How to Stay Raw While Preparing a Cooked Food Feast

Christmas time is here and that means lots of family, lots of friends, and lots of food.

And let me guess.  Every year you prepare a big Holiday Dinner for your loved ones and this year is no different.

Well, except for the fact that you have gone raw and won’t be participating in any of the eating.

Yikes!  You just don’t know how you can possibly prepare meals without tasting everything as you go!

Maybe I can help?

Hire a Taste-Tester

Here’s a quote from my e-book Surviving Sticky Situations on a Raw Food Diet that may help:

Consider this: you are NOT cooking for yourself, right?  You are cooking for others.  It doesn’t matter what it tastes like to YOU.  It only matters what it tastes like to your family!

In that case, you can just as easily ask your spouse or son or daughter or WHOEVER to be a taste tester for you.

No.  More.  Excuses.

Just to clarify, I am not just talking through my hat here.  I actually HAVE cooked meals for my loved ones while 100% raw.

As I have brought up before, I used to want to own a bakery and I spent much of my time baking and decorating elaborate cakes.  I bet you I have seen all of the crazy cake challenges on Food Network (even the more recent ones, I am ashamed to say).

Pretty crazy, huh?

Simply having your family members taste the food is a great tip for those of you who have to prepare Christmas Dinner this year.

That said, this tip won’t mean jack squat if you refuse to follow one simple raw rule for success.

But first, a little anecdote…

Christmas Cookie Crafting and Clean-Up

As I mentioned above, I used to be into baking and because of my past pastry “expertise,” my mother enlisted my help in Christmas cookie decorating this year (last night, actually).

While I was a little skeptical about my skill (I have not so much as *looked* at a pastry bag in over two years), I wasn’t worried at all about the cooked food temptation.

I know that I do not need to taste-test my family’s food just because I’m preparing a cooked dish for them.  The food is not for me anyway, so what’s the point in tasting it?

And what would I want with THOSE sticky sweets when I have delicious and nourishing oranges, kiwi, bananas, grapes, and pomegranates in the house?!

To my surprise, I seemed to have retained some of my pastry finesse and actually had a whole lot of fun!  Although, I had completely forgotten how messy baking is (gosh, I wonder why).

While it was great listening to Christmas music and “gossiping” with my Momma, cleaning up the mess of icing and sprinkles, trying to get the sticky, sugary feeling off my hands, and keeping everything away from the animals—and yes, I’m referring to my pets, not my ravenous relatives—is something I can live without.

All in all, I was able to enjoy in the seasonal festivities without feeling bloated, achy, or guilty from succumbing to cooked food sweets.

In fact, I did not even *think* about taking a nibble from the sugar cookies or gingerbread men (which used to be my favorite and the exact recipe I made every year at Christmas) and there is one very important reason why…

Fill Your House With Festive Fruit

You can hire your own taste-tester and swear to yourself up and down that you will not take a single bite of cooked food, but I guarantee you all that will go out the window when you’re hungry.

It is so easy to tell yourself “just one bite” when you have not eaten so much as a morsel of food all day and the only raw food in the house is one overripe banana and an orange or two.

If you really want to overcome the lure of cooked food, then you have to anticipate it and plan smart.  The best way to do this is to keep lots and lots and LOTS of TASTY and RIPE sweet fruit in the house.

By “tasty,” I mean fruit that you actually like to eat.  By “ripe,” I mean food that you can eat right that very instant!  Winter time actually makes this one easy because there is a lot of fruit available that is perfectly ripe at purchase, such as oranges, grapefruit, grapes, apples, etc.

This way, you can be sure that you have enough food for meal times AND for any snacking you need to do in between to avoid any “necessary” recipe tasting.

So before you begin preparing that turkey and gravy or pork roast and applesauce, do yourself a favor and double check your fruit supply.  Whenever you hear that calling for cooked food, go grab a banana or two and tell that cooked drudgery to…

Well, I’ll leave that part up to you.

Holiday Get-Together Tips?

Do you have any tips for staying raw this Holiday season while still enjoying in all the food-filled festivities?  Please share your sagely wisdom in the comments below!

Go raw and be fit,

Swayze