Raw Food: A Complete Guide for Every Meal of the Day

I've been trying to figure out the best way to review this book. On the one hand, hard-core rawies maybe won't like the fact that the authors are not 100% raw all the time. But me? I like this. They may say that the recipes are so simple, so why write them into a raw cookbook? Yes, they are simple, but they are very different than those I've seen in other raw books, and I have, I swear, most every raw book published! I enjoy and get inspiration and ideas from them all. But taste and simplicity are the themes here.In addition to the great recipes, this book is pretty - nice layout, photos, etc., and honestly I am a sucker for pretty books. But again, I am enamored with the ease of these recipes. I think it's almost validation for how I eat and most usually approach the raw thing, meaning - in the summer and early fall and even spring it's much easier and feels more natural to eat a lot of raw. But I live in the Midwest, and in the winter, it is very counterintuitive for me to hunt for pineapple and mango to make a smoothie. I want root vegetables - sometimes cooked - and miso soup. And I won't apologize for that. (There are no cooked recipes in here and none for miso soup, I was just making a point.) I do love the raw recipes that use these root veggies (parsnip, celery root, sweet potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes for example)and I am totally all over the fruit porridges. I'm making my own versions with seasonal fruit and chia seeds, and although many may say it's just a smoothie with less liquid, OK - but I didn't think of it - and I love it. Especially the idea to add celery. My non-raw husband also loved the taco fixings, which we had last night.I think those new to raw will love these recipes. And those who truly need or want to put something together quickly. A lot of books say "quick" but there are often hidden steps or recipes within recipes that make this misleading. In this book, NONE of the recipes require dehydration, so save for the recommended nut soaking in some recipes, these are very easy to do. Over this Memorial Weekend, the book has been my go-to for some needed cleansing and "body resetting." I think this is a great book for beginners, as well as for those of us who are a little burned out on the more involved recipes many raw food books contain. Right now, this is the way I want to eat, and I'm so glad I found this at a local bookstore so I could see it for myself. I look forward to more raw food books by these two women! (Hope you're working on one!)

I LOVE this book. I'd probably have bought it for the photos alone. Most food prep books have a small handful of photos stuck in the center and that's it. This one has large, as in almost life-size, yummy photos on almost every page. It's almost a coffee table picture book.It's a really nice thing to be able to decide what you want to make by looking at a picture of it as opposed to guessing what the recipe will make. The BEST part is that the recipes are pretty darn simple and with ingredients you can find. Unlike anther raw food book I have where the recipes are complex and filled with expensive and hard to find ingredients. Who wants to have to mail order stuff to make dinner?Everything looks delicious, doesn't require exotic equipment, or ingredients. Plus, because the recipes are simple you can easily doctor them to your liking. Simple example is the seriously yummy apple pie. It's simple to make, but since I have dehydrator I chose to warm and soften the apples like a cooked apple pie. Yum!The downside of this book is that someone skimped and didn't put in an index! What were they thinking? The table of contents is sparse and no index?!? So, if you saw something a bit ago that you wanted to try or have some ingredients and want an idea of what to make with them, you either have to remember what meal or category it was in or flip through the book to find it. Not a hardship as the book is fun to just look through, but if they make a new version (please do, there's still room on my shelf), please include an index. Heck, I'd gladly download an errata with an index.I was going to give it 4 stars for the lack of index but I like the book so much that it probably deserves more than the allowed 5. This is a book worth having.

I love this book! I have just begun getting interested in Raw Foods and most of the books I've come across call for ingredients that are not in my local health-food store, or call for a dehyrator! This book is very user friendly, the photos are beautiful, and the recipes can be made with out a dehydrator or hard-to-find ingredients.I am not a %100 Raw Foodist, but I am trying to incorperate more raw foods into my diet and this book is so easy to use because the recipes are organized largely by mealtime so I can find something quick and easy to put together--NOW! All the recipes are simple and require very few appliances. Also, everything I've tried tastes amazing, even recipes I wasn't too sure about! I never thought I'd like a Papaya Carpaccio because I hadn't really liked papaya in the past, but the dish was SO yummy that I devoured the salad almost entirely myself! There's a recipe for a chocolate mousse made with cocoa powder, avocado, dates, and honey that is amazingly satisfying! And, the cashew-nut-sour cream cheese is simply cravable. These recipes and others take less time to put together than anything cooked. It's also good to know that I can eat something rich or sweet and feel good that all of them are made out of fruit, vegetables, and occasionally a tablespoon or so of a natural sweetener, like honey or agave syrup.The only thing that could be improved is the binding of the book, which looks like it may have the tendancy to un-do since it's a thick paperback.Other than that minor detail--buy this book and welcome to Raw Food Love!