Raw Vegan Condiments

Some easy-to-make dips and sauces for the whole family!  Raw and vegan, keeping the enzymes and nutrients intact.  Great for salads, sandwiches, and more.  We rarely keep track of exact measurements of anything, but in general, we start off blending the nuts or seeds with the veggies slowly, and add more items in as we go.  The Vita-Mix works very well for blending.  Add more oil, vinegar, lemon or water to water down or make more creamy.  Nuts and seeds may be soaked before blending.  A fun project to make with the kids, practicing measuring, harvesting, preparing. Play around with ratios and suprise the whole family!  Excellent books with raw vegan recipes found here.

Sunny Cauliflower Dressing

Cauliflower
Sunflower Seeds
Raw Apple Cider Vinegar
Braggs Liquid Aminos
Braggs Olive Oil
Pepper
Fresh Parsley and Dill (or dried)
Coriander
Garlic
Onions or Green Onions
Water
Fresh Squeezed Lemon or Lime

Red Bell Pepper Dip

Red Bell Pepper

Raw Cashews

Onion

Garlic

Raw Apple Cider Vinegar

Braggs Liquid Aminos or Nama Shoyu Soy Sauce

Braggs Olive Oil

Pepper

Fresh Parsley

Coriander

Cumin

Dash of Chili Pepper

Water

Fresh Squeezed Lemon

Olive Tapenade

Olives

Walnuts

Onion

Garlic

Raw Apple Cider Vinegar

Braggs Liquid Aminos or Nama Shoyu Soy Sauce

Braggs Olive Oil

Pepper

Fresh Parsley

Coriander

Cumin

Fresh Squeezed Lemon

Raw Food Resources

We get a lot of questions about raw foodism...what is it? How do we do it? Where is there more information?

Raw food is essentially eating whole foods in their natural form. Being a raw food vegan means that fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and sprouted grains are eaten. There are a lot of "gourmet" raw food meals, but the easiest prep meals are often the best! Juicing and smoothies make great drinks, as well as natural spring water. Eating raw food is healthy for us and good for the planet.

Shopping and food prep is much quicker, and the health benefits are astounding. There are many wonderful books with recipes and information to get you started. Alisa Cohen's book is one of our favorites. We have a list of our favorite books that are available through Amazon listed at the bottom of our blog. Raw food prep classes are offered throughout the world, and raw restaurants can be found in many major cities.

Great tools to have in the kitchen: Vita-Mix or other high-speed blender, Juiceman or other juicing machine, citrus juicer, chopper, good set of knives, dehydrator, seed sprouter. These are not all necessary, but are nice to have on hand.

We highly recommend Purely Delicious magazine. It's a wonderful resource for the whole family! Click on this link to subscribe or take a quick peek at the current issue.

The Raw Food Coach (click on her picture below for more info.) is the perfect place to start if you need more information, e-books, classes and inspiration.

Raw Juicing and Smoothies!

Mommy is a raw food vegan, so we eat lots of fresh fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds in our family. Joey is a vegetarian. All of the boys (Daddy, too!) are omnivores. We help with juicing about every other day. We either make our famous "vruit", a smoothie, or we do fresh citrus juicing (take a looks at these beautiful oranges!). This helps us get our vitamins and minerals naturally, even when we don't feel like eating salads all the time. It's also a fun way to learn the names of the fruits/veggies, count, cut, and help out with preparation. We figure out which ones are roots, which ones are fruits, and which ones grow on vines/bushes/trees. We look for spirals and patterns and we talk about seeds and growing. Our rabbit, Rabbee gets all of the leftover goodies from our juicer!

We purchase most of our fruits and veggies from natural food stores, the organic sections at conventional grocery stores, and farmers' markets. Once per week we visit the Sacramento Waldorf School where they sell their bio-dynamic, organic leafy greens and other seasonal fruits and veggies. Their kale and collards are up to 3 feet in length! Yummy.

Syrendell Vruit

1. Juiceman juicer or other high-quality juicer machine, bowl, wisk, glasses

2. Slice and wash 2 apples, 1 beet (if you leave out the beet, the color of the drink will be more green instead of pink/purple)

3. Wash leaves of kale, spinach, collard greens, chard, dandelion greens, watercress or other dark, leafy greens

4. Wash a handful of parsley or sprouts (alfalfa, clover, broccoli)

5. Wash and lightly scrub with your hands 3 carrots

6. Run all items through the juicer

7. The mixture will land in a bowl. Wisk the mixture.

8. Pour into glasses and drink as is, or add a bit of orange juice to taste!


Syrendell Chunky Monkey Smoothie

1. High speed blender, such as Vita-Mix

2. Place chunks of 3 frozen bananas inside of mixer (when your bananas start to turn soft, cut them up and put in a container in the freezer to save for future smoothies)3. Add 2-4 tablespoons of raw cacao powder

4. Add 2-3 tablespoons of raw organic almond butter (not roasted)

5. Pour chocolate or vanilla almond milks or vanilla soy milk until the blender is 3/4 full (even better, make your own raw almond milk!)

6. Blend on low, then speed up the blender until the consistency is right

7. Serve in glasses and enjoy right away!