This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s Renegade Roundtable, which can be found at http://www.RenegadeRoundtable.com. In this excerpt, Nomi Shannon shares on The Raw Gourmet, Raw Food Celebrations and great raw food recipes.
Renegade Water Secrets with Nomi Shannon, raw food chef and author of The Raw Gourmet and a new book, Raw Food Celebrations.
Kevin: We could talk for hours. I wanted you to talk a little bit more about “The Raw Gourmet” and your new book and what someone can find in there, because it’s a great book. It’s great for people who want to do parties, who want to do themes and all that sort of stuff. And I think it’s really missing in the palate of raw food cookbooks that are out there. This one is kind of needed. It kind of fits a pretty nice niche. So why don’t you talk about that a little bit.
Nomi: All right, thanks. Well, you know, I think that the “Raw Food Celebrations” is the first book out that is specifically for celebrating. And what we did, Sheryl and I broke it down, so that if you wanted to have a theme, it doesn’t have to you can pick a recipe from here or from there, it’s broken down into I forget how many themes, seven or eight — Italian, Thai…she did the Thai because she and her husband have been to Thailand many times and the food is incredible. She did stuff I never heard of, like [indecipherable] and stuff like that. And delicious coconut soup and stuff. Brunch, buffet, cocktail, if you just want to have a bunch of people over, and just sort of have hors dousers and drinks. You know, we have a few nice drinks in there. They don’t have alcohol in them, but you could put alcohol in them, if you wanted to.
And what we did is we did a timeline, so it’s like three weeks before the party dehydrate, cut up the red peppers and dehydrate them, because they’ll keep forever, and then you toss them in or throw them on top of the soup. Five days before, four days before, three days before, the day of. And we tried and succeeded in most of the categories to have the amount of work you do on the actual day of your event, if you choose to make, there’s probably seven to nine recipes in each grouping, and if you choose to do the whole thing like that, and have the event as we structured it, then we really made it so that you can plan a week ahead and on a Saturday or a Sunday have a nice event. Or you can just
pull out one recipe at a time.
And we worked very hard to make it. Like my lasagna recipe I showed a few of the sauces last, whatever day I did the food prep in Fort Bragg, I think it was Saturday, and I made three or four sauces in less than 45 minutes. And turned out they were all the sauces that go into the lasagna. But we start making them four days before. And then really what takes the time is assembling the lasagna, and you do that the day before. So it’s a fun book for that, and it’s a book for someone who is starting but they don’t want to have like an energy soup concept, or for someone who’s been making food for a while and would like to make a nice family meal or entertain their friends. It’s absolutely structured so that you don’t have to be raw to enjoy the food.
Kevin: That’s great.
Nomi: And then “The Raw Gourmet” is your basic, this is the best first book to get, or one of the first books, and if you really, literally read it from cover to cover, you will know everything you need to know to have a raw food kitchen. I don’t get into things like, you know, it’s a food book, I do not get into deep things like healing and cleansing and all that because it’s a food book. But it’s everything you need to know about a raw food kitchen. We’re actually going to reprint it, and someone asked a question about I used Braggs in the book. Well, I do use Braggs in that book because I didn’t know it was a bad product at the time I wrote the book. I would substitute Braggs now for Nama Shoyu, which is a supposedly raw soy sauce, or maybe a little sea salt, or something salty like that.
And I’m thinking well maybe those people at my publisher can change every Braggs in the book to Nama Shoyu, but that’s a big undertaking, so maybe that won’t happen.
Kevin: Yeah. And where can someone go to get that book?
Nomi: The best place to get the book, I mean, yeah, you can get them at places like Barnes and Noble, or health food stores and stuff like that, but the best place is to get them from my site, rawgourmet.com, and the reason for that is I give a free booklet with each book. With the purchase of “The Raw Gourmet” you get a soup booklet, which is thirteen to fifteen raw soup recipes, and with “Raw Food Celebrations“ you get a book called Raw But Not Naked, and it’s a book of salad dressings.
Kevin: Wow, cool.
Nomi: And actually there’s no other way to get those booklets. And they are, each booklet is worth seven dollars. I did that purposely because you have to pay for shipping and so it’s a free gift, and it mitigates the cost of shipping plus. So, and then of course you’re supporting the author, so that’s always nice, too.
Kevin: That’s great. And that’s at www.rawgourmet.com.
Nomi: Right.
Kevin: Where is that on the site, right on the front page?
Nomi: The first thing you’ll see is on the left, when you look at the products, there will be a picture of “The Raw Gourmet” and “Raw Food Celebrations.” There’s also lots of recipe at my site, Kevin, and there’s articles. I’ve been writing a newsletter for about ten years and I’m gradually posting them it the archives. So there’s probably eight or ten up there now. There’s a lot of information at my website. There’s also, when you sign up there’s a free newsletter. It’s one of the first things you’ll see. If you haven’t been to my site, sign up for my free newsletter. That comes out sometimes once a week, sometimes less. The one I sent out today was “how to deal with your doctor,” your medical doctor. How to get the responses you need from him, or her.
Kevin: Cool.
Nomi: Last week I put out a bunch of recipes called “Summertime Recipes.” Sometimes I put specials out, I always have really good specials. But when you sign up for my newsletter you also receive a free seven-part course which is called The Raw Truth. And that gets emailed to you every other day or so until seven have arrived and it stops. It’s just little snippets of information about fat and other things like that, and each one will have a recipe with it.
Kevin: Oh, each one has a recipe! Oh that’s great. So where you can find that is when you go to Nomi’s site www.rawgourmet.com , you can go there right now and on the left-hand side, as of this recording it’s an orange box and it says “newsletter.” You can get seven recipes seven days in a row that you can prepare for your family or for your friends or for yourself.
Nomi: And if you want to see the most recent picture of me and my little grandson Seth go to, I think it’s just “The Raw Gourmet.” Because I never, I’m just the most un- photogenic person, and the picture of me is like ten years old, so my daughter sent me a picture and it wasn’t too horrible so I posted it last month and it’s a picture of me and the baby, who is almost a year old now.
Kevin: That’s great. Well, I want to thank you for time, I really appreciate it. For those of you who are listening you can go to www.rawgourmet.com and I would recommend getting the seven recipes and Nomi’s newsletter and definitely checking out the book. Ann Marie loves it and she’s going to be preparing some of those recipes. So you’re going to be hearing a lot about it on the Renegade Health Show. So Nomi I want to thank you for your time.
Nomi: My pleasure.
To read the rest of this transcript as well as access The Renegade Roundtable experts just like Nomi Shannon please click here! Kevin Gianni is an internationally recognized health advocate, author & film consultant. He has helped thousands of people take control of their own health naturally. For more information visit raw food diets and holistic nutrition.
