Two Creamy Pasta Recipes Made Fully Raw!!!

So for this post, I've decided to share a couple raw pasta recipes that I have found to be awesome!  I'm including the link to the sites that inspired my cooking, but with each of these, I made a few minor modifications.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Creamy Alfredo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQJzK4P8N5U

I am super excited about this recipe for so many reasons! First of all this is so light and fresh and yet still tangy and creamy. This is definitely going to be a recipe to keep for many future uses.  When I was looking for a good raw Alfredo sauce recipe, I was getting disappointed that they all contained a large volume of cashews.  I LOVE cashews, but I was really hoping to find one that wasn't so heavy on the fat.  Thank you Kristina and Fully Raw for coming to my rescue!!! 

One of the recipes I found online used butternut squash noodles, instead of the zucchini noodles I've been using.  I had a little butternut squash sitting on my counter that I have been trying to figure out how to use raw, so I decided that this was the dish.


To make the squash noodles, I used a hand held peeler.  These will be very wide noodles, which is great with Alfredo sauce. :)  The recipe with the butternut squash noodles suggested to soak them in olive oil to soften them.  Again, I am trying to stay away from high fat, so I soaked them in water.  They were very al dente, but very tasty. 

Before I made the sauce, I made the cauliflower "cheese" topping. This is very simple.  I put a couple small cauliflower florets into the food processor and let it go until it had the consistency of grated Parmesan cheese. Then I set it aside until I needed it.  I also sliced my cherry tomatoes.

 The sauce was very simple: 3 whole zucchinis, 1/4 cup pine nuts, 1 clove of garlic, and the juice from one lemon.  The original recipe called for some fresh herbs that I didn't have on hand, and it worked out just as well.  I ended up adding more ingredients to the sauce after I took the picture.  The clove of garlic was a little big and my zucchinis were pretty small.  The lemon just tied it all together.  Make sure and taste your sauce and modify for your taste buds.

I put all these beautiful ingredients in the blender and pureed until it was a sauce consistency.  I did have to scrape the sides down a few times.  Also, when it first started blending, I was afraid that it was looking too dry.  Just let it go, when the zucchinis break down they make the sauce nice and moist.

At this point the dish is ready for assembly.  Pour your sauce over the noodles.  If you would rather, the original recipe calls for zucchini noodles.  They are awesome as well.  I tried to mix the sauce with a spoon, but my fingers worked much nicer for this task.

Once you have your noodles coated in the sauce, its time to add your toppings.  I added a nice heaping pile of cauliflower cheese and lots of yummy fresh tomatoes.  For a little color I topped it off with some fresh thyme and parsley from my garden.  Right now, for me, this is a two serving recipe.

Using the butternut squash as noodles, this entire recipe comes out to only 548 calories!  If you only eat half as a meal, like I did, then that is only 248.  Not bad!!!  If you use zucchini instead of the butternut squash for noodles then the total comes to 461 calories for the single recipe.  (I calculated based on 5 large zucchini instead of the butternut squash and 3 small zucchini I used.)

Creamy Avocado Pasta

http://ohsheglows.com/2011/01/31/15-minute-creamy-avocado-pasta/


This recipe was super easy to make raw, as the only modification I had to make was in substituting the pasta and the olive oil.  Now the olive oil is really a preference thing, getting cold pressed olive oil is still technically raw, but I am striving to have fully unprocessed ingredients in my raw cooking.

I used my mandolin to slice my noodles from a zucchini and a squash.  I don't have a spiralizer yet, but if I continue to choose this lifestyle, I might be getting one soon in my future. :)  For now my mandolin does the trick.

For the sauce, I put all the ingredients into my food processor and blended away.  Now I substituted pine nuts for the olive oil.  My sauce was a little thick, so I added a few teaspoons of water to help it blend smooth and creamy.  If you choose to use the oil, then don't worry about the water.  I would advise against any milk, even non-dairy, as the lemon would not mix well with it.

To finish this dish, toss your noodles with your sauce.  I had to use my hands to get the noodles well coated.  This recipe is HUGE and not many calories.  My version was only 376 calories.  If you change any other ingredients, the calories may also change. 

Raw Challenge Day 10, January 14, 2014

 

This morning I started out with a breakfast of awesome berries and oranges.  I had been having smoothies with bananas, oranges and berries.  However, I learned this week that it is really not good to mix bananas with acid fruits and berries.  They have very different water contents, which means that even when they are blended together they digest at different rates.  This can cause gas and discomfort.  After two days of being more careful about the food combinations I'm working with for breakfast, I have noticed a huge difference. Yay!

For lunch I enjoyed a monomeal of oranges.  I LOVE how amazing everything smells when you peel that many oranges at one time.  The kitchen at my office smells amazing and fresh. :)

For dinner, I had found a recipe for fully raw fettuccine Alfredo.  The only substitution I made was that I used raw butternut squash instead of making zucchini noodles.  This was merely because I had the butternut squash and have been interested to give it a try.

The noodles were very al dente, but apart from that, this was amazing!  I will be posting the recipe very soon!  I have always been a huge fan of tomatoes with a cream sauce, so when this recipe called for them I was in love. 

I have to admit that I did not stay fully raw today.  My husband barbecued chicken again, and I was not as strong as last week in resisting.  It was delicious, but I noticed that again, I felt dehydrated very quickly and my stomach does not feel well. 

So my lessons learned so far:

1. Monomeals are awesome and help me with reducing my cravings.

2. Keeping a close watch on the volume of nuts I use as meat substitutes is important for minimizing the fat I consume.

3. Proper food pairing is crucial for success!  And it miminizes discomfort.

4. I need more sleep than I had previously thought.

5. Water is essential and staying hydrated is a huge priority.

6. The more fruit I eat, the happier I am.  After years of being an emotional eater, it is amazing to eat to my fill and feel amazing instead of guilty. :)

7. Even though they aren't following me on this journey, my family has been making changes to their diets as well and are reeping the benefits.

8. Just because I allow myself to have a food that isn't fully raw, I am not a failure.  I am making a choice and then I get right back to eating fully raw.

Raw Challenge Day 9

I cannot begin to describe how nice it was getting back on my raw diet.  Just a few days of not following fully raw and I could feel a huge difference in my body and even in how I was thinking.  When I'm eating fully raw, I feel better hydrated and significantly more satisfied.  I don't have any cravings and my appetite is much more in check.

The first couple days were a little tough, with still craving my old foods, but with every day of this challenge, I am feeling more committed to this lifestyle. 

I kept foods very simple today, as I was getting back in the habbit.  I had a smoothie for breakfast and a monomeal for lunch.  Again, by the time I got to dinner, I just wasn't very hungry.  So I chose sleep instead. 

In the morning I went for a short run.  I ran two miles and walked a half mile.  I haven't been able to run since before Christmas, so I was very excited!

Tomorrow I'm planning to make a new recipe I've found for dinner and I am super excited about it!! 

Raw Challenge Day 6, 7, and 8

I had to take a break from the challenge this weekend.  My little sister got engaged!!!!!  So we had lots of celebrating and wedding planning to work on. 

Even with the break, each morning I started the day with a mountain of beautiful fruit! 

Having been raw for almost a full week and then having alcohol and cooked/prepared food, I noticed a few things.

The first big thing I noticed was how quickly I dehydrated.  Last week I was not drinking water like I usually do, because my diet was providing me with my needed water.  Just a few glasses a day were plenty.  When I was eating cooked food, I felt dehydrated almost immediately.  I really couldn't drink enough water to make me feel better.

My old food cravings are gone.  We went to the bridal extravaganza, and although I did enjoy tasting cake and all the amazing foods brought by the different catering companies, I had significantly more self control than I did, prior to going fully raw.  I even went so far as to forget to eat a few times this weekend.  On Sunday, I completely forgot to eat after I finished my breakfast, until it was after 6pm.

And lastly, I cannot forget to eat all day.  I got really cranky and then overate when I finally did eat Sunday night.  It is really important to not skip meals.

So I was worried that taking a little break from fully raw was going to break my dedication to this challenge and lifestyle and it has actually done the opposite.  I love that I had a fun weekend and am equally excited to be back to my fully raw lifestyle.  My relationship with food has definitely changed, and I even enjoyed what I was eating more than I did before this challenge.  I knew it was special, and I truly appreciated everything that I ate.

Congratulations again to my amazing sister and her awesome fiance!!!  I am so happy for you!




And just for fun, here is a picture of me with a knight at the bridal extravaganza!

Raw Challenge Day 5 January 9, 2014

This morning I was still feeling a bit lethargic.  Now that I'm the only one in my house on the challenge, I am ready to take myself even further down the path of less processed.  I also decided to start tracking my calories.  Hopefully I can use this as a means of tracking my progress, and making sure I am eating enough calories that my body isn't starving.

This morning my smoothie was made with 1 banana, 1 large orange, 4 ripe kiwi fruit, half a pint of strawberries, and 2 teaspoons of raw unprocessed honey.  I made sure to get the raw organic honey, but I'm not sure if a purist would count this as ok.  As I'm still new to this, I am going to count it for now.  My smoothie came to 484 calories and was 92.5% carb, 1.5% fat, and 6% protein.  This definately falls under the minimum of 80% carb and 10% max for fat and protein.  I added enough ice that my smoothie made 64 ounces, just 2 glasses of ice.  However, it falls well below the suggested 800 calories for breakfast.  I'm not quite sure how I'm going to even come close to that!

On day 1 and 2 it took me most of the morning to finish a 32 ounce smoothie.  This morning I was able to finish my first 32 ounces on the drive to work and had finished the second before 8:30 am. 

During the morning, I was really hungry, so I had a few glasses of water and two bananas.  Bringing my total calories for the day to 694. 

For lunch I experienced my first "monomeal".  This is where you have very minimal variety in the food.  So I ate all the oranges I could.  Turns out my current limit is 4, which amount to 348 calories.  I was amazed with how refreshed and satisfied I felt after eating.  Unfortunately, again I did not succeed in getting in the suggested calories for my meal.  My stomach is just not used to this volume of food. 

I felt really hungry pretty early today.  So by 5 I was ready for dinner.  A friend shared an awesome recipe for pasta with an advacado sauce (instead of heavy cream).  So I decided to give it a shot making it fully raw.  I replaced the pasta with zucchini and squash noodles.  This was super easy and really yummy!  The entire recipe makes an huge bowl of pasta, easily for two people, and the whole recipe has only 376 calories.

I sat down with my enormous bowl of pasta, ready for a pig out session, and was pretty amazed at how quickly I slowed down.  I didn't get through half of the pasta before I was done.  So today, eating as much as I can, I struggled to get 1,230 calories for the day.  Based on normal diets, this is good for trying to lose weight.  But with the raw vegan, I'm a little nervous that I'm not getting enough calories to keep me going, but I'm feeling good so far.  Today my food breakdown was 88% carbs, 5% fat, and 7% protein.  I hit the 80-10-10 balance!! :)

I have been enjoying learning more about this lifestyle.  I was watching a video from Kristina (http://www.fullyraw.com/) and she was talking about how important it is to replenish energy (carbohydrates), as that is what we are using all day.  It reminded me of biology in college.  I remember studying how plants are able to take light from the sun and convert it to energy.  In the animal world, the herbivores are getting fresh energy from the plants they eat.  The carnivores get their energy from eating animals that eat plants. 

I have always been a big advocate for fresh and not processed.  I love taking very simple ingredients when I cook.  If I am going to make something, I don't use prepackages sauces and powders.  I would rather make them myself.  I had never thought of applying this line of thinking to the energy I was getting from my food.  By eating only plants, I am cutting out nature's middle man.  I'm not relying on the middle animal that has preprocessed the energy from the sun, I am going straight to the source.

Raw Challenge Day 4 January 8, 2014

After facing so much hunger on Day 3, I tried to over compensate by making sure I had lots of extra fruits on hand.  And this plan definately helped me!  I ended up not being able to finish everything I had brought to work.  By the time it was time for dinner, I couldn't eat any more. So I opted out.

Day 4 ended up being too much for Solly.  He made it until dinner and after we talked about it, we decided that it was best for him to stop the challenge.  In order to get enough calories on this diet, it is necessary to eat a very large volume of fruits and veggies.  He just wasn't able to eat as much as he needed.  He really didn't want to stop the challenge, but it was the right decision for him for right now.

What has been awesome about the past four days is how much more willing he is to try new foods.  I saw him eat zucchini, summer squash, and more fruit than I can write down.  He was transformed from a relatively selective eater, to a fearless adventurer.  And I could not be more proud that he was able to last almost four full days.  This guy made it through three lunches at school with raw food.  His strength and dedication at 7 years old has been an inspiration to me. 

Days 3 and 4 have definately been more of a struggle on this challenge for me.  Knowing my son was able to hang in there has been giving me the strength to keep going.  But right now my energy is down, and I am extremely tired.  So I've been trying to get in bed early to get lots of sleep.

I've really been surprised with the huge variety of opinions in what is raw and what isn't; what is good to eat and what isn't.  As hard as it is to consider, I really am leaning more towards 80-10-10.  I've been finding out that a lot of the foods I thought were good and raw are not as good as I thought.  And not that they are all bad, but certainly not for everyday or every week use.

Thank you to everyone that has been so supportive so far!  I am very fortunate to have awesome family and friends!  Day 5 here I come!

Raw Challenge Day 3 January 7, 2014

Today is the first day that I am straight up hungry.  Hungry like I just ran for an hour or two, only I didn't.  So, today I have definately had more water than in the past two days.  And I have made sure to have lots of yummy fruits handy to keep me from straying.  I keep reminding myself how excited and dedicated Solly is to this challenge.  I cannot let that awesome little guy down. 

I've been doing more ready on the raw lifestyle and was a little surprised to learn that being a "raw vegan" doesn't mean you have the same diet restrictions as the next "raw vegan".  Being from the south and spending most of my childhood in Texas, there was a time in my life that vegeterian and vegan were very foreign and unappealing concepts.  So for me to find out that there are more than one raw vegan diet plans out there was pretty mind blowing.  What is even more amazing is how completely different the approach to the raw vegan lifestyle the two books I picked up are.

The 80-10-10 diet is seriously hard core.  Even at the early stage in my research and development with the raw vegan lifestlye, I have major respect for anyone that can fully commit to this lifestyle.  The second book I picked up is a much more appoachable concept.  At least I find it to be.  The book is filled with amazing yummy recipes that give a nod to foods I love, and make the transition to a raw lifestyle easier and less scary.

The best example of the difference I can give is my raw lasagna.  There are five components to this dish, raw zucchini thinly sliced, tomatoes sliced, raw pesto, raw marinara and raw cheese.  The zucchini and tomatoes are simply themselves, nothing added; the pesto is full of walnuts, which are full of fats; the raw cheese is full of pinenuts, which are also full of fat; and the marinara has olive oil in it, again FAT.  Now these are all good, healthy, natural fats.  Which beats the heck out of having something deep fried or wrapped in bacon; I'm not debating that fact.  But when you are thinking about a healthy balance, this meal is heavy on the fats.  Also, these recipes have a LOT of ingredients.  Yes they are raw and yes they are healthy, but some of these recipes require more time and effort that I can give to at least three meals a day.

When it comes to the meal ideas in the 80-10-10 book they read very differently.  Dr. Graham actually encourages what he calls "monomeals".  This means you eat the same fruit for the entire meal.  An example would be 2 pounds of bananas for breakfast.  That's right, you heard me correctly, 2 POUNDS!!  I am a food lover!  I love to play with my food and enjoy the variety in my diet.  My initial thought is there is no way I could ever get to this point.  The incredible volume of food required to get sufficient callories is also pretty intimidating.


My husband let me know he was taking care of dinner tonight for himself and Jonah.  My initial reaction was how wonderful of him.  This quickly changed when I got home.  He had prepared an incredible platter of grilled meats.  This guy is serious when it comes to meat and fire.  Poor Solly kept changing his mind about continuing the challenge but really wanting some of Dad's meat.  It did not help that I had been really hungry all day and usually can't resist meat hot off the grill.

Towards the end of dinner Solly announced that he was done with the challenge.  We had talked about it.  I told him how incredibly proud I was that he had lasted almost three full days.  He went into the kitchen to get a plate for his meat, and by the time he got back to the table he pointed to my salad and asked for me to load up his plate.  This kid amazes me!  I don't know where his strength comes from, but it is truly an inspiration!  He ate his fill of salad and never touched the grilled meats.  My awesome husband treated us to his best melodrama villian impression as his evil plot was foiled by Solly's inner strength.

As I had been starving all day, I tried to make a huge feast.  I've been watching the Fully Raw challenge videos, and based on the volume of food Kristina eats, I don't think I've been eating enough.  Well, I couldn't eat half of what I prepared, so I saved it for lunch tomorrow.  And it is twice the lunch I brought today.  Hopefully this will help.

For the first two days my energy has been really high.  Today was definately different.  I have been pretty tired and am planning to get to bed early.  Hopefully some sleep will help me with my willpower.  I can't believe I made it past day 3!!!!