Best Practices

When starting out raw it's tempting to eat a bunch of common fruits and vegetables... till you want some variety in your meals.

Some best practices that really helped me are as follows:

1.  Farmer's Market:  Go to your local farmer's market, even if you're not sure what to buy.  Once you get there, let yourself be inspired by the amazing variety there. Speak to the people who grew the food, and they're always happy to tell you, sometimes in great detail, how it was grown, where, and give you some great recipe ideas.

2.  Stick to the basics.  At first, I went salad-crazy.  This was territory I was familiar with and so it was fairly easy to build up my knowledge from there. By simply incorporating things I'd never thought of before, such as adding cilantro to a bowlful of greens, I was able to venture into bigger and slightly more complicated things like how to make a filling salad without using meat, then without using lettuce.  Spinaches and kales became the base, and it was much easier from there to stay experimental.

3.  Start juicing.  Every raw foodist will recommend to you their favorite brand of juicer and mixer.  You'll love having these as you go further along. However, in the beginning I found it nice to use the one I had from my local department store. These type of centrifugal force juicers that are smaller and designed for occasional use came in handy.  It was best to use this rather than not to have juiced at all.  In this way, you quickly alkalinize the body, and feel the difference immediately. What was really surprising was how quickly people noticed.  They may not have guessed I'd gone raw but they commented on how something was glowing, better and fresher about my aura and general overall appearance than anything else.  Plus you can usually find some sort of greens around the house that need to be used up, and you won't have to dread just having salad, salad and more salad.  You may be surprised at how quickly you can use up what you already have on hand in your juice recipes.  Great starters are

kale + spinach + bananas, even overripe ones. 
carrots + oranges
apples + spinach + bananas
kale + cucumber + cilantro works really well, and you can add one or two apples to a two serving glass to balance the "green" taste. These were some of my favorites when I first really got going with it, and they were even better when combined with...

4.  Mini-fasting.  At first I couldn't imagine even thinking of undergoing a few-hours-fast, much less anything worse.  It seemed unreasonable, like I would have to sign up to some far away camp or health spa to even dream of it.  Happy to report, it was a great best practice to commit to fasting one meal a day, usually lunch since I could easily distract myself with errands and other things to do.  I'd make a lot of juice beforehand, and carry it with me in a plastic container with a lid, and kept it in a cooler.  Whatever juice I was drinking for the one-meal fast had to have lots of banana.  I found my blood sugar wasn't as spikey and I was much less shaky about the whole thing when I followed that one step.  Sometimes I'd add purified water, and other times I'd make a green veggie or fruit smoothie, and with all that ice, I could maintain my strength and energy for hours and last until dinner.

5.  Being patient.  If there were a day or time when I hadn't much time for preparation, then I'd know I could always fast from dinner and that woul be that. No worries.  The neat thing was that this launched me into thinking that now I could go further and fast from today's lunch or afternoon snack, (usually around 4 pm) till the next day's lunch or dinner.  That's when you and other people really start seeing the results of your body's alkaline state.  For some reason it just felt easier to juice fast breakfast and lunch after going to bed with only a 3 or 4 vegetable juice dinner.


By adjusting these best practices, I hope you're better able to find what works best for you and your family.