The truth is that the book is not, as the author acknowledges, "fanatical" about raw food. If you look carefully, a few recipes call for cooked ingredients: cans of consommé, bread or graham cracker crumbs, and that eternal retro favorite, gelatin, which is pretty lucky for me. People loooove nasty-ass gelatin:
Like German Herring Salad! It's one of the limited number of "raw" recipes that calls for boiling water uses it for the glorious purpose of ... well ... floating pickled herring, carrots, tomatoes, and dill pickles in onion-and-bay-leaf flavored gelatin.
The nice thing is that Yvonne Skargon provided illustrations to make the ingredients seem whimsical and appealing. Swim into that dill, little guys!
Reekie also insists this is not a diet book, but it's packed pretty full of diet or diet-adjacent recipes, like this alternative to Slim-Fast:
A little orange juice mixed with raw eggs, vegetable oil, and a bunch of milk? Living on this for three days would make those little refrigerated shakes from the grocery store seem downright decadent.
The cat perched above the recipe seems to think living on the milk might be all right...
...but my own experiences with my cats and dairy suggest the rug will need cleaning before too long.
There's also a classic dieter's "lunch":
Cottage Cheese Grapefruit Cups! The surprise ingredient is the cucumber. Yippee.
My favorite recipe, though, might be the one for something I usually love: strawberry yogurt.
Have you ever been enjoying a nice bowl of strawberry yogurt and thought, "You know what this could use? Some crushed garlic!"
Well, apparently Jennie Reekie thought that, and assumed that somebody would agree with her.
I will agree on one thing: anyone who gets a bowl of this is also getting a raw deal.
And mom thought tofu week was bad. At least the people who made up the recipe for strawberry tofu pudding knew enough to not use garlic in it.
ReplyDeleteThe pudding recipe was definitely okay... but those meatballs were not.
DeleteMercifully, I don't remember the meatballs. Maybe I didn't try them. I just wish that I could lose the memory of lemon herb chicken. I think that will be seared in my brain as long as I live.
DeleteHonestly, I don't remember the lemon herb chicken. I guess we remember our own disasters best.
DeleteThat's the recipe that required several extra minutes in the microwave because the chicken was still raw if prepared per instructions. It was so scary I had to try it first since I was the one who made it. I gagged on the first bite and nobody else touched it.
DeleteThat's probably why I don't remember. I didn't even try it!
DeleteAll I remember about the tofu "meat"balls was that they had tofu and peanut butter in them. Did not go with marinara at all. They were pretty gag-worthy too.
That Dieter's Cocktail! "Eat or drink nothing else" She should have called it the "Eating Disorder Starting Kit Cocktail". Bit on the long side though
ReplyDeleteThat isn't as catchy a name, but what it lacks in punchiness, it makes up for in honesty.
Delete