Customer Reviews

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Eating Raw

5 star:		(57)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've got 3 other raw food books. I like this one the best. Not alot of hype. I appreciate that. It is written for idiots...begins by explaining the benefits of going raw. I'd been raw for a month prior to reading this book, but the motivation to continue was good.

Step by step instructions for soaking and sprouting methods (easy to follow chart included). I was too timid to attempt this process til I read this book. Way easy. My kitchen is sproutin' right now.

Recipes with easy to find ingredients is important. I've got to prepare food for 5 s.a.d. enthusiasts so I don't have alot of time or cash to fool around with. This book's got the recipes I can use. The live oatmeal recipe was easy to prepare and delish! It touches a couple of times on this or that being gluten free, which is vital for me. It clued me into nama shoyu...major gluten goin' on. Thanks, it sucks to have a recipe picked out and find out at the grocery store while reading a label that I can't have that specific thing. So, I run around putting the other ingredients back on the shelf coz that recipe's a wash! Another thing, Idiot's Guide tells you exactly what needs to be soaked for any given recipe. I ruined a recipe from another book because it didn't tell me to soak $12.00 worth of almonds. I had to go on you tube to watch other people explain it before one of them finally mentioned that they needed to be soaked. I was bummed. This book helps me not screw things up.

Idiot's Guide has great insider tips on kitchen appliances...wish I'd have read this before I bought my dehydrator, blender, food processor, and juicer. The dehydrator to buy is the Excalibur. The hours it saves in dehydrating time due to its design is crazy! Now I'm bummed with my cheapy Walmart one. There are alot of chip, cracker, and bread recipes I can't make very well without the good dehydrator. The recipes are found in other books not just this one, so it's not a negative against this book. The dehydrating chart is helpful, as well. I like how Idiot's Guide explains why you have increased temps at the beginning of some dehydrations and not others, and why it is still considered raw at these temps. Also, a Champion brand juicer is the one recommended by all raw foodists I've read from. This book explains very simply the differences in how they work and therefore why Champion is the brand recommended.

Basically, the book imparts alot of knowledge, little tips and info on nutition without being too sciencey. It defines some of the raw foodist lexicon. It's like having a friend explain lots of little facts as well as some biggies, in a fun to read manner. I'd buy it again if I didn't already own it!

After making another wonderful dinner from this book tonight, I decided that I should write my impression of the recipes. I have a lot of raw uncook books, so I am familiar with many recipes and food preparation techniques. These authors seem to have perfected the ingredients for soups and breads, and they really understand the concept of taste. I first made the Sweet Vanilla-Almond Dip - so simple but so yummy! I love it with apple. Then I made two salad dressings, the Tahini Dressing and the Fantastic Flax Dressing - both perfect and delightful! I made the Blueberry-Vanilla Macadamia Nut Granola and it is quite good. Then tonight I had for dinner the Carrot Ginger Soup with a sandwich made with the Foccacia. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to try raw cuisine, and I intend to keep exploring more recipes!

I am reasonably new to eating live foods and this book has proven to be incredibly helpful with the transition. The recipes are so tasty and not overly time-consuming to prepare. Even if you only intend to add some raw foods into your diet this is the book for you. It's well written, quite thorough (with lots of helpful hints and tasty tips scattered throughout the recipe sections) and yet simple and very easy to understand. It's divided into five main sections so it's quite user friendly when you're trying to access the various information it contains.

Part One talks about the health benefits of raw foods, how to set up your pantry and what gear you'll need in your kitchen. Part Two teaches you about preparation, marinades, sprouting, dehydration and culturing techniques. It even includes a very complete chart for dehydration drying times and temperatures that I've found extremely helpful. Part Three contains delicious recipes for beverages, soups, sauces, dressings and lighter fare. Part Four contains more wonderful recipes for heartier fare including breakfasts, breads, wraps, main dishes as well as absolutely yummy deserts! Part Five talks about lifestyle changes, the transition into eating live foods and gives some fasting options as well as a wonderfully laid out 4-week Raw Food Success Program.

The writers have also included a resource section with helpful information on other books as well as web-sites for raw food and sustainability organizations, online publications, classes, retreats and workshops where you can learn more.

All in all I think this is one of the best "cook" books I've seen about raw foods. The recipes are tantalizing and delicious and the information is very accessible for everyone.

I read the reviews for this book and thought it might be a nice place to start. I had one other raw food recipe book and thought its recipes tasty, but "involved." Since I am looking for a way to simplify my life, not complicate it, I have been in the market for recipes that can help me do that. The goal is to eat healthily, but not devote my life to kitchen time. (There is so much more to life... like three kids and managing a non-profit bookstore!)

Well, this book didn't fit the bill for me. The recipes were far too involved--and I am not talking about dehydration time and sprouting. Just looking at the list of ingredients left me feeling overwhelmed. Maybe if I were single again with my life to myself. Today, however, I don't have the time to do that type of meal preparation. I needed a way to make this transition easy.

A much better book, as far as I can see, is Raw Food Made Easy, for 1 or 2 people, by Jennifer Cornbleet. That book doesn't require you to purchase expensive items for your kitchen right off. It gives recipes with fewer ingredients (a.k.a. less prep time) and more easily found in mainstream groceries. She gives a list of what to fill your pantry with, and then a SIMPLE weekly shopping list for one. If you have multiple diners, just multiply by the number involved.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Eating Raw was accurate in the info it gives on dehydrators and other raw diet info, but the nuts and bolts (i.e. the recipes) were impractical for daily use for people with busy lives. (a.k.a.--people who don't dwell in their kitchens)

If you truly have done no reading or research on raw foods, then you may well find the introductory info helpful and informative. There is also an extensive resource section in the back. So, I'm giving it 3 stars for that. However, if you want to then learn simple-to-prepare recipes that will help you ease into this way of eating, you may be disappointed. I dislike discovering multiple recipes and steps "hidden" within recipes. I bought The Complete Idiot's Guide to Eating Raw - which you would think would be friendly to beginners - but no, this recipe within a recipe thing was rampant in there. One recipe (for tacos) in particular contained 5 different sub-recipes, all located in different chapters of the book, AND some of the sub-recipes had multiple steps. Example: the nut cheeze is one sub-recipe of the raw taco recipe, and when you locate the recipe for nut cheeze (in another chapter, of course) you discover rejuvelac has to be "on hand" to make the nut cheeze. The nut cheeze itself has to be cultured overnight to prepare, AND the rejuvelac takes several days to make from start to finish. Plus, rejuvelac is listed in the chapter on "advanced techniques". Good grief. This is enough to overwhelm and turn off anyone. (I tried to make the rejuvelac, btw, and it was a failure for me.) In fact, preparing something like a raw version of tacos could take you over a week, if you haven't already gotten into the rhythm of preparing and soaking all of these different ingredients ahead of time. Some of us may never aspire to or achieve this level of organization. I have tried very few recipes due to this complexity. Sometimes I think these problems arise when books are written by professional chefs. I wish they had taken all the recipes to friends who had little to no experience in raw and asked them to attempt making them in their own home kitchens. They might have gotten valuable feedback in that way, and ended up with more user-friendly recipes.

In addition to the recipe complications, many ingredients are VERY expensive, and VERY difficult to find. One salad dressing called for pumpkin seed oil, which even my local Whole Foods doesn't carry. I finally found a bottle of it on the lower shelf at a health food store and it was more than $20.00 for a very small bottle. (I declined to purchase it.) I believe it was the only recipe in the book calling for pumpkin seed oil, so you had better love the dressing and make it frequently to use up the oil, or think up other recipes for it on your own. There are many, many other instances like this. They make a point of saying that you may find eating raw to be much less expensive. Well, not with these recipes, unless you were accustomed to dining frequently at expensive restaurants. Further, the few recipes I have tried were not stellar. I found I had to make a lot of adjustments to make them palatable. I also found errors in the text, like a recipe intro to a juice that mentions an ingredient that is not listed in the recipe itself. To top it all off, this is a small and personal thing, but I found the cartoon drawings at the beginning of the major sections to be somewhat lame, not funny to me even in a corny type of way.

I really enjoyed another book by these authors, Vegan Fusion World Cuisine, and had much better success with those recipes. Plus, it was much more visually appealing, with beautiful photos and inspiring quotes. That book is not all raw, however; it contains more cooked vegan recipes.

For raw information and recipes, I have several other recommendations. The book Becoming Raw is excellent for detailed and well-researched information on the raw food diet, and how best to meet your nutritional requirements while consuming raw, plus it explains in detail how to avoid potential pitfalls. For really simple and unintimidating recipes, go with Jennifer Cornbleet's Raw Food Made Easy for 1 or 2 People. Ani Phyo's books (Ani's Raw Food Kitchen and Ani's Raw Food Essentials) are also great for fairly uncomplicated recipes (though more complex than Jennifer's), as well as good background info.

I think the authors of this book are sincere and well-intentioned folks, but this book of theirs was really a miss for me.

I find this book incredibly enjoyable to read, easy to follow, and wonderfully inspiring-- and I'm not even vegan or a raw foodie! This is really the first book I've read that makes me feel like I can prepare delicious raw foods, and truly get pleasure from the whole process-- growing, shopping, preparing, and eating. I thought it would only have a small selection of worthwhile recipes, but there are so many that it seems like a whole cookbook inside, and all of them that I've tried so far (too many to count) have yielded scrumptious results.

Though I normally follow a vegetarian diet (with plenty of organic dairy, and occasional wild salmon), I know now that I feel better when I stick mostly to a vegan/ raw diet-- one that does truly taste alive and brimming with energy. Thanks in large part to this book, I feel like I can eat like this every day, and have fun with it.

I also love the Blossoming Lotus Cookbook (by the same authors), and if you haven't been to their famous vegan restaurant in Kauai, I really recommend it! The high degree of of creativity and love that these people have poured into their restaurant and first cookbook have obviously gone into this book as well. Also, don't be fooled by the goofy-looking stock photo of raw lasagna on the front cover-- the raw lasagna served at the restaurant is not only beautiful to behold, it's one of the yummiest and most original dishes I've ever had.

I just got the new book and I love it! It's the most informative, readable, and complete book I've ever seen on becoming a Raw Vegan.

Really, it's incredible! Thank you!!!

I have a number of raw food books. The problem is they are too difficult or too boring. This book gives great info. It hits all the points you always read concerns about. I thought the recipes would not be interesting since this is a basic book. I was wrong. The chocolate-orange pudding is great. The choco tacos were really good. I almost didn't try them. You should. I seem to be the only person who doesn't care for almond milk. The cardamom-almond milk is great. The survivor's cereal is worth the price of the book. I am not a smoothie person and always looking for something else for breakfast.

This is an excellent book! When I bought the book, I was hoping to be educated on how I could adopt more raw food into my diet. I did not expect to thoroughly enjoy reading the book. The book comprehensively covers the ins and outs of a raw food diet in a very clear and interesting way. I strongly recommend it.

Since getting this book,I've done nothing but spread the word.It's just simply put the best informational material for the average person.It has made my life so much more fun to see folks getting excited about eating better.....thank you so much!