Stephanie L. Tourles - Raw Energy: 124 Raw Food Recipes for Energy Bars, Smoothies, and Other Snacks to Supercharge Your Body

STEPHANIE TOURLES

124 Raw Food Recipes for Energy Bars, Smoothies, and Other Snacks to Supercharge Your Body

The mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by publishing practical information that encourages personal independence in harmony with the environment.

Edited by Margaret Sutherland and Rebecca Springer
Art direction and book design by Dan O. Williams
Text production by Liseann Karandisecky

Photography by Kevin Kennefick
Food styling by Frances Duncan and Dan O. Williams

Indexed by Christine Lindemer, Boston Road Communications

2009 by Stephanie Tourles

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce illustrations in a review with appropriate credits; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other without written permission from the publisher.

The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. All recommendations are made without guarantee on the part of the author or Storey Publishing. The author and publisher disclaim any liability in connection with the use of this information.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tourles, Stephanie L., 1962
Raw energy / Stephanie Tourles.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-60342-467-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Cookery (Natural foods) 2. Raw food diet.
3. Vegetarian cookery. 4. Raw foods. I. Title.
TX741.T68 2010
641.5636dc22
2009028675

To Rick OShea IV the smartest, funniest, most energetic and beautiful dog Ive ever been blessed to have share my life. You warmed my heart, my soul, and my feet on cold winter nights, and tested my endurance on our daily, six-mile, Cape Cod seashore walks. Ill never forget the porcupine mishaps and romps through the Maine woods. Ill miss your smiling face and your constant presence in my office when I sit down at the computer to write.

Rest in peace, my furry friend.
August 1, 2008

Special gratitude goes out to the folks at Storey Publishing, who have invited me to share my passion for whole, living, raw foods with you, my dear readers. Plus, Id like to thank the good Lord for the following people who have contributed to my joie de vivre and my knowledge and love of the natural world, organic gardening, and preparation and appreciation of food: Thank you to Phenie Ashe and the late Earl C. Ashe, my grandparents, for teaching me about the goodness of raw, garden-fresh vegetables, wild blackberries, muscadines, and luscious persimmons, and for feeding me scads of thick, juicy, savory tomato sandwiches my favorite. Thanks for the inheritance of an incredibly green thumb, too!

Thank you to my late grandmother, Grace Anchors, for the pure enjoyment of her moist, tender, flaky, Georgia biscuits, creamy butter beans, and tangy bread-and-butter pickles.

Much gratitude goes to my mother, Brenda Anchors, for ridding our family home of junk food and introducing us to the benefits of whole foods and supplements decades before health food was in, and to my dad, Mike Anchors, for many lengthy family vacations, delicious outings to authentic French and Mexican restaurants, and exposure to unfamiliar fresh, regional foods. Thanks for filling my mind with knowledge, my youth with experience, and my mouth with exquisite tastes when you could have instead filled our new home with expensive, fancy furniture.

Thank you to my husband, Bill, for building and designing spectacular garden enclosures that are simply works of art. Thanks for making gardening a sheer sensory delight. Your crafting hands are truly blessed, my dear!

Thanks to Nancy Sullivan, my mother-in-law, for teaching me the beauty and necessity of texture and color whether in the home, on the plate, or in the garden. Im grateful to the late Helen Nearing for the inspiration to eat primarily raw and vegetarian, and to live simply as close to nature as possible. Thanks to Candis Cantin, my beloved Community Herbalist Program teacher, for continually emphasizing throughout our lessons that our bodies, minds, and spirits become what we eat and assimilate, and that the keys to health are whole foods and herbal nourishment, enjoyment of life and work, sufficient rest, and exercise, combined with good digestion of food and life experiences. So amazingly true. Thank you, Margaret Sutherland of Storey Publishing, editor of Raw Energy, for believing in the power of raw foods and understanding my need to relay this message to all of my health-seeking readers.

Raw Energy was written especially for those of you seeking healthful and dramatically different alternatives to empty-calorie snack foods such as doughnuts, muffins, white-flour bagels, vending machine junk, processed cookies, cakes, candy, crackers, and chips, fast-food milkshakes, artificially flavored milk drinks, and pasteurized canned and bottled juices not to mention so-called energy bars that frequently contain refined fruit syrups and high-fructose corn syrup.

The methodology of food preparation in Raw Energy represents a huge departure from the way most Americans cook. My aim with this book is to introduce you to a new realm of food preparation: uncooking! I hope to educate and make you, my health-conscious readers, aware that raw snacks can be far more satisfying than conventional snacks while providing deep, sustained, get-up-and-go power and promoting health, vitality, and good looks as they tantalize the taste buds. The all-raw-ingredient recipes are easy to make, delicious, and delightful to the eye and palate. And better still, they are highly nutrient-dense and enzymatically potent: raw foods retain their naturally occurring enzymes, which typically make them easier on the digestive system than cooked foods. These energy treats consist of real, whole foods, and are completely unheated and uncooked, as is each individual ingredient. Unlike most no-bake cookbooks published to date, Raw Energy recipes contain no sugar, fruit juice concentrate, jams or jellies, marshmallows or fluff, corn syrup, chocolate syrup, flour, dairy products, refined salt, candy pieces, toasted or roasted ingredients, malt sugar, chocolate or butterscotch chips, sulfured dried fruit, or hydrogenated fats. They do contain raw nuts and seeds, raw nut butters, raw unprocessed honey, unsulfured dried fruits and coconut, raw oats, raw carob and raw cocoa (yes, raw cocoa powder does exist), freshly extracted juices, nut milks, and all types of fresh and frozen fruits. I even use raw sweet potatoes and zucchini to create sinfully delicious, crispy, dehydrated vegetable chips. These snacks are good for your body (nutrition and taste), mind (no guilt), and soul (satisfying).

Raw foods retain their naturally occurring enzymes, which typically make them easier on the digestive system than cooked foods.

What is the real health difference between my raw snacks and ubiquitous commercial snacks? Most conventional snacks are made with processed, refined, nutritionally empty ingredients with a sprinkling of preservatives and synthetic flavorings and a heavy-handed complement of white sugar and sodium. Yes, consuming them will indeed give you a real, albeit temporary, energy lift when you need it most. But because they are not created from whole foods consisting of unprocessed proteins, essential fats, and complex carbohydrates that digest slowly and feed your body with sustained vitamin- and mineral-rich pep, but instead are made of refined ingredients, stripped of their former life-giving elements, they will cause your blood sugar to spike. Within an hour or so, the opposite happens: your blood sugar plummets, and low blood sugar means low energy, a cranky attitude, and a hankering for even more junk. By consistently consuming these types of snack foods, day in and day out, you may have unknowingly jumped into an unhealthy eating cycle replete with unstable energy, a raging appetite, poor health and mood, and a less-than-radiant appearance.