Comments on: Raw “Food”

by: lou

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 21:57:35 +0000

Hi Russell,
Thanks for posting this, I absolutely agree with you! It reminds me of when I first went veggie and I’d make veggie versions of meat-based classics. We made up new names for these recipes, too (one of my more recent favourites is Quottage Pie - Cottage Pie made with Quorn) but if you are copying a cooked dish then what do you do? “Pasta” made from courgette - it’s certainly not pasta, but what is it instead? Personally, I like how my food choices these days are walking away from traditional thinking of how we eat. I might have 3 or 4 apples for breakfast, and my favourite lunch is a green smoothie and we eat thali-style for dinner more and more often, with four or five different dishes served together. Much more interesting.
I think it’s understandable that we continue to imitate cooked food dishes in our raw creations, but I am excited about shifting mindsets around how we eat and looking forward to seeing raw food breaking the mould.

From Russell: Thanks, Lou. The Quottage Pie made me smile. Your Thai style evenings sound very interesting, keep your eye open for my Thai-Style Raw eBook - it’s in development.

by: August Garner

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:29:13 +0000

Hello Russell,

Your point is well-made and I agree for the most part. Without question, there is a lot of talent out there, and plenty of dishes that require no comparison to other “food”.

The only place where I differ with your point is that it is better to eat the raw food version of pancakes then it would be to succumb to a craving of butter and syrup drenched stacks of white-flour fluffiness.

One last thought, as raw foods keep gaining in popularity, perhaps it won’t be long before comparisons are made with the assumption of cooked foods being inferior.

From Russell: Hi August, thanks for your comments. I seem to have not made myself clear, in that, I also wouldn’t say that traditional pancakes would be favourable over any raw version, at least in terms of health. It wasn’t my intention to give that message. Thanks again.

by: Alexandra

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:08:04 +0000

And when I look trhough your flickr photos, I see that you actually do have a picture of pancakes, blueberries and cream AND another of chocolate crepes. *lol* Why not post some of these recipes? I personally would love to have the recipe for the chocolate chip cookies … :)

From Russell: Hi Alexandra, those pics were taken whilst I was at The Pant in NYC, and so I don’t have the recipes as they’re not mine. Now you mention it though, those pancakes - which are actually more like Scotch pancakes, not the pancakes you have on pancake day - were actually very tasty :-)

by: Alexandra

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:00:44 +0000

I think I’ll have to agree with what you’ve said above, but actually, I think I’ve seen a picture of raw “pancakes” in a magazine that the author of therawtable.com have been putting out. I don’t have the recipe, but somehow I doubt that it’d taste much like real pancakes … :) Oh, and now that I think about it - there is a pancake recipe (Apple Crepes with apple walnut filling and cinnamon maple cream) in Raw Food Real World by Sarma Melngailis and Matthew Kenney, if you or anybody else, for that matter, should change your mind. But again, the taste of real pancakes is hard to copy, I think - but then who’d actually want it (referring to that typical greasy taste of them)?

From Russell: Perhaps pancakes was a bad example! Lol. I’m sure all the pancakes you mentioned taste fantastic, the point I’m making is that mocking cooked food can leave some people, particularly new people, baffled. They just can’t see how you can have a raw burger or raw pizza - which leads to raw food being dismissed as a joke.

Thanks for your comments.