Overwhelmed and need some tips

[mazena]

Hi everyone, I've been raw for 4 months now and loving every second of it. However, I'm really overwhelmed by the planning and preparation processes. We (my life partner and I ) are very busy professionals, and we are very curious and interested to learn how other fellow raw foodists are managing planning and preparing.

Please tell me we are not the only ones :)

Thanks everyone.

Maz

[maggiesdaddy]

You aren't the only one! I am still new to this, but I hear that as you go along your raw path you will crave less prepared foods so it will naturally become easier. For me, I depend on a few recipes or foods that I try to have around at all times.

For me I have lots of fruit and sprouted legumes around at all times.
I also have a stock pile of raw nuts and almond mylk around. Sometimes if I am busy I toss some dried fruits and nuts in a bowl and top with almond mylk for cereal!
I also have raw taco meat made from blended sprouted lentils and sunflower seeds as well as some raw corn tortillas that I can buy from my local health food store.

I find that sometimes this gets boring, but as a full time college student with a 9 month old baby, it gets kinda hard to prepare food so taking one or two days to make meals in advance really helps me!

The menu planning is difficult. I try to take one evening a week to surf the web for ideas. Maybe you and your partner could spend one morning/afternoon/evening together a week just surfing for food and doing some experimental cooking.

[Dent de Lion]

What helped me the most:

-Focus on simplicity in your meals/menus.

A few bananas for breakfast, or even a banana-strawberry smoothie is so much easier (and cheaper!) than a fancy raw breakfast. Plus, it's faster to make and makes your grocery list more manageable. If you know you like salads for lunch, just stick with that. Again, easy, fast, cheap, less stressful re: grocery shopping. It's fine to have the same or similar things for days or weeks on end. Just re-adjust as your tastes change, or the season changes, or the price of certain produce goes up or down, etc. The longer you're raw, the more you'll know what you like and how much you'll eat of it.

-Try to only shop once a week.

Take the time to make a grocery list, including what you need AND the quantity (and also which store if you go to more than one.) This helped me immensely, because going shopping really does take a lot of time! When I really sit down and make a mindful grocery list (at first it took me about 20min. to do this, now it's more like 5min.) I breeze through the store, spend less money, waste less food, and don't have to worry about having enough fresh stuff on hand at the end of a busy day.

-Have a good idea of how long something will last in your house.

I.e. know how long its shelf life is, whether it will be gobbled up or used occasionally, etc.

-Have your pantry/freezer/fridge well-stocked in things with a long shelf life.

For instance, I always have a huge bag of dried wakame flakes in my pantry. (I buy wakame in bulk online.) If I'm too tired or busy to fuss with dinner, or if grocery day is approaching and I'm low on fresh greens, I put a big handful of wakame in a bowl or water and let it soak for about 5min. or more if I'm multi-tasking. Then I just drain and rinse it, and top with whatever I feel like (salad fixings, leftover sauce or dressing, etc.) Voila! A filling and healthy dinner in 6 minutes.

-Be conscious about what you really will eat, and don't bother buying ingredients for things you won't enjoy or won't have time to prepare.

For example, I keep meaning to try making this fancy recipe I found, but honestly I know I won't get to it soon. During the work week I'm busy, and I have plans the next few weekends. So my grocery list this week is going to consist exclusively of my basic staples for quick & easy meals. This means I won't stress about finding time to make something fancy before the ingredients go bad.

[Raw Angel Mom]

The DVD raw made easy for two was very useful for me to watch in the beginning of my journey. She shared interesting tips for busy people etc...

Now, your life will get easier and simpler because you are going to crave for whole fresh food more and more. Meaning, you won't need raw gourmet as much to stick with this journey.

If you like to prepare food with nut/seed, then make sure to have some soaked all the time (I don't anymore because i don't eat nut so much).

Learn to make recipe that doesn't require dehydration etc.... Something fast and easy. Such tacco, lasagna, dressing salad, etc...

Write down the reason you went on this raw path. Read your card every day, this will help you to stick with raw and simply make time to do it.

Making a smoothie is so fast, easy and nutritious.

I just eat fruits most the time now, green smoothie and salad. Depending of the time of the year, i will make some simpler raw gourmet dish, such humus, squash pasta etc....Pilling the squash is the most time consuming, the rest is quite fast and easy.

The day before, wash your produce you will use the next day. This save so much time when you are in a hurry.

[cosmicpixie]

I'm new to this too . Have always been a bit of a lazy eater and this makes life easier in the days for me because I just spend 5 mins whipping up a green smoothie for breakfast and 5 mins doing another 1 or 2 smoothies /nut milk smoothies in the day. If peckish in between smoothies I've been eating some nuts and raisins.

Dinner might take longer - half hr to an hr depending but then it was always like that. I do what I've always done - sit down one evening, take an hr or so to plan what meals to make the next week, write the menu plan down and on another bit of paper write down the shopping list.

Are you 100% raw ? I'm not and don't want to be as I enjoy some cooked foods, so long as they are healthy. That can make things easier as for example yesterday I made a huge pot of vegetable soup and blended it and that serves 2 for 2 nights. no cooking tonight. I do the same with legume curries . I guess whether all raw or not there are some evening meals where you could prepare something to last the 2 of you for 2 nights running.