Raw Food and Rap Music

[IMAGE: Raw Pad Thai we made!]

Ever since Mood Food, we have all dove deeply into the healthy ways of eating. Organic, raw, vegan, vegetarian, fresh, slo, you name it. It has all suddenly piqued our interests and coincidentally, right in time for Bali…the epicenter of raw craziness.

So, with our new found curiosity and, not to mention, being in a place where it’s probably the most practiced, we decided that we had to get more knowledge on the subject at hand. We were then found eagerly signing up for a class on all things raw. And accompanied by friends from Mercer Island, Janet and David, we set out to learn what exactly is the deal with, not only a way of cooking, but a way of life.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE IN THE RAW?
To be raw, your food has had to have been cooked at 116 degrees fahrenheit or less. In other words, you don’t won’t to scorch the living enzymes inhabiting your food by heating it too high. And now that we’ve learned what it really means when someone says raw, we can get into the tools you need. The main appliances we used consisted of a blender and food processor, and though we didn’t need to use it during the class, there is the “oven” of raw cooking (a.k.a the dehydrator.) There wasn’t much needed other than a good level of patience. Not much time is devoted to chopping and slicing, but to soaking, dehydrating, and freezing. Some recipes you can just blend and eat right after, but for other meals you have to plan beforehand and in the long run I’d say the kitchen time is about the same as if you were regularly cooking. It was actually pretty surprising how amazingly easy this whole raw food making thing is. I expected it to be a little more challenging considering the fact you couldn’t cook anything. Though with that said, you have to know quite a bit about food and what would make for a good, healthy substitute with flavor.

WHAT WE THINK
We went home that day feeling a lot more educated. Albeit, I wouldn’t say we are ready to go full raw. We still love our meat (cooked) and other tasty grilled, marinated, baked, boiled, simmered, etc. foods. Yet, we’ve all expressed that we would love to incorporate some raw dishes into our weekly diet when we get back to the States because they’re obviously pretty good for you and can certainly be very tasty. Especially the desserts. I could go raw for desserts… maybe.

WHAT WE MADE
• Chocolate cake
• Pad thai
• Coconut macaroons
• Pumpkin milk & granola
• Sushi rolls

WHAT WAS THE FOOD LIKE?
Everything was incredible and by the end we were all filled to the brim. Because there wasn’t a need for so much prepping of the ingredients, we were seated around a long table watching our teacher blend the food and occasionally someone would go up to help slice a vanilla bean.  In the end, we all rolled our own raw sushi. It might’ve been boring otherwise if the teacher wasn’t such a, I would say, interesting guy.

WHAT WAS THE TEACHER LIKE?
On the course of the trip, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to do a cooking class in each country we have traveled to. All of them have been considerably different, each one with  a few things that seems to stand out and make it something to remember. From having a burner or wok all to ourselves, to being invited into a restaurant so we could cook with the owner personally, to taking a class where we were limited to only two or so words in means of communication, to going to the market in advance and eating worm cakes, to simply just cooking something super delicious. But nobody could’ve guessed what Bali’s stand out thing was. Or maybe they could’ve. The teacher and guide that would take us on our journey into raw cooking was named Jonny Freesh.  And yes, that is a chosen last name, or should I say that’s his stage name. At the end of the class,  he disclosed with us his true passion…rapping!  By serenading everyone a song on raw food we were stunned into silence; in awe of the raw… chef? Believe it or not, he’s said to be touring in the U.S. early 2015, well he hopes at least.

Jonny Freesh: rapper extraordinaire, raw chef, health guy, wears toe shoes. Seems about right.  Though whether or not we’ll see Jonny rapping on tour through Seattle, it was definitely a class I’ll remember for a long time to come. Here’s his latest rap video about durian!