Raw Food Recipes - It's Easier Than You Think

When we started drinking green smoothies a few months ago, I decided we should follow a raw food diet more often. My husband won't give up meat, but that doesn't mean we can't have bigger salads and raw food snacks. Once you collect your ingredients, making raw food snack recipes is very easy. You can even make up your own.

I started out with the book Raw Energy: 124 Raw Food Recipes for Energy Bars, Smoothies, and Other Snacks to Supercharge Your Body by Stephanie Tourles, who also wrote Organic Body Care Recipes: 175 Homemade Herbal Formulas In Raw Energy, Stephanie has a great chapter on "raw food basics" which offers great info on digestive enzymes, organic food, the value of snacking and how you can make snacks a part of your day to increase energy.

The next chapter covers all the "how to" of the raw food diet. What foods you should have on hand and what equipment you need, such as a dehydrator and a food processor, which is also a must for green smoothies. After much research I decided to purchase a Vitamix but there are several good ones out there.

For many raw snack recipes you only need a bowl, a spoon and the ingredients, which includes nuts, dried fruit and something like raw peanut butter or almond butter to hold everything together in a ball. Refrigerate your raw snack for 24 hours and they keep in the frig for about 2 weeks - if they last that long.

Once I made a few of the raw snack recipes in the book, I was able to make up my own recipes, using various ingredients like oatmeal and flax seed.

As the name implies, though, Raw Energy: 124 Raw Food Recipes for Energy Bars, Smoothies, and Other Snacks also has recipes for delicious raw food smoothies made of fruits and veggies, juice blends, raw food bars and granola. Your kids will love these healthy snacks and recipes. They make nutritious additions to your kid's school lunches too.

The Vitamix website offers great recipes and information on green smoothies and the raw food diet. If you find a Vitamix is a good purchase for your family, you can also get free shipping with this link - a $25 value!

Find more information on beginning a raw food diet.