first in a base dressing of agave/vinegar.  Then topped it with the thai dressing!  This dish is very delicious, filling and was super easy to make.  Not to mention I have so much.  Lots of cabbage AND about two cups of the dressing!  I will have this around for at least a couple of days.  See!  Raw foods don't have to be time consuming.

There are some other things I could have added to this dish like: cashew pieces, pepper, diced pineapple, pecans, pretty much anything.  I will add things to this salad as I eat different servings to change it up.  Ha ha, this is my evolving plate of healthy food.  

Well this concludes my first blog.  I hope you are excited to see more!  Please check back!