My Adventures with Raw Food

I’m not a professional chef or nutritionist, but I’ve always loved to cook and learn about nutrition. It’s amazing how food can actually heal our bodies. Eating pure, living food is vital to our health, happiness and longevity.

My obsession with cooking and nutrition began when I was 10 years old and read about vegetarianism in a Zoo Book (remember those?). I was a vegetarian for many years until late high school when I began eating chicken and pepperoni pizza at social events. In college I tried out the macrobiotic diet in which you eat vegan but also eliminate nightshade vegetables and eat a lot of organic brown rice. But my energy levels dipped because I wasn’t able to get all the nutrients I needed with a student meal plan, so I decided to just eliminated red meat and pork from my diet. In 2012 I tried Filet Mignon for the first time and really enjoyed it. That was the year of steak and beef for me! But since I have had less and less red meat because it really drains my energy levels.

Fast forward to late 2013 when I landed a gig with The Honest Company managing the company blog. We worked with a lot of great raw food chefs and celebrity chefs who invented uber-nutritious recipes for the blog. Sometimes a chef would get caught-up in their business and not have time to submit a recipe, which provided me an opportunity to play around in the kitchen (for work!). I already am the chef in my family — I often cook holiday meals, grabbing recipes from Epicurious and Williams Sonoma, and on my own I love experimenting with new, healthy dishes. But raw food was a new and exciting challenge. I was totally on-board with the idea of raw food and went to Cafe Gratitude in San Francisco a number of times. Living food for living bodies makes sense to me. So I tried dozens of raw recipes and watched dozens more YouTube videos about raw food (check out Dara Dubinet’s channel — she’s vibrant and beautiful and her recipes are delish!).

I don’t eat 100% raw but I try to eat as much raw food as possible. After an entire day of eating raw, I feel incredible! But I still go out with friends for dinner and if I can find a raw item I’ll order it, otherwise I try to limit my portion size when eating cooked food because it can hurt my stomach.

Every Wednesday I’ll be posting a raw food recipe!

I encourage you to try some raw food recipes at home and see how you feel after eating raw. If you already eat raw, tell me about your favorite raw food recipe in the comments!