Raw Fooding It Dinner – Carrot Ginger Soup

Although I love how I feel when I conform to a raw food diet, it’s oftentimes challenging for me to maintain. Breakfast raw meals are very do-able, since everyone in our home is on their own for breakfast. It’s either a plentiful bowl of fruit & g-raw-nola, raw pancakes or a smoothie. All these choices are wonderfully satisfying to me. Lunches are easy too. I usually brown bag a salad with a raw-foodist dressing (today’s is Kreamy Curry, my fav). But dinners… My kids are not into the raw stuff. Guacamole and salsa are pretty much as far as they will go at the moment. So, dinners are “cooked”, accompanied by generous and voluminous salad.

But last night, I indulged. While every body else was left to scramble for leftovers, I selfishly and joyfully partook in the very fragrant, creamy and delectable raw Carrot-Ginger Soup from The Complete Idiots Guide to Eating Raw book.

With Mark Reinfeld’s (one of the book’s authors) permission, I gladly share their recipe here, an easy one to try if you want to experiment with raw food cooking, uh, preparation.

CARROT-GINGER SOUP

4 cups carrot juice (about 4 lbs carrots)
½ cup macadamia nut
¼ avocado, mashed
2 TB ginger, minced
2 tsp nama shoyu
1 TB freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ tsp curry powder (optional)
½ tsp fresh dill or ¼ tsp dry
Pinch cayenne
Pinch salt
Pinch freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup carrot, peeled and shredded (optional)
¼ cup beet, peeled and shredded (optional)
½ cup corn, fresh off cob (optional)

1. Place 1 cup carrot juice, macadamia nuts, and avocado in a blender, and blend on high speed for 20 seconds or until mixture is smooth.
2. Add ginger, nama shoyu, lemon juice, curry powder (if using), dill, cayenne, slat, and pepper and blend on low to medium speed for 15 to 20 seconds. Slowly add remaining carrot juice through the top while blending on low.
3. Serve immediately at room temperature. Pour soup into bowls, and top with shredded carrots, beet and corn (if using).

Healing foods: a carrot a day might help keep the eye doctor away. Half of a medium size carrot supplies you with 100 percent of your vitamin. A requirement in the form of beta-carotene has been shown to be essential for eye health and, due to its antioxidant activity, has been reported to lower heart disease risk.

Yield: 4 cups, prep time: 20 minutes, serving size 2 cups.
Each serving has: 479 calories, 28g total fat, 4g saturated fat, 8g protein, 55g carbohydrate, 8 g ifiber, 0mg cholesterol, 396 mg sodium

As you can tell from my photo, I opted for avocados and raw pine nuts as my garnish, since that was what I had on hand. Plus, I love avocados. I also did not juice my own carrots but took the shortcut of buying fresh carrot juice. The recipe is a keeper and now on the top of my favorites list. The soup only takes a few minutes to prepare, an added benefit.

If you are remotely interested in raw food, I highly recommend Complete Idiots Guide to Eating Raw book.  It presents a good amount of easy and great tasting recipes but, best of all , it gives all the necessary background for newbies looking to gain more information on the raw food lifestyle. It covers tools, basic prep, myths and techniques.

I’m trying the raw Macadamia-Fugde Brownies next. Watch out!