Mundane….. that sums up how my weekly meals were becoming. Very active busy family of five + not a whole lot of time = mundane meals. Notice I said our meals “were” becoming mundane. After I pulled myself out of this comatose state I was in, I discovered a whole new world thanks to Nourished Kitchen, Raw Food Rehab, and Raw Food Recipes. I am not necessarily a vegan, or a raw foodie as I would say, BUT I do believe that adding these elements into our diet is extremely important. I am not a big meat or chicken lover but I do try to prepare dishes with them often. So finding out about these websites opened up our options drastically. Not to mention Facebook and Pinterest made this quest for new options a piece of cake! Nourished Kitchen is more than just a recipe blog and food site. I discovered Moroccan Lemons on their site along with many other options to spice up our weekly meals. Spicing things up is what we needed! Being I love all things books (kind of nerd in that respect) they’ve recently launched a new cookbook! It’s called “The Nourished Kitchen: Farm- to-Table Recipes for the Traditional Foods Lifestyle”. Do yourself a favor and check them out when your surfing Facebook. You can find them there as well. They offer a wealth of information along with fabulous pictures!
Onto the “Raw” part….. Time to get down and dirty…. Literally. To change things up, and eat more fresh veggies, adding raw was the ticket. I decided to surprise my family, *insert evil laugh*, one night and make Raw Pad Thai.
Let me back up a minute. My first brush with raw was at a little cafe in Winter Park, Florida called Cafe 118 Degrees. Hot Hubs (aka Steve) and I decided to live on the edge (really just me but I talked him into it) for date night one evening. Being it was an all raw restaurant, I convinced Hot Hubs that it was an adventure we’d never forget! Boy was I ever right! Little did we know how our lives would change after this crazy night out. First up, Raw Crackers and Hummus. Don’t remember much about this other than it was delish. Next up, Pad Thai. This sounded like something we could handle. Not too freaky if you know what I mean. To say the dish was exceptional would not do it justice. My taste buds were having a party and even more shocking was that Hot Hubs was actually enjoying it as well. To finish off our evening, we opted for a raw cashew ice cream. There were many choices, but cashew seemed safe. This clinched our evening. The server stopped by several times to check on us, I think she thought we might bolt, and in the end we had her pulling up a chair to chat about all things raw.
Fast forward a few weeks to my attempt to turn my boys onto this new concept of a raw dinner. Never mind that I didnt’ exactly tell them it was raw, but their facial expressions said it all when they realized there was not a trace of chicken and the “noodles” were not cooked. Welcome to all raw baby and the rest is history! Well, not really, as this was just the beginning. Let me introduce you to two of my favorite raw food sites:
Raw Food Rehab
and
Raw Food Recipes
Now we’re cookin’….. or NOT. Both of these sites were a gem for me, as I had felt like I struck gold when I stumbled upon them. Sure I had accomplished making Raw Pad Thai, but I didn’t want to stop there. Both Raw Food Rehab and Raw Food Recipes were a well-spring of information and being they are both on Facebook, it once again made my life 100 times easier. I like the idea of one stop shop social networking, and this made that possible. Click and go! I also love pictures so I can see what I’m attempting to make, and once again these two sites delivered! You know when you absolutely love something, it makes you want to share it with the entire world? Well, I’m very much like that and when I love something, I can’t resist shouting it from the rooftops, and directing people to the proper sites.
It has been almost a year to the date that I decided to spice things up and today we are still going strong. I think most families are super busy, and either honestly don’t have the time to research fresh and new ideas, or simply get stuck in the same mundane comatose state I found myself in. Adding one meal per week of simply raw into our routine was easy and not as hard as you think thanks to these wonderful sites I stumbled upon. As for myself, I routinely eat a raw breakfast or lunch each day, and again it’s not hard, it just takes the effort of thinking out of the box! Everyone needs a little SPICE in their life! So what are you waiting for? Spice things up!
Organic Sport Chic 