Watching YouTube videos by Raw vegans like Freelee the Banana Girl has been one of the ways to fill up my free time. It is both inspiring and useful to be watching how other raw vegans sustain their lifestyle and sharing tips and recipes with others on how to be a raw vegan. The online community of raw vegans is growing stronger each day and I’m definitely glad to be part of this.
Everyday I’m learning new knowledge about this lifestyle. It’s really more than just abstaining from meat and dairy products and sticking to raw foods. There is so much more about the nutrition that goes behind this concept of eating raw foods. There are also different versions and adaptations of this life style. Some raw vegans eat 100% raw living foods while others aren’t too particular about it, eating any sort of plant-based food as long as they are not cooked. For instance, some raw vegans feel that raw cocoa is not a raw food as it has been processed and heated to some extent while others felt that eating raw cocoa is acceptable in a raw vegan diet. Well, for me, I feel that as long as your body is thriving and you’re feeling great, it doesn’t really matter which type of raw veganism you’re sticking to.
One of the more popular raw veganism lifestyle is the raw til 4 (#rawtil4). The Raw Til 4 diet actually incorporates cooked plant-based foods as such I find that this form of diet would be great for those who had difficulty sticking to a fully raw diet meal plan. It is especially suitable for those who want to try out the raw vegan lifestyle as well because you are not deprived of delicious cooked vegan food. The principles of the Raw Til 4 is to eat raw foods everyday til 4pm in the day and after 4pm, you will have a high-carb meal. You could have rice or even cooked potatoes chips with low-fat and low-sodium sweet chili sauce. Freelee, a raw vegan enthusiast herself, had came up with a 7-day meal plan based on the Raw Til 4 diet. You could read more about here if you want to have some ideas of what the Raw Til 4 diet consist of.
I’ve been liking this idea of keeping a balance between raw foods and cooked foods. It is like having the best of both worlds and you’re not really missing out on anything. One of the high-carb dinner meals you can prepare is baked potato fries with raw vegan cheese. To make the raw vegan cheese, I’ve experimented with several ingredients like herbs, nuts and nutritional yeast and I’m pleasantly surprise to discover how much it actually taste like cheese. It’s creamy, savoury and appetizing. And amazingly nutritious!
Here’s how you do it!
Baked Potato Fries with Raw Vegan Cheese Recipe
Baked Potato Fries
2 large organic potatoes
1. Peel off the potato skin then sliced the potatoes into thin shoestring fries. ( Thin potato slices cook faster in the oven.)
2. Place it in the oven and baked at 180 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes till the fries looked slightly crisp and brown. ( The cooking time depends on the type of oven.)
Raw Vegan Cheese
3 tablespoons of raw cashews
2 tablespoons of chopped Chinese Parsley
1 tablespoon of chopped garlic
1 tablespoon of nutritional yeast
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt
1/3 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
Add all the above ingredients into the blender and blend it well till creamy. Drizzle the ‘cheese’ sauce over the baked potato fries and sprinkle some chopped spring onions (optional). Does this reminds you of KFC cheese fries?
However, I do not recommend that you eat this everyday even though it taste and looks delicious as it is rather it does contain a considerable amount of fat due to the presence of cashew nuts. Yes, I’ve just learn from the 80/10/10 diet book by Dr. Douglas Graham that we should really go easy on nuts and seeds even though it contains healthy fats!
I’m more convinced that I do totally become a vegetarian for life because I am not deprived of all these decadent food.
