Raw: The Uncook Book: New Vegetarian Food for Life

Overall, this is a great book. It's inspiring and fun, and the food doesn't get much healthier. I've really gotten into the book during the last couple of weeks, and most of the recipes I've tried are very good. You don't need all of the ingredients he lists, so don't be afraid to omit or substitute. I do not yet have a dehyrator, and my oven doesn't go below 170 degrees, but I have been able to test some of the bread-type recipes. They're very good. Actually, everything has been very good so far (especially the milkshake!), except the Butternut Squash Soup. I found I just don't like raw butternut squash.If you are on a low calorie or lowfat diet, be aware of these things:1-There is no calorie information. Once I calculated the calories for the Cashew Gelato, I found out why! It was enough for a whole day's calories for anybody. But it really looks like ice cream.2-Many recipes use nuts, dates, orange juice, olive oil, avocados, and maple syrup. I think that keeping the avocados in any diet is a good idea, though. Flax seeds show up a lot, too, but they are highly beneficial and don't seem to always get digested, if you know what I mean!3-Juliano's "butter" is olive oil with salt. He says, "Slap an extra slab of 'butter' on everything! You can eat all you want and get what olive oil promotes most: healthier hair and skin and better circulation." Easy for him to say. He's already skinny.About the orange juice-it shows up everywhere. He combines it with things I never would have thought of. However, he usually lists low calorie substitutes. And he never claimed this was a diet book!I found sprouting to be surprisingly easy, but his chart for sprouting and soaking times is incomplete. Sometimes he refers you to the chart, but what you need is missing. More information on sprouting would be helpful.Juliano is clearly in love with this way of cooking and this way of life. His enthusiasm is contagious. He seems to jump off the pages. Along this line, his sense of humor shows through when he names his recipes odd names which can be very misleading. Two examples are "Cottage Cheese" and "Nacho Cheese", which have no ingredients remotely contained in real cheese (except oil). I'm not saying these recipes aren't good substitutes or good on their own merit, just that the names are misleading.If you are new to vegetarianism or raw foods, I would not suggest switching over to this way of eating quickly. It will shock your system, and you'll probably get discouraged. Break yourself in over the course of a few months, and your body will thank you. This is the nicest book I've seen on the subject.

Good as a reference book of inspiration.

The author is eccentric (to say the least) and just brillant. I have other raw food cookbooks and this one is by far the best. The pics are absolutely gorgeous. I am one of those people who definitely needs a pic because for a lot of these dishes I just couldn't imagine how they should be presented. The ideas are fabulous and the ingredients are not difficult to find. I can actually eat these food combinations without going yuck. While I am not a die hard meat eater I find that when left to my own devices I prefer raw foods. I now take advantage of the summer season to get the freshest vegetables possible from my local farmer's market and the difference in the tast is incredible. Take for instance corn on the cob. Corn that has just been picked taste so very different than the corn that was picked two days ago. Going to your local farmer's market enables you to see and taste the difference between freshly picked vegetables and what we usually get in the super market. These raw recipes virtually come alive with flavor. Now I have to work on what to do during the winter.......

I am very disappointed in this book. I am fairly experienced at preparing raw food but this book does not give enough direction for many of the recipes and I seriously doubt that many of these recipes are even viable. There is no way each one was proofed before publication.The Real Toast recipe is a perfect example of what is wrong with this book. Half way down the ingredients list it calls for "1/2 tablespoon Cayenne". That would be 1 1/2 teaspoons. Now what kind of chef, editor, etc would use the measurement 1/2 tablespoon? It might sound silly to some, but trust me, it's not. It's either a typo and should be 1/2 teaspoon (which is still an insane amount of cayenne for this size recipe especially considering the bread will be dehydrated and all the flavor/spice will be intensified - and it's not meant to be a spicy bread!) or this recipe was written out by someone lacking some skills and never tested before publication. Even so, I followed the recipe exactly (aside from leaving out 1 teaspoon of cayenne) and it came out like a thick soup. There is no way I could "form dough into 8x8 inch square crusts". Perhaps the 1 cup of flax seeds called for should have been ground flax instead? Or the 1 1/2 cups orange juice should be reduced to 1 cup? I managed to salvage the recipe with some ground flax but if I wanted to experiment I wouldn't have bought the (un)cookbook - I've been experimenting just fine on my own.The Rejuvelac is another example. "Soak the spouted berries in water for 9 hours..." Maybe on Mars, but on Earth it takes about 3 days to make rejuvelac. Does he have magic wheat berries? Does he not really want to share his recipes? Does the Emperor have no clothes?I looked for this book in stores for months before finally ordering it online. I now believe that the stores do not carry it because it must be one of those books that gets returned too often.This book has some interesting flavor combinations and ideas but I do not trust the recipes and will have to second guess each new one I try. I think there are ideas here for someone wanting to try new things but if you are looking for a gourmet raw food book  Raw Food/Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow  is the book to buy.

This was one of my first Raw Books and I was surprised and dumbfounded by the complexity of the recipes, and the bizarre layout and tricky-to-source contents.However, two years of raw on, I do love the happy pics of Juiliano leaping from the surf!!A cacao table book!You need to live near a whole foods or have some good internet shopping sites for many of these recipes.

Extraordinarily elaborate..As there was nothing edible which took my fancy, this went to the charity shop.There were also too many strange photographs of the author: fit to put anyone off their food.

First of all, this is a good book with plenty of great recipes and inspirations etc etc etc. However, I find Juliano's technique is best suited to someone who owns a restaurant or at least has nothing else to do all day except prepare food. For someone like me with a full time job, a wife and a child the recipes are completely impractical since a lot of the recipes need to be dehydrated for up to 13 hours and most of them refer to other recipes in the book. You think you're going to spend half an hour making something only to find that the recipe requires a condiment detailed on another page that takes half a day to make.For example, I decided to make the raw carrot cake. It said "this is the tastiest *20 minute* carrot cake you'll ever blah blah blah...". The first line of the recipe says "Soak the dates for 2 hours". The making of the carrot cake may take 20 minutes but the preparation of the ingredients could take up the best part of your evening.I use it as a source of inspiration rather than a recipe book simply because I don't have a dehydrator and if I did I certainly wouldn't use it for the huge lengths of time that Juliano recommends - life's just too darned short. He owns a restaurant so his job involves making food all day long and he is required to have the well-stocked kitchen that he describes but unfortunately I don't. In short, it's a hugely impractical but wonderfully inspiring book that I can recommend if you can spare the money.Also he uses way too much salt. But that's just my opinion.

so many of the ingredients are unavailable or unknown in the UK but the pictures of Juliano are very cute

Wonderful raw food book, beautifully presented (I have the hard back) with lots of unusual recipes as well as easy-to-make more standard ones