Raw deals

Raw food cookbooks…I love the paradox they pose.  If it’s raw, then it can’t be a cookbook, because there’s no cooking involved.  And if there’s no cooking involved, then why do you need a cookbook in the first place?

This thought came to me most recently upon receiving a copy of Ani Phyo’s Ani’s Raw Food Asia.  Phyo is a raw food guru, and when I opened the book, I could readily understand its juicy, colorful appeal.

There is no time more suggestive of a raw food diet than midsummer, that heat-hazed period of doldrums when the limbs are heavy and the stove, hard to approach.  Yet strangely, raw food cookbooks are published yearlong, rather than being concentrated in July and August as you might expect.

My relationship with raw food doesn’t really take place in the kitchen.  It mostly takes place in the garden, while I’m gardening.  I snack all the time in the garden–on radishes, peas, carrots, blueberries, tomatoes even plain old lettuce.  Half the time the harvest doesn’t even make it back to the house, and often when it does, I’m too full to eat it.

In short, I am really naïve in raw food matters.  So, raw foodists, what recipe was it that first won you over?  What book?  What raw recipe can you not live without?  Go ahead, share it–we’re here, blender and knife at the ready…and burners firmly switched to OFF.