Ok, it felt good to get that out of my system! Here’s the scoop! I’M NOT FINDING THIS EASY! Yes, mother, I hear you, “everything worthwhile is worth working for”. I know. That’s not my point. My point is that I need to feed a finicky 16 year old and since Wednesday her favorite phrase has become “I don’t like this”, not meaning the raw food diet in concept, but almost everything I put in front of her to try. Ok,  that’s problem #1. I’m doing all the heavy lifting. This WAS her idea, so I need to keep trying to include her more. Today I asked her to plan her own food menu for the day. We’ll see how that goes.

So my second problem is information. Yes, I purchased an absolutely gorgeous raw food cookbook and yes, I’ve tried several milks and smoothies out of it, but most of the recipes are, well, daunting and time consuming. This doesn’t fit well in my crazy lifestyle. The first step in getting help is recognizing that I NEED it! (Thanks again, Mom!) That said, the second step is to see what I can find on the “google machine”. I mean seriously, this is the 21st century and more information is available to us than ever before. It’s even at our fingertips! I fell into my first helpful website as a result of a fortuitous comment posted on my blog from Earth Mother. http://earthmother-intheraw.blogspot.com/2009/03/you-can-quote-me-planning-is-key.html. There is a wealth of fun stuff here including recipes!

Here are several that sounded particularly good to me:

Sweet potato casserole and cranberry cashew rice pilaf (I have the rice soaking now 🙂 ): http://earthmother-intheraw.blogspot.com/2009/11/thanksgiving-in-raw-take-two.html

Hot chocolate: http://earthmother-intheraw.blogspot.com/2009/12/natures-prozac-hot-chocolate-in-raw.html

Pumpkin pit: http://livelifeveg.com/raw-pumpkin-pie/

Through her site, I found others: I particularly liked:

Sites I like: Kristen Suzanne’s – Kristen’s Raw – below are links to a couple sites I found helpful.

How to get started with raw, motivations for staying raw, sugar and caffeine addictions with raw http://kristensraw.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-to-get-started-with-raw-motivation.html

Raw kitchen and food prep calendar http://kristensraw.blogspot.com/2008/10/raw-food-diet-success-tip-be-focused.html

Great site for how to instructions, with directions to make almond milk – I’m ON this one!: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Milk-an-Almond-fresh-homemade-almond-milk/

Cookbooks of interest (I’m still not sure what you call them when you don’t actually “cook” the food)

I’m interested in Penny Shelton’s Raw for the Holidays (yes, I know it’s not a holiday, but seriously, some festive elements are needed when undertaking a 40 day raw food diet with very limited preparation): http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/raw-food-rehabs-raw-for-the-holidays/7849749 and Philip McCluskey’s Raw Food, Fast Food:  http://www.lovingraw.com/lovingraw-ebooks-cb/?hop=eatraw

Observation: I went from whiny to empowered in on blog post! I love the I interwebs! I CAN do this!

As I find more gems, I’ll share them! For now, I’m off to make a healthy smoothie for breakfast and plan food for the next several days!