If This Is Raw, Then I Don't Want to Be Right

My sister Katie and I had a plan. She would come visit me and we would eat only raw food. We didn’t have a real reason to do this little experiment other than that we like to think we're pretty hardcore.

At a hypothetical dinner party where the guests are conscious eaters trying to out-brag each other, the raw foodist always wins. “I’m a vegetarian!” “Well I’m gluten-free.” “Oh yeah? I don’t eat anything that’s been heated over 104 degrees.” It’s the trump card of restrictive diets.

I understand that cooking certain foods (like vegetables) causes them to lose enzymes that you want to eat. So it makes sense to choose to eat raw food whenever it’s convenient. But to make it a diet and refuse to eat anything that is not raw seems unnecessary.

No matter. We wanted to try. So when she arrived at LAX airport today, we began to plan our raw day. We would eat lunch at Euphoria Loves RAWvolution on Main Street in Santa Monica (or Dance Dance RAWvolution, as Chris calls it).

Katie had brought along a cookbook called Raw Food: A Complete Guide for Every Meal of the Day by Erica Palmcrantz and Irmela Lilja. So for dinner, we would pick up some ingredients and cook ourselves a raw dinner at Andy’s house for ourselves, Andy, and his roommate, Chris.

Lunch at Euphoria Loves RAWvolution was good. The restaurant has a pleasant, hippie-chic atmosphere, with photos of people doing yoga poses on the walls and raw food interest books to browse while you eat.

After consulting with the women behind the counter, I decided to get the Original Big Matt Burger, named after chef Matt Amsden. It was a burger made out of what looked like seeds to me, with tomato, lettuce, home-made ketchup, and mustard on the side. I got it with avocado and wrapped in cabbage instead of on an onion roll:

My sister ordered the zucchini spaghetti with seed pesto sauce. It tasted like regular pasta but a bit less slimy and it came with a raw cracker of some kind:

The problem with Euphoria is that the meals are pretty expensive. Each of us spent about $14 and we didn't even get drinks or desserts. After looking into the ingredients used in many raw recipes, we discovered the expensive thing is pretty much a rule.

And… that’s a problem. Neither of us has enough money to buy new, expensive ingredients for every meal while Katie is out here, nor can we afford to spend $14 every meal to eat out.

So we decided to amend our raw commitment. For dinner, we’re going to cook some pasta, make some salad, and try to make a raw vegan apple pie that we found in the Raw Food cookbook.

For the next two weeks, we will try new fun raw recipes and eat at raw restaurants we find… but not all the time. It’s the way I feel about a raw food diet in general. Since it doesn’t make a difference ecologically whether I cook my food or not, I’m not going to stress out about it.

I feel healthy as a plain old vegan and besides, I’ve never been too concerned about being that girl who wins "most hardcore" during restrictive diet battles at dinner parties. Nobody likes that girl.

This Little Vegan Went to Market

I spend as much time at farmers markets as I can. They tend to provide an awesome combination of good food, good energy, and samples I can actually eat. What happens when you throw in live music, pony rides, and a bunch of celebrities with babies strapped to their chests in one of those hippie baby-carrier things? You get the Santa Monica farmers market.

It’s (kind of) within walking distance of Andrew’s house, so this past weekend we decided to head over. The farmers market has a free bike valet system (seriously!), but I didn’t have my bike. It was a lovely walk, and by the time we got there we had definitely worked up an appetite for brunch.

I love the experience of perusing booths, especially when the sellers have a connection to their product. People selling the produce they farmed with their own hands are generally pretty friendly and motivated to convince you of their food’s deliciousness.

As I perused, I was impressed by all the raw food options. I've had only one raw experience in the past, so I wanted to see if I could put together a raw brunch.

I decided to make myself a little variety plate at the Planet Raw booth. (Side note: check out their website. It has an intense techno soundtrack.) I got a slice of apple pie with “kream” (it was spelled with a k on the menu for obvious reasons, but I don’t approve), two sushi bites, and a falafel ball with tahini sauce.

As I popped the sushi rolls in my mouth, I wondered aloud to Andrew what could be in them. “Rice isn’t raw, so that’s why they’re wrapped in seaweed. It tastes like cabbage, avocado, cucumber, and something fishy-tasting… I wonder what they used for fish flavor.”

Andrew stared at me for a moment and then answered, “Fish. Raw fish.”

Duh. Of course “raw food” is not necessarily vegan, so there was no reason why there shouldn’t be fish inside the sushi rolls I had just happily consumed. I groaned. I felt like a horrible vegan. And on top of that, I was still hungry.

So I hit up the Eupohoria Loves RAWvolution booth, mostly because I was intrigued by the name. RAWvolution is a food delivery system that will bring a box of raw goodies to your door each week, and Euphoria Loves RAWvolution is their restaurant in Santa Monica. The man at the booth gave me a free sample of the “egg” mixture, and I was sold. The burrito included oregano “cheese,” coconut jerky, walnut “meat,” mango salsa, and avocado.

Don’t ask me what walnut meat is.

All in all, it was a successful trip to the farmers market. I just have to remember that “raw” and “vegan” aren’t synonymous to avoid future slip-ups!