Feeding the Whole Family

Feeding the Whole Family, was reprinted January 2008. It boasts "65 delicious new recipes, including meat dishes."

The first book, with the purple cover, was for me the only cookbook a young bride needed. Everything I tried tasted good, and the recipes are very economical.

The following eight recipes from the first book are a big hit around this house:

Tofu Breakfast Burritos
Millet with Fresh Peaches (and blueberries!)
Bathing Rama Spinach
Black Beans with Sensuous Spices
Susan's Surprise Salad
Whole Wheat Pancakes with Blueberry Topping
Mary's Chocolate Cake (vegan version)
Pumpkin Muffins

-----
After being diagnosed with diabetes, I found that six out of those eight dishes would raise my blood glucose unless eaten in very small amounts. I can eat burrito filling. I can have half of a small muffin. It was beginning to seem like torture- I'd rather have no pancake than a quarter sized pancake! Eating grains and starchy vegetables, although healthy whole foods, wasn't working for me.
------
Diabetics: In a nutshell- a whole foods diet may not be enough to keep diabetes under control without medication. I know from personal experience that the Berenstein Principal works.

Transitioning to Raw

Depending on what you're diet is like now, transitioning to eating a whole foods vegan diet first can be helpful in transitioning to a raw diet. And when you're eating a raw diet, you're also continuing to eat only whole foods. Eating a raw diet means you just elinate cooked foods.

First- what is Whole Food? Can you imagine it growing in nature? Even a fish swimming is a whole food. (Some pople think a fish is food for a bear.) Artificially pink fish-paste with artificial onion flavor that comes in a tube to squeeze onto crackers is not a whole food, because you cannot imagine it existing in nature.
If you choose to eat grains (Berenstein thinks diabetics generally shouldn't,) the less processed the better. You might prepare brown rice or quinoa for a side dish. Eat a lot of vegetables, and make half of them raw salads. Find whole foods to replace special ocassion things you might have eaten before and you will completely lose your desire to eat processed, artificial food.

When you are ready, transition to raw foods. Begin the day with green juice and have a salad for lunch. Work up the courage to try some simple raw recipes for dinner.

If you are going to "fall off the all-raw-wagon" do it with whole food. Have slow-cooked oatmeal with organic apple grated in it and unsweetened almond milk for breakfast, a home-made vegetable soup with sunflower seed crackers for lunch, some brocolli salad with a side of carrots and cooked spinach in an almond butter sauce (also known as bathing rama) for dinner. These are good foods that help you transition back to raw because they do not throw your body as far off balance as much as highly processed, artificial, sweetened food.