Before joining the blogworld, I don’t think I even knew what the “raw food” movement was. Here, however, it’s been quite a craze over the past few years. Now, I could never give up cooked meals, but I absolutely appreciate some uncookin’ every once in awhile. My favorite dessert is raw, after all!

Today’s class focused on cleanse & detox via a “living foods,” or raw, diet. The science behind this dietary path is that uncooked foods are higher in enzymes than their heated counterparts, especially when prepared with methods such as soaking, fermenting and sprouting.

Though it might seem easy to prepare raw dishes, a lot of the recipes are quite labor-intensive. Because throwing something on the stove in a saute pan isn’t really an option, you need to get creative with your flavor profiles, cuts and condiments. Our class put together over a dozen delicious plates!

Jicama salad: a combination of raw diced jicama, avocado and yellow pepper with a tahini dressing that had a similar feel to chicken salad (make no mistake…you wouldn’t really compare this to chicken salad, but for an entirely raw, vegan version, it was damn delicious.)

Summer squash salad with dulse. Because the dulse wasn’t cooked, the student responsible for this dish soaked it in apple cider vinegar to get rid of the overly salty, seawater flavor. It was light, fresh and flavorful- one of my favorites of the meal.

Mixed nut and vegetable pate, made from soaked walnuts, almonds, pine nuts, peppers, carrots and onions. Taste-wise it was quite good and had an interesting combination of flavors, but I’m not a big fan of the texture of nut pates.

Sunflower pate with dill: same story. The dill made me like it better than the prior pate, though. Love me some dill! (I’m craving a pickle all of a sudden, no joke.)

Kefir, or whole milk fermented with probiotics. I’ve never been a milk drinker (as a kid, I used to eat endless bowls of cereal until there was nothing but a teaspoon of milk left to dump), so I passed on this one, especially after catching a whiff of the pungent sour smell.

Vegetable soup, which contained carrots, tomatoes, avocados, onion, bell pepper, cucumber and corn. This was surprisingly sweet and reminded me of a blended gazpacho. The corn provided some pleasant chew, too.

Cinnamon beets, which were spiralized before being tossed lightly with the dressing. I adore cooked beets, but raw they taste much different and weren’t totally my cup of tea, though the cinnamon dressing was an intriguing taste.

Fresh corn salad- just raw corn, red pepper, and celery with a simple dressing. This was refreshing and reminded me a lot of summer. Definitely something you could serve at a BBQ without anyone ever knowing it was “health supportive.” By the way, is it May yet?

Wheatgrass juice with apple and lemon. I’m a wheatgrass wimp and can’t handle it- my stomach just freaks out and I become nauseous for hours. My classmates raved about it, though.

Zucchini with pesto. Hands down my favorite dish of the day. After being softened with sea salt, the zucchini had an al dente pasta texture that was absolutely incredible tossed with the pesto. Yum.

Filibert-date milk. I tried this in a glass that had some bleach in it from the washing process, which turned me off of it a lot. Kind of mad that I forgot to try it again in a new glass after lunch though, because the ingredients sounded heavenly together.

And finally, my creations: raw chocolate brownie cakes, made two ways.

One with just walnuts and dates processed together, then frosted with a coconut oil-agave-raspberry “frosting.”

And one with walnuts, dates and a few tablespoons of agave for extra sweetness.

Though I have the largest sweet tooth known to man, I actually preferred the first cake better! It was more of a pure chocolate lover’s cake, and to me, chocolate and all other sweets are two totally different beasts. The frosting was a total experiment, but it actually turned out perfectly, and I looooved the hot pink color. This would be a great dessert for a healthy girls’ night!

Have you ever had “raw” dishes or been to a raw restaurant? What did you think? What cooking methods do you prefer?

Holy heck- only 9 days of class left at NGI. It’s been four months since July 18?! When and how did that happen?!

As I’ve said before, we’re getting into the more informational part of the program, focusing on different approaches to health rather than just cooking techniques. A lot of the information is really interesting in theory, but I have to confess, in the least judgmental or rude way possible, that I’m not really that into it. While I’ve always been a right-brain, philosophical thinker, I guess it’s the doctor’s daughter in me that likes facts and evidence; though I see the truth and validity in certain holistic concepts and ideas, I have trouble accepting the esotericness (is that a word?) of these lifestyles as a whole.

Case in point: today’s class on Ayurveda.

Ayurveda is a traditional form of Indian medicine that has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. Obviously, centuries of information can’t be easily compacted into a single class, but the basic practice of Ayurveda centers around the three “dosas,” elemental energies that are translated into human personalities: vata (air & space), pitta (fire & water) and kapha (water & earth).

After some background information on Ayurveda, we each filled out a basic questionnaire to determine which of the three dosas we contained the most of. Most of my class was pitta, which the teacher said was unsurprising given that culinary arts is a fiery profession, but I was vata, which manifests itself in a kind of restless, active, stressed personality. Fair enough. My second level of dosa was pitta, which also makes sense, given that I also have the characteristic perfectionist, organized traits. And I also exhibit some traits of kapha, mainly in my appetite (I’m always down to eat, regardless of actual hunger levels). The theory goes that everyone has some traits of each dosa, but most people are dominated by either one or two of them.

Next, we cooked lunch! Fall is the season of vata, whose chronically cold condition necessitates hot, spicy foods. Our menu consisted of a minestrone soup with cannelini beans, the simplicity and freshness of which made it my favorite dish:

Squash and portobello cannelloni made with fresh homemade pasta and stuffed with either tofu ricotta or the real cheese stuff:

An olive-arugula salad, made with a thick, salty olive dressing that I personally liked but would have loved on its own as a tapenade:

And a citrus-fig salad in its own juice, which was spiced with anis and was a really delicious way to enjoy the two flavors together in a light, refreshing dessert:

While usually we stand around and hurriedly stuff our faces during tastings, for today’s class we actually sat down as a group and discussed our meal, which was a nice change of pace. It was interesting that most of the pitta class members didn’t really care for the meal- according to Ayurveda, that’s not surprising, since it generates a lot of heat for their already fiery personalities.

After lunch, we came back to get into more of the nitty-gritty of things, which was where I started to get a little wary. As I’ve said before, I think there’s a lot to be taken from Eastern medicine, but complicating something as simple as eating raw produce because of your “condition” seems kind of ridiculous to me. Similarly, the idea that you shouldn’t stay up too late or wake up too late because it interferes with certain dosa “times” is another teaching I just couldn’t live my life by. I’m not bashing anyone who chooses to take this path, because each person’s approach is different, but for me personally, thinking this much about my health and ways to strengthen it actually has the opposite effect- it just brings worry, guilt and an unhealthy obsession. Knowledge is power, but in the midst of so much conflicting information coming from Eastern and Western medicines, as well as from factions within each of those, how can we really know anything? I’m going to keep eating my cold raw vegetables, tons of fruit, prepackaged Clif bars and refined sugary desserts regardless of what various health standpoints have to say, because thinking too much about what I should and shouldn’t eat is a surefire way to mess up any sort of intuitive eating I’ve developed over the past few years.

In any case, I still found the class to be really interesting in general. Though culture isn’t really the focus of these lectures, I think it’s really cool to learn about how different groups and ethnicities have developed unique approaches to health and medicine, from the five elements of Chinese medicine, to the dosas of Indian medicine, to the life-saving emergency technologies of Western medicine. My opinion is that there’s some truth to everything, but none of them have all the wisdom or answers.

Do you know anything about Ayurveda? If you’re interested in the doshas, you can take a simple quiz here- what’s yours, and do you agree with its description of your personality?