I have never been much of a cook, so all this making food from scratch is still really new to me. So far, I think I am doing a pretty decent job of it, but today I did something that I am not so sure about. I made a pasta sauce by taking my raw ingredients (2 big slicing tomatoes, 5 carrots, and 1 large Chioggia beet) and shredding them in a food processor. I added a can of tomato paste, herbs (thyme, oregano, fennel), some nutritional yeast, brown sugar, sea salt and black pepper, a bit of water to make it more liquid, and simmered it on the stove for 20 mins or so. Some garlic would have been good too, but I forgot. Either way, I thought it came out delicious, but all 4 of the kids (2 of mine and 2 of a friend’s) rejected it!

Basically, this leads me to wonder if you can cook shredded veggies. I remember one time (a long long time ago) trying to make onion soup by pureeing raw onions, and that obviously didn’t turn out so great! It also makes me think more about raw food. I would estimate that about 1/3 of my diet is raw since I eat a lot of fruit, salads, and nuts, but I generally do not prepare raw dishes. I think it would be great to have more ways of eating raw food than just grabbing a piece of fruit or having a green salad, but I am pretty clueless about raw cooking.

A while ago, I did buy Matt Amsden’s book RAWvolution: Gourmet Living Cuisine, which is full of amazing photography and delicious sounding recipes. Of course he also says every raw food kitchen needs a good food processor, dehydrator, and juicer– 3 things I do not have. And hence, sadly, I have not made any of his recipes yet.

So yes, I am feeling a void in the dephts of my kitchen cabinets. I want a better food processor than the one I have, which isn’t a food processor at all, but a hand blender with a small food chopper bowl attachment. The one I have been drooling for is the Cuisinart DFP-14N Custom 14 Food Processor, but I can’t get over the $200 price tag… While I’m dreaming, I might as well mention that I also want the Excalibur 9 Tray Dehydrator, the Wolfgang Grain Mill, and a Green Star 2000 Juice Extractor.

That’s all.