Day 75 - 3/4

Time for a brief review...

I look back on 75 days of reluctant vegan raw foodism.

It has been challenging.

I have managed to stay 99.9% raw. I have knowingly and deliberately eaten cooked food once in the whole time - when my mum was here and cooked lots of delicious Ghanaian food. I stole a teaspoon of her Okra Stew. Heaven.

I have accidentally eaten processed sweetcorn on salad once or twice. And there are a handful of occasions where I may have eaten something cooked and I simply do not know (usually in restaurants where the interesting item I have been served almost certainly was heated above 43 degrees in the preparation but is now - I am repeatedly assured by the person serving me - cold).

Vegan raw foodism is a growing trend in Berlin. Just in the space of the last 14 days I have eaten in four different specialist environments:

• Boris Lauser - a gourmet Raw Food Chef who hosts private dinner parties in his Kreuzberg home (so good I ate there twice :-)
• La Mano Verde - a vegan restaurant in Charlottenburg that serves gourmet cooked food but also has a complete raw food menu
• "Rawfood Goes ..." events organised regularly by Rawger and held in Fujisan Bar in Wilmersdorf, and
• Gesund und Sündig, also in Wilmersdorf, apparently Germany's first raw food restaurant which only opened this month

Another place is due to open in a few weeks and it will serve raw food in Görlitzer Park, Kreuzberg.

All of which is pretty amazing.

But I do miss cooked food. And I am fed up of only having a choice of a large or a small mixed salad when I go out to dinner in bulk standard restaurants - and these days I even have to fight to get a tomato or cucumber on them.

I am suffering from my decision to stop eating meat & fish (The effect - I know that even when my 100 days are up, that lightly grilled salmon with butter & tarragon will not be on my plate, no matter how non-raw I am. Those Kentucky Fried Chicken Fillet Pieces they are advertising? Sharon can just walk on by. Seeing people sitting outside restaurants tucking into their steaks could almost make me weep. I am looking forward to eating cooked food again, but I will miss meat & fish terribly for a while to come).

And I am fed up of people commenting about how much weight I have lost.

And I have turned to alcohol again - my one sin - to make it through.

I am not a raw foodian in my heart.

This experiment has been eye-opening and I hope my health issue will have been cured.

But either way, I will cease to be 100% raw on Wednesday July 6th.

I cannot wait!

What do you think my first item of cooked food should be?

Day 67 - Avocado thing

I need a better name for this dish...

I created this having been inspired by Boris and his most inventive use of marinated aubergine.

I thought my aubergine days were over for the rest of my raw life. But then - I tasted the aubergine and broad bean quiche and I was hooked.

So I went home and bought me some aubergine, cubed it up and marinaded it in:

olive oil

garlic

ginger

sesame seeds

agave nectar

pink salt (now that would be a good name for a piece of creative writing)

black pepper

a very little bit of chili

a squeeze of lemon juice

all whizzed up in a blender.

I marinaded it in the fridge for at least a day, but was not really focused on how to make a quiche I must admit. So adventurous I am not. And especially without a dehydrator. So I made the meal that you can see in the photo above.

Avocado thing (otherwise known as guacamole) with a side of a Something Else thing (made with aubergine).

It tasted quite good actually.

I just need a damn name...

Day 61 - Oh. My. Sainted. Aunts.

Delicious does not even come close.

The edited highlights are :

* Boris Lauser is a raw food genius.

* Real raw food is amazing

* I need a job that pays around 6,000 € monthly after tax, so that I can hire Mr. Lauser as my personal chef / raw food instructor.

Damn, that was delicious!

My only criticism - there wasn't enough of it!

.....

To start with, we were served with a welcome drink. Mango and fermented something. Boris kindly told us all about it, I cannot remember anything except that it is very good for you. Admittedly, it tasted a bit gewöhnungsbedürftigt

The first course looked great - a two-colour asparagus creation (something like a mousse) with a side salad and an orangey source (ingredient not colour).

Wonderful. I love asparagus. And the peeling-chopping into small pieces-then eating thing isn't happening.

The second course was an aubergine and Saubohnen quiche. I have no idea what Saubohnen are in English - or England - but they look like broad beans (oh I just checked Leo, they are broad beans). Whatever. When did you ever eat beans and actually enjoy them? Well, on Wednesday night I did! Delicious. The quiche - I would never have guessed that it wasn't cooked - was amazing. And I love aubergine and have been suffering from withdrawal symptoms from them also. But now I have been inspired and I am going to marinade the one I bought today in Alnatura as soon as this blog post is finished... :-)

The third course the selection of nut cheeses and different kinds of bread. Mindblowing.

So, this was my strategy for eating. I tasted a little of each of the four cheeses and three slices of bread (I can no longer remember all of them I had my clear favourites, the rest paled into insignificance - which btw is only testimony to how great my favourites were...) I ranked each of the breads and cheeses very quickly and then ate them in reverse favourite order.

People my word for today is: Olive bread and Cashew Nut Cheese.

Wow.

And then a long time nothing.

Boris if you are reading this - I do not want to learn how to make the cheese myself. I want to be in enough supply of it to be able to bathe in it! I have tried to imitate your olive bread today. Ich bin gespannt....

Finally, the fourth course, an absolutely delicious moussy-type desert. Made by Melanie - another excellent raw food chef. The bits of chocolate sprinkled over the top were particularly mind-blowing.

I got to take another portion of pretty much everything home with me and enjoy the whole experience again the next morning. I can now look the remaining 40 days of my raw food experiment squarely in the eye and with confidence. I know how raw food can taste.

Bring it on.

Thank you Boris for rescuing me from almost certain insanity.

Day 59 - Gourmet Dinner!

Oh joy!

I am going out to dinner today - to a place that caters for raw foodians!

Boris Lauser - apparently some kind of raw food genius - is holding one of his regular private dinner parties tonight. We are already booked in. The timing of this could not have been better.

I am on a bit of a food strike -

I have stopped eating raw bread and green salads - cashew nuts and bananas will also bite the dust soon. Avocados are slowly coming back into favour.

I am so looking forward to Boris working his magic - I desperately need to eat something more inspired than "Feldsalat".

Check out the menu: http://www.balive.org/b-alive/dinner-club-20th-may/

...and watch this space :-)