Shopping to Stock a Raw Pantry

So, if you want to convert your family to a mostly raw vegan diet, what do you throw out? And what do you keep? And what do you BUY? Well, we hardly have all the answers to this. But we made a start. First, I chucked out all of the meat and most of the dairy (my kids are dairy addicts, so we're going slow on that one for now) and got rid of most of our processed and refined foods (including vegetable oil). Then we went shopping. All of the following came from Good Earth Natural Foods and Costco. We still need to make a trip to Sunflower Market to see what they have to offer.

Owen and Charlie pose with the lot!

Yes, my friends, there IS raw salad dressing.

An overview. The box is stuffed with bananas from Costco. You may also notice a bag of Bosc pears, a pineapple, avocado, honeydew, cantaloupe, kiwis, blackberries, a massive bag of raw spinach, raw almonds, raw mixed nuts, and various pantry items including raw cacao powder.

This will be raw ice cream as soon as I get my turbo blender! You may recognize a young thai coconut and some caramel agave nectar (rice milk has been added to make it creamy). I am also excited to make a raw mint chocolate chip ice cream with mint leaves and cacao nibs. Yum!

As quoted here, Celtic Sea Salt is naturally moist salt harvested from the Atlantic seawater off the coast of Brittany, France. This type of salt are harvested using the Celtic method of wooden rakes allowing no metal to touch the salt. It is naturally air and sun-dried in clay ponds and gathered with wooden tools to preserve its living enzymes. Because it is unrefined, it contains all of the 84 beneficial live elements found in sea water, with no chemical and preservatives nor any other additives. We're gonna give it a go!

This right here is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich waiting to happen. The bread and jelly are not raw, but they are free of refined ingredients, sugar, and animal products.

Owen loves him some fresh berries!

A couple of extras to put in your green smoothie. The flax oil provides healthy fat to help metabolize your greens. The Liquid Light is something I won at a green smoothie demo--I think this bottle retails for around $40! But it adds amazing natural minerals.

I threw SO MUCH junk away when I cleaned out my freezer. The only really naughty thing left is the frozen quesadillas, but they were only overlooked because at the time I did the cleaning Matt hadn't decided to go raw yet. The frozen berries are for the smoothies, of course!

These are not raw, but as far as crackers go they are pretty good for you. Unprocessed and unrefined with a lot of grains and seeds. We bought this humongo bag at Costco.

Both of my younger boys are dairy addicts, so we are trying to wean them from cow's milk onto almond milk. Charlie models the regular variety here. It is made from raw almonds and water, and personally, I like it better than dairy milk.

Bentley is IN LOVE with this delicious dark chocolate almond milk! As soon as we get our turbo blender we'll be able to make this from scratch!

So, I have always insisted that I don't like avocados. I can't remember the last time I actually TRIED one, however. So here goes nothin'.

Tahini is a sesame seed paste used in many raw recipes, and Agave is a supersweet natural cactus nectar with a low glycemic index (it doesn't impact your blood sugar like refined sugar does). Many raw vegan dessert recipes include Agave.

So, there you have it. Our first major raw vegan shopping trip. We happened to be at Costco when a demonstration for the Blendtec turbo blender was going on, and it is AMAZING! We have ordered one through a friend that was able to get us a discount, and I can't wait to use it! The guy doing the demo made us a green smoothie, delicious amazing raw tortilla soup, and raw vegan ice cream with a handful of spinach in it (you couldn't taste the spinach, it was delish!).