Customer Reviews

Rawsome!

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the single best reference and recipe book in one that I've found thus far. Mars provides a detailed food-by-food breakdown of nutrients as well as suggesting what conditions this food may help heal. Her recipes are practical, relatively easy to assemble and appealing. The strongest point in her favor for me, the only raw eater in my household, is that many of her recipes make only 2 servings, thus making Rawsome! an excellent choice for singles or couples who prefer not to have to downsize recipes.

Mars also summarizes five classic studies supporting raw foodism as well as recommending three titles for those wishing to explore the scientific support more extensively. I'd suggest Gabriel Cousens' Conscious Eating for people wanting more scientific support with recipes.

The most annoying drawback for me for a number of Mars' more appealing recipes is the unbelievable amount of time required to soak, drain, soak, drain, and dehydrate ingredients before you can even begin to assemble the dish. And then, my little bitty dehydrator often takes well over 24 hours to do its work. Too much hassle for me! (To be fair, however, lengthy preptime is common for quite a few recipes in all-inclusive raw recipe books.)

Nevertheless, there are many usable recipes in Rawsome! Consequently, it's still the best all-around raw recipe book I've found, easily the equivalent of Betty Crocker's "big red" binder cookbook.

I am not entirely sure how I stummbled into raw foods but I am so grateful that I did.

Brigitte's book was one of the first that I picked up and a really great start for beginners. I was instantly converted reading her book. Although I have been a vegan for some time.. I did not feel entirely healthy. Brigitte's book really opened my eyes to eliminating all that processed foods (and even all those cooked veggies that I thought were so healthy for me!) and start really eating natural.

If you think you already eat healthy now.. read this book and you will be completely shocked! Not only is the introduction to raw foods she gives amazing and empowering, but her recipes are wonderful (and simple) for beginners. I do not have a dehydrator, but a lot of the recipes don't require it. I now drink homemade raw almond milk daily. I absolutely LOVE her recipe for Easy Almond Cheese Spread! Everyone I give it to can't get over it. Her shakes are absolutely fabulous I loved the Mango Lassi and Purple Haze. Brigitte has opened me to a whole new way of eating and all new foods that I probably never would have otherwise tried (I had never eaten almonds ever or drank coconut water! yummy!) Best of all even though I have only been eating about 75% raw for the past two weeks I am already noticing an improvement in my health. It is so exciting to know that for the first time in your life you are really doing what's right and natural for your body! I can't imagine ever going back to my old eating habits. If Brigitte's recipes weren't so good.. I may have given up on the whole raw food thing (as there are other gourmet raw recipe books out there that are so discouraging for newbies!). I take this book everywhere with me...it really is wonderful and I will recommend it to anyone who really has a genuine interest in being healthy. I cannot wait to see my health continue to improve.

If you can only get one Raw Food book--this is it! It includes sprouting charts, drying times for dried foods, Lists of every vitamin and mineral with the corresponding foods--even an alkaline/acidity chart. The recipes are simple. If you wnat more gourmet type stuff, I suggest Juliano's RAW. But this book is a must for every Raw kitchen--the most accessible Raw food book I've come across, and Thank You Brigette Mars for including research on uncooked foods--good research--there's a lot of hocus-pocus, magical thinking out there in the Raw Food World, and this is a breath of fresh air, because it's smart and straight forward.

I found and bought this book a few months after reading Kevin Trudeau's Natural Cures book which has finally allowed me to be cured forever of crohn's disease which I had been fooled into beleiving was incurable by the medical community, so I would highly recommend the Natural Cures book to anyone fooled into thinking their disease in incurable (hint: 100% of chronic diseases are direct results of poor food choices, and the one and only cure is to switch to a healthy diet, which is well proven to cure all chronic diseases including cancer).

To get on to Rawsome!, I bought this expecting to find recipes for cold soups, salads, and not much more. To my amazement, there are recipes for pizza, lasagna, samosas, "meat" balls, cheese imitation, pancakes, chips. Even more to my amazement, is that most of these taste WAY better than their "real" equivalent, and they are very filling. For example, the chips which are awesome and crispy like real chips, taste much better, yet I can only eat a few at a time because they are so nutritious.

The secret to making these foods raw but with the taste and texture of cooked foods is dehydration, rather than cooking at 350 F for 30 minutes for example, it's dehydrated at 110 F for 12-24 hours, which preserves the vitamins, enzymes and other nutritional parts of the food. Sure, it may seem long, but the result is great tasting, disease-preventing food.

I can easily see myself eating mostly if not only recipes from this book from now on. They taste awesome, a cheap to make, and extremely healthy. Having given myself crohn's disease at the age of 17 through a terrible toxic diet loaded with dairy and sugar (2 very deadly poisons to the human body), I now understand the importance of healthy eating and this recipe book lets me eat healthy great tasting food for cheap.

One thing you'll notice is that many of these recipes can take 24 to 48 hours to make, it takes very little of your time though. For example, for the pancakes, you must soak nuts in water for 12 hours, then dehydrate them another 12 hours, then mix all ingredients, then make the pancakes on dehydrator sheets, and dehydrate 12 hours, turn around, dehydrate another 12 hours. That's 48 hours to make pancakes! But if you do one recipe per day, you will always have a constant supply of many recipes as one recipe makes quite a bit. So you can make pancakes on mondays, chips on tuesdays, samosas on wednesdays, etc and always have a bit of everything available, so I do not see this as a problem at all, quite the opposite, since the recipes take so little of your time, it will save you time compared to normal cooking. You also won't have baked on foods that are hard to wash. So don't expect recipes you can start a few hours before guests arrive, because they'll be done days after your guests leave, but many recipes can be done in a few minutes also, so there's still many choices for quick meals, like the raw pasta which can be made form start to finish including cleaning in no more than 5-7 minutes, as it is only grated and blended vegetables.

Of course, expect to buy a dehydrator as it is required for many of the recipes. Luckily, my counter top convetion oven has a dehydrate mode, but it is "hard coded" to 150 F, which is too hot and cooks the food slightly, eventually, I will buy the Excalibur dehydrator the author recommends to make perfect dehydrated meals as I know I will be dehydrating almost daily from now on (and have since I got the book).

If you want to not only have a disease-free life, but save money on groceries (the author claims a 50-80% reduction in grocery costs by following a raw vegan diet, indeed, I found myself comming out of the grocery store with many more bags and a much smaller total on the receipt, and that's if you buy organic, which I'd recommend, why eat healthy foods loaded with cancer causing chemicals?), I would highly recommend this book. It will also help save the environment as you will not be buying much packaged/boxed foods.

Rawsome! is much more than a cookbook - it is an in-depth, integrative guide to the health benefits of eating raw foods, and how to safely and properly select, store, and prepare raw foods. Herbalist and nutrition consultant Brigitte Mars explains sprouting, juicing, and many more techniques for enriching the creations of an all raw-foods diet - no cooking, grilling, steaming, or applications of high temperatures. 200 kitchen-tested recipes round out this useful and highly accessible resource for anyone interested in eating closer to nature.

This well-written book not only has many great recipes and suggestions for the best possible diet, but a very complete complete encyclopedia of vegetables, herbs, grains, and even bee products! I have enjoyed it immensely.

I recently have begun introducing more raw into my diet. RAWSOME has been an essential tool and ally in this process of self healing. The recipes are delicious and make your palate dance with excitement and flavor. It is also educational, giving the reader a chance to learn what the health benefits are of each fruit, vegetable, nut and seed. I recommend this book for anyone looking to improve their health and have fun in the process! Enjoy!

Awsome! I couldn't put it down. I'm not into changing totally to a raw diet, but I am more careful about what I eat. The information on each food item, nutrition, & medicinal were excellent. Many books I have read just give you recipes. I have many allergies, and found in her book other foods in the food family, so now I can stay away from them. Also my mother has arthritis and I've made a list of foods for her to eat to help her. I leaned more from Bridgitte's book than the last ten I've read. I've told everyone about it. Don't pass it up.

Very well written and the recipes I have made so far have been easy and tasty. This is a good "complete" Raw food book for beginners to advanced. Good information on the 'why' and 'how' a nice list of references. No pictures but that helps keep the cost down ($18.95). I like it. It's a keeper.

This is my first Raw title and I quite enjoyed it! It lays out information in an easy to follow structure and the content was very informative. She gives an account of her personal experience followed by what raw living is and isn't, reasons to go raw, how to equip your raw kitchen, eating with your family and friends etc. A lot of this info is very useful. The encyclopedia would be good for those who don't know a lot about the foods around them. Luckily I have a copy of the Doctor's Book of Food Remedies which is very comprehensive and it also tallies with what I have read in this book although this book adds some that I wasn't familiar with. I have not tried any of the recipes as yet (time constraints) but I HAVE read through all of them. Most of the ingredients seemed very accessible until I got to two of the recipes in the dessert section which called for 'agar flakes'... ??? Needless to say a more experienced raw foodist would know what they are and where to find them. If you have no clue you could just omit them or nix those recipes from your experiment list :)

I like that she gives little tips throughout the book like what to use in place of rice, variations on flax crackers, sandwich ideas etc. I also love that in her recipes she tells you the shelf/fridge life of the products and where the best place is to store some of them.

If the book is so great why did you minus a star?? - 1. Many of the recipes call for tahini and although it may be readily available to a lot of people, I have found some very simple recipes online for it so it would have been useful to include a recipe here in the book for those who would have found this product unable to obtain or who would prefer to make their own at home 2. A LOT of the recipes contain salt (which to be fair can be omitted) and since I haven't used salt since the early 90s, it's something I noticed especially. Instead of salt I flavour my food with fresh minced garlic, onion and chives which salt sensitve individuals can try. (This can possibly be dried and stored but I've never tried it so can't say how that works) 3. A lot of recipes call for Nama Shoyu which again may not be accessible to everyone so an alternative seasoning could be provided.

On the whole I'm glad I purchased the title and would definitely recommend it to anyone who's interested in purchasing.