Reichlin - Cooking Geek: Going Raw and Going Paleo

Cooking Geek

Going Raw and Going Paleo

Rebecca Reichlin

Copyright 2013 Rebecca Reichlin

All rights reserved.

Paleo Cookbook, Raw Food Cookbook This book goes into details on two distinctively different yet very healthy and beneficial diets, the Raw Food Diet and the Paleo Diet. Weight loss is best achieved when eating well-balanced foods that contain optimum levels of nutrients. Each of these two diets does just that, helping the person to develop a plan of action in reaching weight loss goals. Another benefit to these two diets is the health benefits of eating right. These diets make excellent lifestyle changes, which brings about strong immune systems.

The Raw Food Diet has immediate affects in the body. First it acts as a cleanse, helping to scrub all the impurities from the digestive system. This cleanse is especially helpful if raw foods were rarely digested, to suddenly introduce the body to raw foods will cause it to "scrub" even harder through the digestive tract. Once the body becomes accustomed to the diet, it becomes a habit, a way of life. Raw food is more than eating salads all day long. It is a variety of foods with the recipes incorporating raw foods into each of the meals, helping the body to become healthier and maintain a better weight.

There are enough main dish recipes to make a menu plan for three full weeks. These main dishes give a variety of flavors, using raw vegetables as the staple in creating some very good meals. Try the Raw Lasagna, Raw Burgers, Raw Mushroom Burgers, and the Raw BBQ over Zucchini Noodles. Other samplings include Collard Quinoa Wraps, Stuffed Peppers, Spinach Manicotti, Raw Carrot Falafel, Chickpea Salad Chard Wraps, Brazil Nut Chutney, Tomato Sambar with Spaghetti Squash "Rice" and Nut Chutney.

The book also includes recipes for side dishes, appetizers, sauces, and breads. No meal is complete without these recipes that help to accentuate the main dish. Try the Raw marinara Sauce, Butter Lettuce and Avocado Salad, Carrot Tomato Soup, Mashed Celery Root with Garlic and Chives, Sunflower See Pate, Buckwheat Curry Bread, Red Pepper Bisque, BBQ Walnuts, Cauliflower "Couscous," Cashew Cheese, Cauliflower Salad with Ranch Dressing, and the Sundried Tomato Spread. Other side dishes can include steamed vegetables and raw salads.

No recipe section would be complete with breakfast and brunch recipes. Breakfast is an important meal and there are more than a week's worth of delicious breakfast recipes in the raw food diet section. Recipes include Apple Cinnamon Crepes, Raw Waffles, Chia Pudding with Bananas, Raw Brazil Nut Onion Bagels, Chia Pudding with Strawberries, Banana Splits, Cinnamon Citrus Crepes, and Crepes with Berries and Cashew Cream. Try substituting the fruits within these recipes for a larger variety.

The Paleo Diet has been around for years, many many years, dating back to our Stone Age ancestors. The foods in the Paleo Diet are the foods these people ate. They were a strong people with very little issues with weight and illnesses. There is no evidence that any ever suffered from weight problems or obesity. They had healthy hearts and far out lived the people of today because of the healthy diets and the fact they received plenty of exercise. They ate a diet rich in vegetables and fruits and a large variety of lean meats. There are no grains or legumes or anything processed or junky in the Paleo Diet. People eating this diet find they lose weight easily and their health improves. The main thrust of the Paleo Diet is for a lifestyle change to better eating habits.

There are almost a month's worth of main dish recipes, giving you a great head start at meal planning. The main entrees are hearty dishes that work perfectly with the side dishes included within the book. Enjoy recipes such as Cobb Salad, Shephard's Pie, Paleo Style, Coconut Chicken Strips, Pork Roast with Dijon Glaze, Roast Chicken, Shakshouka, Suffed Pork Tenderloin, Paleo Chili, Paleo Meatloaf, Roasted Turkey with Balsamic Glaze and Apples, Chicken with Cherries and Kale and Hot Dogs, Paleo Style.

The side dishes and soups are great pairs with the main entree recipes but also make for great lunches and snacks. Try the delicious Chicken Soup with Sweet Potatoes and Swiss Chard, Chicken Salad with Fruit, Sweet Potato Lime Soup, Red Pepper Dip, Asparagus Salad, Easy Collard Greens, Roasted Cauliflower with Tahini Dressing, Kale with Pine Nuts, Fennel and Carrots, Steamed Baby Carrots with Dill and Honey, Roasted Beet and Walnut Salad, Eggplant and Mushroom Curry, and the Tomato and Zucchini with Curry Sauce.

The Paleo Diet includes breakfast recipes too. Again, these recipes can be adapted by substituting the fruits with other fruit. Adapt the recipes according to your taste. For the sweet tooths out there try the Banana Walnut Muffins, Almond Pancakes, Cucumber Blueberry Smoothie and the Cranberry Almond Bread. For a more savory flavor, try the Eggs with Kale, Spinach Quiche, and the Irish Soda Bread. Just because these are breakfast recipes does not mean you can't enjoy them any time of the day or night.

The Paleo Diet does not lack in the desserts section. Even the Stone Age people enjoyed decadent desserts and treats. They simply did not use grains to create their pies, but they did eat pie! Try the recipes and serve them to your family and friends, they will agree they satisfy the sweet tooth. Enjoy the Paleo Style Coconut Cream Pie, Chocolate Cranberry Pie, Pineapple Coconut Frozen Custard and the Chocolate Avocado Mousse. Try adding different fruits to the recipes for a variety; adapt them with your favorites.

The Paleo Diet is indeed a lifestyle change, though weight loss within this diet comes about from lack of junk foods, processed, sugared and grains, it comes from eating a well-balanced vegetable and meat diet. Weight loss is not the main reason people choose the Paleo Diet, but if the issue is excessive weight it will eventually fall away. Exercise is always a great addition to a lifestyle and helps a proper diet to work better in the body. Getting enough exercise along with the nutrition helps the body to be strong and healthy and to maintain a decent weight level.

The raw food diet is rapidly gaining in popularity, both as a short term cleanse and as a lifestyle. In any major city (and quite a few mid-sized cities as well), there are several raw food restaurants to choose from, exposing ever more people to the benefits of raw foods as well as educating the public that a raw food diet doesnt have to mean being consigned to glumly munching on salad after salad.

As youll learn in this cookbook, you can enjoy a widely varied raw food diet, although it does take some creativity and a willingness to do a little bit of work. You will have to do a lot of your own cooking, but raw food adherents are more than convinced that the extra time spent in the kitchen more than pays for itself in the form of better health.

One of the scientific concepts underpinning the idea of eating raw is that the process of cooking most foods destroys much of their nutritional content. Even heating most foods to relatively low temperatures of around 120 degrees Fahrenheit is enough to cause the enzymes that they contain to break down and for that reason, many people choose to reap the maximum nutritional content of the food that they eat by choosing not to cook it. While you will see many recipes in this book which call for warming or wilting various ingredients or entire dishes, this is done at very low temperatures of 100 115 degrees Fahrenheit in order to prevent the ingredients from losing their nutritive value.