I'm gonna try...

a serious diet. Yep. I'm letting someone else make my food for the next 10 weeks. I have to tell you, I think this one is going to be VERY difficult for me. But, I'm hoping that I'll get used to it and the stress of spending so much time trying to figure out WHAT to eat and WHEN to eat it and how many calories are in it and all I really want is a freaking pizza, will ease up.

Especially right now. I've got work worries, weight worries (and frankly I don't care about my energy levels at this point, I want some of my old clothes to fit -- all I've accomplished so far is to lose enough that the ones that did fit are now too big and nothing fits right at all!), and moving worries. I don't like this. I feel like every aspect of my life is unstable and it's wearing me down.

Bitch, bitch, bitch, moan, moan, moan. I know and I'm sorry. See, I'm getting grumpy and I'm not supposed to be grumpy anymore! Like I said, hopefully not having to think about the food part for a while will help -- even if it will drive me nuts not being able to cook anything at all.

And that brings me to a sort-of cookbook post here. There is a book coming out at the end of the month that I have been dabbling with (I have a review copy and have prepared some of the dishes with great success) and I want to tell you about it. It's called Living Raw Food and it's by Sarma Melngailis author of Raw Food, Real World and proprietor of NY restaurant Pure Food and Wine a vegan/vegetarian restaurant using all raw food. She also runs OneLuckyDuck.com a website where you can get all of the hard-to-find ingredients in her cookbooks (Irish moss, kelp, dulse...) as well as cookies, bath stuff, OneLuckyDuck shirts and totes, raw food books, and other stuff.

Now, I'm not a vegetarian, certainly not a vegan, and am sometimes really turned off by how other books of this type are very preachy towards people like me, like I'm a bad person because I eat meat. Not so with Living Raw Food. She explains her reasons, and then makes the book very approachable for folks like me who are simply addicted to food of every kind!

In honesty, I was hoping this book would help me eat better and control my calories. I wish there was calorie information available for the recipes, but other than that, it's a great book (with a ton of deceptively healthy recipes). There's a whole section on "baked" goods -- they use a dehydrator to get the crispness you would get from baking -- and even a section with mixed drinks. (Yes you do need some special equipment: dehydrator, juicer, food processor, and a mandolin all come in handy.)

I made the Chocolate Coconut Truffles and the Coconut Snowballs, both of which use dehydrated, unsweetened coconut, agave nectar, and coconut oil. I had no problems finding ingredients for most of the recipes I was interested in, but I live walking distance from a Whole Foods, so I imagine it's not always so easy. The Snowballs also called for raw brazil nuts. Amazingly, because I love brazil nuts, I had a bag (but I kind of cheated because I suspect that they were roasted). Our friend said he doesn't usually like coconut and he dug into these little cookies like there was no tomorrow!

Another recipe we tried was the Cashew Milk, first in a section full of shakes and drinks that I'm dying to try (Lime Coconut Milk anyone?). It called for cashew butter, something I've been buying already, and it was pretty tasty, if you like nut milks (I like almond milk a lot, so I was prepared).

And tonight, as part of my last hurrah, I'll be making the English Cucumber Cups with Avocado, Mango, and Mint Salsa and Spiced Macadamia Nuts.

See, lots of tasty treats even if you're a ravenous meat eater like me. I think for us, this book is a good way to get some really creative and innovative, healthy dishes into our menus. (No, I don't think the truffles were "healthy" but they sure tasted great!).

So it'll be 10 weeks before I get to crack this baby open again, and by then it will have hit shelves (June 30). I hope you fellow foodies out there will give it a shot, cause it's kind of fun to think about food in a whole new way. It might even influence some of your regular cooking as well.

You can read more about Sarma at welikeitraw.com.