Ani's Raw Food Kitchen: Easy, Delectable Living Foods Recipes

Comment: Allow me to get my biases out of the way: I'm not vegan, or 100% raw. I'm a vegetarian living in the Midwest without air conditioning. My goal with raw foods is to use lots of fresh local produce without needing to turn on my oven in summer! I want to go beyond salad, but don't want to spend all day in my kitchen. I purchased this book because I enjoyed Ani's Raw Food Desserts.

I didn't enjoy this book as much. The recipes I've tried were tasty, but most of them require specialty ingredients that are expensive and/or are not available at my local co-op, or don't come in amounts I can use before they spoil. A single recipe may also require several "base ingredients" that are themselves other time-intensive recipes, which require still more specialty ingredients. I got a little lost in the cross-referencing, and a little miffed when base ingredients that I'd mixed up went bad before I could finish them. I really wish the recipes made better use of more common ingredients that are grown and readily available throughout the United States.

This book could have been more accurately titled, "Lifestyle by Ani." It's full of great pictures...of Ani. What space remains is split between recipes and scattered bits of Ani's lifestyle manifesto. This confused me: I purchased a book on preparing raw foods, after all...Is she preaching to the converted, or actually *trying* to lose me by going off-topic? She could have condensed and confined this to the intro. Better yet, put it in a foreword, and have it penned by a more authoritative scientific/health expert.

If, in fact, this book was geared toward the "raw food curious" and beginners, which might excuse the manifesto, the author would have been wise to stick to simpler recipes with simpler ingredients and spend the photo space showing us how it's done.

Comment: I loved this cookbook and found all the recipes accessible. YOu do however need a wholefoods market for the more rare ingredients. Also, I wish I had a vitamix for all of the nut butters, soups etc. Otherwise, she seems so lovely and I like her recipes...!

Comment: I've been a vegan for three years now and have been going on and off a raw food diet for another two. I am already 100% convinced of the benefits of a raw diet, so I bought this book hoping in would give me new, healthy ideas for what to eat. But it's disappointing. A few of the recipes are good: I like her corn chowder, her Baja cheez, her marinated onion and spinach salad, her raw tomato sauce, her cashew cheese, and her raw burritos with taco nut meat are fabulous. But there are a number of drawbacks to this book:

1) Most of the recipes contain a LOT of oil and nuts (which of course can make anything taste good), so I've had to modify most of the above recipes substantially since I don't want to weight 5000 lbs.
2) Some of the recipes are not kitchen tested (it seems) and end up not being edible. Has anyone tried the broccoli mash? Yuck! And I LOVE raw broc, but when you just blend it up with nuts and it is sort of disgusting. The corn polenta is just raw corn mush . . . not edible either. And the mushroom gravy, while delicious, doesn't seem to go well on anything other than the raw broc mash or the raw polenta.
3) I agree, too many photos of Ani! I don't mind a few, but it gets irritating to have so many.

So, I will be shopping for another "uncook" book soon!

Comment: This was one of the first raw food books I bought. The recipes are great for a novice who doesn't want to invest in the expensive equipment that most raw food recipes call for. Most of Ani's recipes utilize a blender or food processor, with only a few requiring a dehydrator or juicer. She also uses basic ingredients that most people could find at a well-stocked grocery store. The recipes I tried were uniformly delicious, especially the cherry malt!

So why just three stars? Because the recipes are unbelievably dependent on nuts and oils. I purchased the ingredients for a week's worth of recipes, and I literally bought about 8 pounds of nuts. I know it's "healthy" fat, but too much of anything is not a good thing! Also, as much as she relies on nuts, Ani provides virtually NO guidance as to when or how long to soak the various kinds of nuts. She mentions at one point in the book that she always recommends soaking nuts before using; yet, NONE of the recipes mention anything about soaking. One would have to read the entire book (as I did) in order to come across the one mention she makes about soaking nuts. This is a pretty glaring oversight for a raw food book.

That said, I think it's a great starter book, and I'll continue to turn to it for quick, easy (and rich) raw food menus!

Comment: I was temporarily tuned off from the raw diet after reading this book. I purchased this cook book because of the notion that it was "gourmet" style cooking. After preparing at least 3 recipes from each food section, I was slightly irritated and even more skeptical of the "gourmet" touch.

Like an eager student, I purchased everything on the shopping list. I did expect the products to be expensive and they were! The recipes in this book are not intended for a person on a low budget. And it is hard to find uses for at least half of the ingredients in a non-raw cooking style. Thank goodness I did not purchase all the recommended appliances!

Although the food doesn't require a baking time, it does take time to make. Food processors, blenders, etc., take quite a bit of time and strength to clean after use.

As for the taste of the recipes, personally, a lot of the ingredients were foreign to my prior diet, therefore, did not settle well or taste well on my palate. The textures were often thick and nutty.

I can't deny that this may well be the healthiest cook book out there. But as for taste and overall convenience, I am not sold.