Sarma Melngailis - Living Raw Food: Get the Glow with More Recipes from Pure Food and Wine

This book is dedicated to everyone at
Pure Food and Wine and One Lucky Duck.
I love you!

This is about living raw food . Not just eating it, but living it. Whether youre die-hard 100 percent raw, mostly raw (like me), increasingly raw, or just raw-curious, making this transition involves much more than just food. For many people, it ultimately becomes a new way of living.

In my case, the discovery of raw foods affected my whole outlook on life. It was as if a fog lifted and revealed a level of energy, lightness, and clarity that I didnt even know was possible. Almost immediately, I felt better than ever physically, as well as unbelievably happy. Along with all that came an added bonus: a direction and purpose for my life and work. It was like clearing away tall weeds and finding a path I didnt know was there. Now, rather than just aimlessly wandering around the woods in circles for the rest of time, I had a place to goa mission. This was exciting!

I didnt quite know how that mission would be defined or what it would entail, but I did know that opening a restaurant was only the first part. That restaurant, Pure Food and Wine, and the accompanying juice bar, opened in the summer of 2004. The second part turned out to be a book, Raw Food/Real World, published one year later. Both of these projects were created with my then-collaborator Matthew Kenney. In early 2005, we parted ways, and I continued toward the development of subsequent parts, which included both a wholesale business and an online store. By this time, the big-picture goal underlying all these ventures had crystallized for meto make really good raw food, to make it fun, and to make a healthy, organic, and earth-happy lifestyle appealing to the biggest audience possible. In other words, I want to encourage and facilitate healthier eating by making it really yummy and attractive, as well as accessible. What is considered healthy is very often relative and subject to the latest scientific findings, but its pretty hard to argue that eating more natural food that hasnt been processed using unnatural means is a good thing. Of course I also think that eating more fresh plant foods and fewer animal foods is a good thing.

Living Raw Food is yet another part in this undertaking. I might be grandly ambitious and fantastically idealistic, but even if only a few people here and there (or even just one) are inspired to trade in their Fritos and Big Macs for more fresh fruits and vegetables (or swap out Double Stuf Oreos for One Lucky Duck chocolate macaroons), and they feel better as a result, then I still consider that changing the world, and that makes me feel really good.

Many people (myself included) talk about eating raw as something to be discovered , as though its a brand-new innovation or a revolutionary and alternative way of living. However, while it still is somewhat alternative, its hardly new at all. In fact, its more like turning the clock backward, and a very simple concept. Whats so revolutionary about eating only plant foods that grow naturally from the earth and are fed by sunlight? Whats so crazy about eating plant foods that havent been sauted, boiled, roasted, flame-broiled, grilled over flaming coals, fried in sizzling-hot oil, zapped in a microwave, or otherwise manipulated into a state of altered molecular structure? Why not leave the molecules as they were meant to be?

Raw food generallyand at least in this bookrefers to a vegan diet that goes beyond just steering clear of animal products. Theres no cooking in the traditional sense (in that nothing is heated above approximately 118 degrees Fahrenheit), and ingredients are not chemically processed, pasteurized, homogenized, genetically modified, hybridized, or otherwise compromised. The basic premise behind a raw food diet is that cooking and processing foods generally decreases their digestibility and vitamin and mineral density, as well as their overall health-promoting qualities.

The creativity in raw foods as a type of cuisine comes from blending, soaking, marinating, slicing, dicing, drying at low temperatures, and incorporating fresh herbs and spices. This can be done in quite innovative ways, all while preserving the foods integrity. Part of that integrity has to do with letting enzymes survive the food preparation process. Apparently (though Ive never tried this myself) if you split enzymes under an electron microscope, youll find an actual electronic charge, which is why many refer to enzymes as life forces . Why would anyone want to destroy these little life catalysts? When your food comes with its own living enzymes ready to do the heavy lifting in digestion, you wont have to draw as much from your bodys enzyme reserves. When you eat raw food, theres no more food coma. The effect of easier digestion is that you end up with energy to spare to put toward other uses, such as allowing your body to heal itself, or any activity you can think of that is more fun than digestion.

Many people who write enthusiastically about raw food do so because it helped them recover from some kind of disease, chronic condition, or depression, because they lost a significant amount of excess weight, or a combination of these things. Others have been long-time vegetarians or vegans, and going raw was just the next step. None of this was the case for me. I just fortuitously stumbled into it one summer evening, became intrigued, and gave it a try. Reading everything on the subject that I could get my hands on, I was quickly, easily, and thoroughly convinced of the sheer logic of it all. I also felt as though Id taken mind-altering happy pills. With all my newfound energy, I promptly clambered onto the raw food wagon.

All this happened at exactly the perfect time in my life. A few years earlier, Id left an all-consuming career in finance to attend New York Citys French Culinary Institute, where (at that time) it was all about making stocks, cream sauces, the perfect omelet, and chocolate souffl. I graduated with all these skills (as well as an additional ten pounds), but I had no clue what I wanted to do with them. Eventually, I found myself working in the restaurant business with a relatively well-known and very talented chef, Matthew. We lived together, sharing a love for restaurants, cooking, and food in general all kinds of food. In the summer of 2003, we happened to be in between work projects when we came across (and then immersed ourselves in) the world of raw food. When everything about raw food is new, having someone to wade through it all with is really nice. It was summertime, and we lived only a few blocks from New York Citys biggest greenmarket. It wasnt long before restaurant plans were underway.

A Warm Welcome for Raw Food: Pure Food and Wine

In the summer of 2004, Pure Food and Wine opened on Irving Place, a remarkably quaint and quiet street in Manhattan only one block from the Union Square Greenmarket. Its a warm, big, inviting restaurant with a long wine list, creative sake cocktails, and a menu full of creative raw dishes. Everyone asked me at the time, Isnt it terrifying taking such a big risk, to open a raw vegan restaurant in the restaurant capital of the United States, a city teeming with self-proclaimed (and actual) food critics? Full of hardened cynics living life in the fast lane, devouring steaks, cigarettes, and dirty martinis? This is New York City, not California! Isnt raw food just a fad that will soon pass?