[.ca] Raw: The Uncook Book: New Vegetarian Food for Life (ISBN 0060392622)

From Amazon.com:
"Gourmet raw cuisine"--if that sounds like an oxymoron, you'll be amazed by the creativity of the recipes in this book. Every food is "live" (uncooked) in these vegetarian recipes from Juliano, the raw-food guru of Los Angeles. Juliano believes that fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, beans, and seeds in their rawest and purest form are the most nourishing foods. If your imagination stops at alfalfa sprouts and grated carrots, hold onto your cutting board. Juliano's recipes include Butternut Squash Soup, New Moon Fruit Stew, Thai Green Papaya Salad, Living Buckwheat Pizza Crust, Mango Essene Bread, Mock Salmon Sushi, Raw Spring Rolls, seven varieties of burritos, nine varieties of pizza, and nine unusual smoothies. Desserts? Try EZ Pudding (made with maple syrup, avocados, and carob powder) or Cashew Gelato (cashew butter, maple syrup, and almonds, served frozen). There are also condiments, dressings, and sauces, and plenty of information about preparing raw foods, including how to soak and sprout beans, grains, seeds, and nuts. It may seem like cheating, but a food dehydrator is permitted to "bake" pizza, cookies, and breads. It blows hot air, but never heats foods hotter than 120°F, which, claims Juliano, "allows all the delicate nutrients that are usually burned out of cooked foods to remain intact." Raw is filled with gorgeous color photos of the foods in all their vibrant colors and a number of photos of the vibrant Juliano (not in the raw). "Before you know it," says Juliano, "you'll be Raw and loving it." --Joan Price

Are you REALLY into RAW? Than this is for you...:
I am SOOO glad I got this book from the library FIRST! I recommend that. I am a Michigan mom that is into healthy foods, where organic food is quite costly. I'm a health educator with nutrition as a major and I am always interested in new and exciting ways to be healthy, prepare vegetables, and healthy food. BUT....JUST in case you are not totally engrossed in RAW food yet, I recommend you borrow it. I read about this book, and its author from a Fitness magazine I read. It sounded GREAT! I thought it would be a great book to get recipes for my juicer and learn some other healthy recipes as well. Well, I sat down to read/look at the book, it has beautiful pictures and text, and some fun sounding recipe titles etc. But I soon realized that this was not going to work for me and my family. I have 2 kids ages, 5 and 3, and a husband that is healthy and fit, but would not touch most of this stuff with a 10 foot pole. I would be putting a LOT of time and preparation into stuff that only I would probably eat. This type of dieting is a bit over the top. And may be fun once in awhile. It would be a fun trip to his restaurant, to have SOME ONE ELSE make it. Juliano is as interesting looking as his food. But unless you are totally committed to this way of life, you may be totally flustered by the amount of time and energy it will take to sprout, dehydrate, chop and chop, and prepare more than half the stuff in this book. The list of ingredients is also daunting to say the least. Anyway, I suggest you get the book from the library first, and see if this is what you really want. It saved ME some money! If you are a single vegan, or have kids and a spouse that can handle all the vegan ingredients, and they don't mind you living in the kitchen preparing, and/or if organic produce is readily available and affordable to you, than this book is for you. I applaud the healthy ideas, colorful foods, and interesting recipes, but be sure you have the time, or care enough to spend your time on this.

Some of the best raw recipes I've tried:
I've purchased many raw food "cook"books over the last year -- and this one has the best-tasting, most delicious recipes yet! Yes, some of the recipes are complicated, but save those for a Saturday afternoon and a special dinner. The salad and soups are divine, and Juliano's recipe for raw hummus (as well as his flax seed cracker recipe) is out of this world! If you're serious about raw food, and want to evolve out of salads and fruit smoothies -- this a great book to help you do it.

Response to "Meat Loaf" Review:
The person who wrote about the "Meat loaf" recipe must not have read the recipe: it calls for a total of only 1/2 cup olive oil. There are also a lot of nuts in it but 1. nuts are healthy and 2. you're not supposed to eat the meat loaf everyday! There are plenty of light recipes here as well. It's like taking ANY cookbook and pointing to the dessert section and saying "Ah ha! look at all this fatty food! What a bad cookbook." Give me a break. I like this cookbook. It's gorgoeus, inspiring and the recipes are good.

Delicious approach made simple:
I can't recommend this book highly enough. I was on the way to raw food when I bought this book, so I was sprouting and already had the dehydrator. However although I was preparing raw meals using recipes I got off the web, they weren't always the most tasty and they seemed to be settling into a pattern of boring repetition. I was feeling doubtful about maintaining this approach although I felt the health benefits of it. Juliano's cookbook has opened my eyes to the potential of raw food. This book is full of delicious recipes that are easy to make. Raw soups take seconds to blend up. Having raw condiments on hand for new flavours. Yes the dehydrating takes up to 24 hours, however unlike ordinary cooking where you have to watch the food and check it all the time, dehydrating just goes on in the background while I get on with my life - and because I can cook in bulk, the breads stay fresh and tasty for weeks. The detail and the photos in the book are great, and so is the flexible approach where if one ingredient or three are not available then we are encouraged to improvise. This book is the most innovative, practical and delicious cook book I have ever used - and I use this all the time now. Highly recomended.

Recipes look good, but seem complicated:
If you are new to raw foods this isn't the book. I asked for this for Christmas, and received it but haven't used it yet. The recipes seem very time consuming and, if you don't have a good dehydrator, the kind that has a temperature gauge, then that is another investment you need for most of the recipes. I have the cheap Mr. Coffee dehydrator, that actually cooks the food at high tempteratures, therefore not making the food raw any more. If you have the funds to buy a nice dehydrator and the time to prepare the foods, then this would probably be a good book as the recipes look delicious!