Oh Lordy, where has this simple recipe been all my life? Warming, comforting, mellow, meaty, juicy, enlivening, nose-runningly spicy without an uncomfortable “burn”… it was just what I needed on this day where the Jersey mountain temps are already, in mid-afternoon, beginning to make their trek down to freezing.

Using “macaroni noodles” cut from fresh, peeled baby zucchini, cut thin and short, the tomato-less “sauce” to this “chili” is a combination of organic button mushrooms, chopped raw pecans, chopped jumbo medjool dates, fresh garlic, olive oil, lemon and chili & cayenne seasonings. And everything blends to perfectly pair some zesty fire with the mellow bland undertones that make pasta so comforting.

A “warm live raw pasta” is when you expose your live all-vedge ingredients to heat, but just enough to take it past tepid. The food is still filled with all it’s living viable-ness and isn’t remotely “cooked”. In fact, I didn’t even get down to the degree of warmth I was after, and still this dish was everything I wanted — warming and belly-filling in that please-sir-can-i-have-some-more way one can get on a cold night.

And the wee bit of sweet morsels of medjool paired with the earthiness of the mushroom? Brilliant. This is definitely a new favorite of mine to which I know I”ll be turning quite often through the cold months!

(This recipe would also be brilliant for non-raw types — they could could this further to create a wonderful side dish, which would be excellent with potatoes of any kind.

In fact… note to self: For next rawish meal, enjoy with Yukon gold potatoes swathed in grass-fed butter!)

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It is cold here in Jersey! (Says the chica who spent the last 6 months in the mid-90s tropics…) And while I’m endeavoring to “jack up the raw” as much as possible right now, we all know that when the cold weather hits what we really want most are those warm, cozy comfort foods.

Enter the Warm Live-Green Oatmeal… a unique raw, living foods recipe the likes of which I’ve never seen anywhere. If you have a high-powered blender like a Blentec or a Vita-Mix, this dish will be toasty warm (though not “cooked”) by the time you have achieved a nice creamy texture. If you don’t have a powerful blender, you can always gently warm over a low temperature for a minute or so after making it.

It’s smooth, creamy, rich, warm, does not taste in the least “exotic” or “weird”, and does indeed take the chill off the day and fill you up. I made my batch from whole dry, unsoaked oats (“groats”), but you can make yours from oats you’ve allowed to soak and pre-sprout overnight, if you wish. It will certainly increase the “live” factor.

But if what you have on hand is the dry stuff in your cupboard, those will do just fine!

Add to that some fresh, uncooked spinach (which not even my ridiculously high-maintenance taste buds can detect), some cold-pressed coconut oil, honey or other natural and/or raw sweetener, vanilla, himmy salt and a bit of water, and you’ve got a quick breakfast or lazy-bones supper which washes down brilliantly with whatever Live Green Smoothie you have floating about.

Such was my combo for dinner this evening. Lazy-bones that I am in this freakin’ cold.

All I gotta say is: Dr. Seuss, eat your heart out!

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Super-quick, super-flavorful, and made with Utterly Pedestrian ingredients so easy to keep on hand!

Enjoy without the meatballs — super-delish on its own, over “noodles” or “spaghetti” made from fresh, raw baby zucchini — or make a side of meatballs for a heartier repast!

And even if you make the whole Spaghetti & Meatball affair… it will still take you all of about 15 minutes, tops!

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This is a potential life-changing, culture-changing recipe, one I wish I knew how to make back in April 2005 when I first embarked on a journey of discovery with raw and living foods.

You could be a meat-eater and eat this instead of meat, and be satisfied. That is not only my own sentiment, but the conclusion of my 70-something marginally raw parents, who were quite impressed when I put this on the table. My mom went crazy over it, and my dad, who is not much into this whole living foods business, really had his eyes opened, I think.

I set out to make a meaty-tasting “salsa” type recipe with 100% raw mushrooms plus seasonings, without other vegetables. And in this case, I left out the olive oil and added only raw almond butter and a bit of lemon juice as a binder, with some fresh garlic, green onions, and generous fresh black pepper… and of course the ever-present “himmy” salt.

If I’d had socks on, this dish woulda knocked them off. For all it’s simplicity, this is the recipe I am most proud of and most pleased with on this whole site. Because it’s the savory, meaty, deeply grounding kind of food that I crave, and the sort of thing a family could make almost every single day, to offset whatever else they might put on the table.

It will play off of whatever else you are eating. Shoot, I ate this Mushroom dish for dinner with organic tortilla chips and 2 sliced bananas and was in heaven. Heaven, I tell you. And fully sated afterwards. But I could’ve had it with any salad, any warm live soup (what a great cold-weather meal!), or a bit of Ezekiel bread (what an amazing salad sandwich or wrap filling this would make!), or just some different fresh fruit, and it would complement any of it equally.

This is a dish to server to your non-raw friends and family, and would make for a killer buffet or raw pot luck dish. You could serve this as part of a “rawish” meal with Yukon Gold potatoes or brown rice (am swooning at just the thought). You could have it with toast for breakfast. Or you could add this to a miso broth with fresh greens.

I’m just getting started. I bet I could serve this a different way for a raw or rawish meal every day of this month. Might be an interesting blog project!

Anyway… make this. And tell me what you did with it!

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I LOVE this dish. At the whole thing, with a fork, no chips, no nothin’ on the side, just this straight-up for my main meal of the day, and it just rocked. Didn’t share a morsel with anyone!

I’m famous for needing crunchy side things to feel satisfied when I’m eating very high-raw, but I have been recently dedicated to creating recipes that don’t require that. And this one delivered! I had a “pesto” theme in mind, to use some of the wee-leaved potted basil growing here on the lanai, but instead I gave basil a far more supporting — rather than dominant — role. Add some fresh lemon, garlic, green onion, and earthy almost-potato-i-ness of the mushrooms paired with the juicy & refreshing crunch of the cukes, and this dish really delivers on a bunch of levels.

You can use any kind of mushroom you want, but I used simple Utterly Pedestrian button mushrooms. And With one tablespoon of olive oil for a very large salad, this could be argued as low-fat… or you could just reduce it to 1 teaspoon for your weight-watching purposes.

On a hot day (95 & humid here in the Florida heat at the moment), this was great. But it would also be excellent on a cold day… just substitute some baby zucchini for the cucumber and expose your bowl to the lowest temp of your oven for a little bit, to raise the temp by a few still-comfortable-against-your-skin degrees. It will be true comfort food… without the deadening effect of real pasta.

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This recipe is a basic one to enjoy as-is (it’s delicious and so easy!), or you can add whatever your favorite little extras you’d like, such as chopped sweet red pepper, fresh herbs, fresh corn off the cob, or jalapeno and cilantro.

It’s so versatile, very mellow and comforting, and when the weather is cold you can warm it slightly to jack up the “comfort food” factor, while still retaining the live-enzyme benefits. Something doesn’t have to be cooked and piping hot to convey “warmth”. You can expose this very briefly to a low-temp warm oven, take it out while it’s still comfortable to your bare hands, and it will be a very different experience than if you ate it cold.

You can also eat this by itself with a fork, you can use it as a salsa, use it as a topping (my family enjoyed some of this tonight over their salmon!), spoon it over some cooked & buttered Yukon Gold potatoes… there are so many uses for it, a kind of “live-food staple” you can add to your regular kitchen repertoire.

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Some of my favorite moments are when I try something completely new and find it to be so tasty and satisfying that I wish I’d been eating since I was a kid. This is one of those recipes.

Don’t let the monochromatic appearance fool you… this is wonderful.

Traditional Greek-style seasonings — garlic, fresh mint, cumin, olive oil, fresh lemon juice — combine with the mellow meatiness of fresh chopped mushrooms and the crunchy-juicy sweetness of fresh corn cut off the cob to create a super-juicy, full-flavored-but-still-comforting taste in that mellow way that only comfort food can be.

The filling is gently warmed in the oven at the lowest temperature to slightly sweat the juices out of the mushrooms… but honestly, the mixture was still cool to my touch when I took it out, so “warmed” isn’t precise. “Exposed to heat without damaging the un-denatured aspect of the food” is a better way of putting it. But certainly you could leave it exposed to heat long enough to bring it up the point where it’s slightly warm to your touch… and taste buds. Would be an excellent cold-weather recipe in that regard.

I put these guys into little iceberg lettuce cups because I’m endeavoring to bring a little more respect toward iceberg’s way… and what a perfect match!  But this could be used as a filling for any sort of wrap, and it would make for an excellent salad sandwich filling. Or… just plain as a sidedish. Make a large batch for a buffet… no doubt your guests will go crazy over it!

This recipe feeds one as a meal, and it satisfied. I know because I had it for dinner, without nothing else. And I was quite full afterwards… though I was sorry the yummy experience was over!

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Absolutely delicious and as savory and juicy as a buffalo burger… but entirely raw, living, and vegan. Not only that, it’s made from Utterly Pedestrian ingredients, which is currently becoming a theme for the Live Green Smoothie Diet site.

The more I “jack up the raw”, the more I crave non-sweet, non-chilled, very-savory dishes. And they can be a challenge in the culture of the raw food world.

But personally, I need them, and the kind that can be made now, this “because-I’m-hungry” moment, not after several hours (or days) of soaking-sprouting-dehydrating. So this genre of make-on-the-spot-savory-food-from-utterly-pedestrian-ingredients is becoming a bit of a personal specialty.

This dish, made from plain ol’ button mushrooms, tomatoes, scallions, olive oil, salt and fresh pepper, can also be amped up with a bit more exotic flavor — just use portabellas, shitakes, maitakes, fresh chaga, reishi… you name it, any of your favorite mushrooms.

But failing that, you can also make this for dinner with the commonest ingredients in your local produce section.

One aspect of this recipe is that, after all the ingredients are combined, the dish is heated very briefly in the oven, not to cook but just to sweat the mushrooms a wee bit. As you can see in the photos, this is not a cooked dish, and by the time you spoon the filling out onto your wrap material (red leaf lettuce leaves, here) the dish is entirely room temperature. But just a few moments of warmth allows all the flavors to meld so nicely!

I ate the entire dish for dinner, without anything else… nothing “rawish” added, just what you see here. It was smokin’ delicious. And so juicy it dripped all over the plate and my fingers… just like a good buffalo burger.

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… and not that ground-up cauliflower “mashed potatoes” raw foodists try to pass off as the real thing.

One thing I’ve said is that, if you want real mashed potatoes, just have the real cooked thing as it will never be possible in the raw world. Well, today I’m eating my words.

If you’re a raw vegan purist, you can use coconut oil to enrich this recipe, but if you’re not entirely raw and not entirely vegan (hello, I’m in that category thank-you-very-much), you can use some organic grass-fed butter for spectacularly authentic results! I was quite blown away and enjoyed every last morsel of this entire recipe… and felt wonderful afterwards, tremendously enlivened and deeply nourished, rather than the “lemme just go lie on the couch and nap for awhile” that cooked mash can often inspire.

This recipe is made with sweet potatoes, but as soon as I can locate some organic yukon golds in my area I’ll be trying it out with those.

These potatoes are warm and truly comforting, and blended with avocado and baby zucchini to get the right texture. With lots of quality Himalayan Crystal salt and fresh black pepper, this is a side dish to remember for your next Thanksgiving Day menu or raw food pot luck!

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What a great breakfast to power you up!

You won’t believe this is made from fresh fruit and vedge… it tastes like dark brownie batter in a bowl, or a rich dark pudding! Kids will love it… chocolate-lovers will love it… and Raw Vegans will slurp it up because it’s warm, creamy, yummy comfort food that  Totally Hits The Chocolate Spot.

This recipe is rich in magnesium and antioxidants, full of living enzymes (great for digestion and rejuvenation), and with the easy-to-digest fat that makes fresh avocado stand apart from all other fats.

And did you know that avocado is actually good for your heart, for your nervous system, and raises the levels of the “good” cholesterol?

Bonafide chocolate health food…

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