These dishes have been inspired by Choosing Raw — I constantly stalk Gena’s blog for food inspiration because she keeps it so simple that I can always find the ingredients in my fridge or pantry….and her food tastes good.

I wouldn’t say this was a duplicate at all of Gena’s chickpea avocado nori spread but the idea of having a simple platter of raw veggies plus a dip was totally what I needed on a busy hot day.

I made a simple guacamole dip (avocado, cilantro, cherry tomatoes, white onion, lemon) and ate it with romaine leaves, carrot sticks, and cucumber slices. No fussing or machinery involved!

And Gena talked about how she improvized on a cucumber mint dressing by adding tahini, so I made my own cucumber tahini dressing (without the mint) and it was so lovely with my salad.

Cucumber tahini dressing recipe (in a high-speed blender; 2 servings):
2 tbs tahini
1/2 cucumber
Juice of one lemon
Pinch of dried dill
Dash of cayenne pepper
Dash of sea salt
Dash of black pepper
Splash of water

But I followed her Cinnamon Cherry Blast to the letter…..It was very yummy and rich. I would highly recommend it if you are in a hurry but need a filling smoothie to tide you over several hours.

I just love it when it’s so easy to be raw….

Happy Friday!

I was inspired by raw mama Kirsten Suzanne again and made cucumber boats. When I saw her picture of guacamole in cucumber boats, I was intrigued.

As you know recently, I’ve been a bit turned off by green smoothies and I also realized that I was in a raw food rut. I tend to drink lots of smoothies and soups so I’ve this urge to munch on food instead of chugging it down.

I prepared my fave avocado dill mash (one avocado, chopped garlic, handful of chopped dill, sea salt and black pepper); dug out the cucumber seeds and mixed them together with the mash; topped the boats with the mash and devoured them all.

We only get skinny Japanese cucumbers in Tokyo and I’ve yet to see fat English cucumbers being sold.

I rounded up this munchy lunch with half a Fuji apple and almond butter.

Sometimes, you just need to chew to be happy.

I like these mineral crust flax crackers because they are full of pumpkin seeds – yay for more iron!

I get them from The Raw Food World.

It’s so easy to make and really delicious.

And I resurrected my raw dessert soul by making these….

I didn’t freeze these coconut chocolate truffles and just put them in the chiller section — so moist and chocolately!

You can find the recipe here but I used pecans instead of sunflower seeds like my previous recipe. The pecans make the truffles softer because it has more oil in them than seeds. I usually use pecans to make raw brownies too so these truffles were pure decadence. By the way, I also subbed the agave nectar with maple syrup because I stopped buying agave — partly because I think it’s too expensive to get it shipped from the US to Tokyo and I find it to be too “shallow” in flavour (sweet but bland while maple syrup is sweet but has depth).

I whipped them up as a treat for going on a road trip a few weekends ago to run a half marathon because food at rest stops are quite dismal and quite junky. Only good food before a race!

Sorry for the long absence but things are hectic here at Raw Bento Headquarters. It’s been a week since my return from Moscow but I took off on a short weekend getaway to Nagano — a beautiful prefecture northwest of Tokyo — with friends and did a lot of indulging on top of little sleep.

On hindsight, I think I threw myself into raw food without much thought to transitioning (maybe that’s why I’m facing some “raw turbulence” right now; more on that later). I suppose I tend to take on the attitude of “all or nothing” sometimes but I’m glad I’m taking a step back and easing myself back into raw food after a yo-yo period of being strict and completely to-hell-with-it.

I’ve always had rice-paper spring rolls at Thai and Vietnamese restaurants but never thought to make them myself. But I must’ve seen some on a blog and thought, “That looks easy!” So I ran out to buy a 200JPY (USD1.90) pack of rice paper to make a high-raw lunch for two (well, the non-raw fiance got a cooked portion of leftover lentil curry, too).

It is seriously so easy and I am kicking myself for not trying these earlier in my raw journey.

You just need to heat up some water in a pan, let it cool to just being warm to the touch (not scalding), dip a piece of rice paper in, fish it out, place it on a dry towel, dump julienned veggies on it, and ROLL!

I used cucumber, carrot, mung bean sprouts, and coriander as my filling.

For the dip, I made a very yummy Asian sauce:

In a high-speed blender:
3 tbs almond butter
1 tbs sesame seed oil
1 tbs olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 tsp shoyu
1 date
1 tbs lemon juice

I loved these and thought they were so delicious but I think my limit is three to four spring rolls at a go. I thought it would be my lunch so I ate seven rolls which left me bloated (probably due to too much rice paper) but yet hungry two hours later. In future, I would definitely pair three rolls with a nutrient dense salad. There’s a reason why these babies are good as appetizers or a side dish.

I LOVE raw coleslaw and I pretty much love drizzling raw mayo (recipe here) on other things too and one of them is zucchini pasta. I’ll sprinkle a ton of black pepper and top the noodles with yellow and red baby tomatoes to make the dish more colourful.

This is another summer meal I like to make but had no cravings for in winter.

Strangely, I’ve developed a creeping dislike for kelp noodles and I adored these all of last year. Maybe my last experience with pesto kelp noodles recently tasted very bitter (perhaps the fault of bitter basil leaves) and the rubbery texture of the noodles somehow got to me. I’ve now got something like eight packets of kelp noodles waiting to be finished. Maybe I just need to make raw pad thai again.

I’m so surprised by my changing likes and dislikes. First, nut pates, and now kelp noodles…. I wonder what’s next…?

I’ve never found napa cabbage attractive to eat but would do so in Asian soups and use it in my own homemade kimchi. But I got sick of romaine wraps so I grudgingly tried napa cabbage and it’s awesome!

The leaves are very firm and holds veggies well and the taste when raw is so mild that it would match pretty much any dip or pate.

I was inspired by a post on Choosing Raw and set about to make my own version.

The fiery orange sauce you see above is my attempt at making zucchini hummus.

Adapted from Alissa Cohen‘s Living On Live Food:

1 zucchini
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1 clove garlic
Juice of half a lemon
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne
Sea salt to taste

I probably used too much paprika so it looked so orange. But the big question is, did it taste like hummus? I’m afraid not. Perhaps I need to use tahini, instead of raw sesame seeds. I detest sprouted chick peas so I wouldn’t make a raw version. However, as a dip in its own right, it was very tasty with a slightly spicy kick.

I drizzled the sauce generously over chopped tomatoes, avocado, and broccoli sprouts with napa cabbage leaves as the wraps. It was very delicious but I would probably put the sprouts at the bottom to make eating easier, or eliminate them altogether and use something else like cucumber.

Sometimes if you don’t follow a recipe to the T, you will get a very different result. Today’s recipe is called an accidental thousand island dip because it was meant to be a “cheesy cheddar cheese” spread.

I took the recipe from a raw blog whose name I’ve forgotten. Although the ingredients were pretty much the same, I think changing the proportions just made it an entirely different animal altogether.

It was meant to look more orange but it turned out beige like thousand island dressing — I think it was because I didn’t use one whole red bell pepper, threw in fresh onion instead of onion powder, replaced tahini with sesame seeds and substituted cashews with macadamias. Also, I added a bit too much water. But you know what? It tasted great. In fact, this is one of the best macadamia nut cheeses I ever made.

In a blender:
¼ red bell pepper
1 cup macadamias
½ cup water
1 tbs sesame seeds
½ hemp seeds
2 tbs nutritional yeast
2 tbs chopped white onion
1 clove garlic
Juice of half a lemon
Sea salt to taste

Nori rolls are a staple in my diet. It’s perfect for when I want something quick and easy, but not too plain. I only use toasted nori sheets but the rest of my ingredients are raw.

By hand, mash up one ripe avocado, shred one small cucumber, add 1 tsp of dried dill, ½ tsp of sea salt, chop a clove of garlic and sprinkle black pepper to taste.

I usually add broccoli or radish sprouts to my nori rolls but I didn’t have any this time, so I made do with some mizuna watercress leaves. Before I spread the raw filling onto a nori sheet, I placed half a Romaine leaf on the nori to prevent it from becoming too wet.

Also, I don’t bother to cut the nori into pieces if the non-raw boyfriend is not around. I just dip it into some wasabi and shoyu and it’s ready to eat. This is raw fast food. I swear it only takes less than 10 minutes from start to first bite. Oishiii…

I get cravings for creamy mushroom flavours once in a awhile and this mushroomy recipe from The Renegade Health Show is the bomb. I didn’t have all the ingredients so here is my version:

In a high-speed blender:
¼ cup sunflower seeds, soaked
½ stalk celery
6 pieces of shiitake mushrooms
1 tbs olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp chopped white onion
1 tbs tamari
Salt and pepper to taste
A splash of water

This made 2 cups worth of mushroom sauce which I couldn’t finish. I probably had ¾ cup over zucchini noodles and the other quarter I stuffed into marinated white mushrooms, that were so yum because it was sooooo mushroomy. I sprinkled more black pepper before serving and it just tasted like a deconstructed cream of mushroom soup, which was a dish I used to adore.

“Simple is the best” was what I was thinking when I returned to Tokyo after five weeks of holidays in Singapore and Sri Lanka.

While it was fairly easy to remain high raw in Singapore as I had access to a blender and fresh produce most times. But I had to go 80-90 per cent cooked in Sri Lanka due to the undrinkable tap water. I toted along Larabars, three packets of nuts and seeds, bananas, oranges and avocados. Needless to say the fresh produce only saw me through the first two days of my journey.

Breakfast in Sri Lanka almost always included papaya, pineapple, and banana in a smoothie or on a platter, but our long hikes and sightseeing activities where we’re not sure when the next meal was going to be, had me decide to throw in the raw towel and just eat whatever was provided. I still remained vegetarian but I consumed eggs and dairy quite freely.

All was well till towards the end of the second week when I suffered heartburn from all the grains, noodles, and pasta I consumed. Out came the medication — I was not proud of this, but I was away from home and had to make do as best as I could. What surprised me was how sensitive I was to eating what seemed like a regular portion of cooked carbs. I tried to eat less and a couple of yoga sessions at a lovely beach resort set me right again.

When I came back to Japan, all I could think of was fruit and veggies. I had very simple meals — lots of smoothies, juices, and 10-minute raw dishes.

Pictured in this post is one of my old faves — raw tar tar sauce with cucumber slices. Check out the recipe here.