For anyone who is raw or going raw, let me ask you a question…Why do we feel the need to name raw dishes something cooked? What is it about needing to make things “look” like cooked foods? For pasta we take out that handy little saladaco and spiral out strands of zucchini or anything that will go through it to make ribbons, take some sun dried tomatoes and regular tomatoes and make a sauce and then call it spaghetti with marinara? Why? Can’t we call it something else? I wonder if creating things to look and taste like cooked foods is a way to stay one foot in the door of that life we are leaving behind. There are recipes for Rawviolis instead of Raviolis, mock tuna fish, energy bars, pizza, bread,  and lets not forget the huge array of desserts that can be made to look like cooked food. Cake, pie, cookies, candy, ice cream and anything else you can come up…yet, are we doing ourselves a disservice by naming such beautiful foods after something that we feel is NOT good for us? I guess in my mind, it becomes a conflict of interest.

When my husband and I used to teach workshops, everyone wanted to know how to make the pizza. Back then, we definitely used cooked names for raw foods. Why? It’s what our customers wanted. We spent countless hours perfecting our recipes to model the food after things cooked. People wanted things “their way” and of course, we accommodated them as much as possible. They wanted the prepared, gourmet, rich and fatty foods. Crackers, breads, granola breakfast blends, nut milk blends, rich and tasty salad dressings, main meals and of course…dessert. At the start, we tried to call our creations by a different name, but it didn’t seem to “appeal” to their appetite. As soon as we called it by a cooked name, the orders started pouring in. Do we have such a hard time letting go of cooked food, that any remnant of that old life becomes some sort of “comfort?” I often wonder if naming a raw food “pasta”, “bread”, “crackers,” becomes a slippery slope for anyone who is trying to overcome their addiction to wheat. Is the cooked word equivalent making it difficult for people to transition as smoothly as they would like? I think it does. I believe that it can be a form of self-sabotage.

One of the beautiful effects that raw and living foods have on us is that our imagination begins to open up. We become more creative as our bodies heal…so how about starting a new trend? How about making new names for our glorious creations, and letting the cooked world keep theirs? I know that we can become creative and dream up new combinations of food and crowning it all off with a great new name.

Fresh Food of the Day

Musa Velutina- Pink Velvet Banana

Tags: cooked foods, creativity, desserts, energy bars, imagination, mock tuna fish, raw foods, raw pizza, rawviolis, saladaco