I'm Going Over the Deep Edge

OK, so I'm obsessing about raw food lately.  I lie awake in bed thinking about how I can turn my favorite "junk food"(pizza, fries, mashed potatoes, cupcakes, donuts...) into a raw version, so I can eat them and still stick to my experiment of "can I lose weight on a raw food diet, without regulating how much I eat".  So far, I'm relying on the raw food experts who've been at this for many years because I don't have a clue how to mimic cooked foods.

Thank goodness, I added raw chef Juliano's dvds to my growing raw food library because he has a very simple and delicious mashed potato recipe.  He also has a mashed potato recipe in his "cook"book (RAW) that gave me an instant tummy ache (they call for 1/2 a cup of lemon juice and a tablespoon of garlic!) The NEW mashed potato recipe is crazy good and very simple.  2 cups of raw cauliflower (it doesn't have to be exact, I used about  2 1/2 cups), 2 cups of macadamia nuts (I used half cashew nuts...macadamias are VERY expensive!) and sea salt and pepper to taste (about a teaspoon of each).  The 2nd time I made them I didn't have macadamias on hand, so I used Brazil nuts and cashews (half and half).  They turned out, not as creamy, tasted more nutty, but still satisfying and good.  All you do is blend the nuts until smooth in a food processor, then put them in a bowl.  Chop up the cauliflower a little and whip that in the food processor, too.  Then mix the two together in a bowl and add the salt and pepper.  Drizzle with a little olive oil, swap out some of the nuts with pinenuts, add your favorite seasoning...experiment and have fun!  They taste even better the 2nd day and will last about 5 days in the fridge.

What I cannot get over is how quickly I get filled up with raw food AND how satisfying the food is (remember, I'm a devoted foodie, I love food and I have to enjoy most of my meals or ennui sets in quickly!).  Word on the street about raw food is that it delivers such deep nutrition that it satisfies more quickly and it extinguishes cravings and addictions over time (I find that I don't have any desire to forage for snacks at midnight and I did this frequently).  I will put a doll-sized portion of Juliano's marvelous mashed potatoes on my plate (2 or 3 rounded tablespoons) and I get very full from this weeny amount.  If they were real mashed potatoes, I could easily eat 2 cups...possibly more and not feel as sated as I do with the raw version.  Cauliflower is so good for you that I'm going to keep these magical raw "mashed potatoes" in my fridge as a quick snack.  Cauliflower is one of those amazing cruciferous vegetables and is known to be a good cancer preventative.  It is also high in antioxidants (C and manganese) and is excellent at reducing inflammation (high in K and omega-3 fatty acids), so make it a weekly staple!

Some of you might be wondering, hey what about all the fat in the nuts!  This is a controversial  topic for many.  Nuts are loaded with fat and some say they should be used sparingly.  Others say, as long as the nuts stay in their natural state (raw) and aren't roasted/cooked (changing the structure of the fat) your body can assimilate the fat way more easily, so enjoy your nuts!  And this is one of the very reasons I'm doing a weight loss experiment on myself, to get to the bottom of this nut mystery.  I'm eating nuts every day--nuts in my mashed potatoes, nuts in my lattes (better than half and half and any fake creamer on the market), nuts in my soups, and burgers, and wraps.  And so far the experiment seems to be working.  I'm not losing weight like Miss America right before the pageant, but I've lost 2 pounds in 3 weeks.  And this is a good thing.  My weekly weigh in is coming soon, stay tuned!