As you may have heard on the grapevine or through social media, we recently got together with our local bookshop, White Rose Book Café, for Claire to host an evening centring on the delights of raw food.
We were absolutely thrilled with the ticket sales, in fact, we completely sold out! The bookshop was jam-packed full of people keen to learn some new kitchen techniques and get their hands on some delicious samples. It goes to show how healthy living is really big news at the moment. People are becoming much more interested in what they eat and the effect that it can have, not just on their waistlines but on their overall health and wellbeing.
Claire’s talk focused on her book, Fresh and Sophisticated – The Art of Radiant Eating, with her demoing some of the recipes and discussing many of the ingredients. This wonderful ‘un-cookbook’ contains pages upon pages of beautiful gourmet raw food dishes and the meals that we serve to our guests on our wellbeing retreats all come from this recipe book. Our guests at the book talk were fascinated with this book and Claire was signing copies well after the evening had drawn to a close!
The evening began by Claire speaking briefly about her history with raw food and her philosophy around what we eat, which is not to preach about macro’s, calories or even necessarily the nutritional value of food, but to encourage people to continuously eat foods that make them feel vibrant, energised and alive.
We started with a green smoothie demonstration which was met by a few wary glances as Claire started to blend up heaps of spinach with various fruits and superfood powders. However, once the samples started to be passed around we soon had everyone converted, they couldn’t believe they were drinking their spinach!
Next up came the tomato sauce demo. We were keen to show the guests how simple it is to make a base for a whole variety of dishes. From Italian to Mexican to Indian cuisine, all bases were covered with courgette, shredded beetroot and parsnip rice made respectively to suit. Once again the mini testers went down a treat with everyone trying to choose their favourite combination. It certainly was a tough choice…
Round 3 was everybody’s favourite course… DESSERT! On the menu this evening was a gorgeous and rich strawberry chocolate mousse which looks as delicious as it tastes. This creamy, decadent pudding was simply whizzed up in Claire’s Vitamix and then divided out for the eager guests to dig in. As you can imagine, this was a big hit and really proved that you don’t need sugars and other unnatural ingredients to create a tasty sweet treat.
Finally, using a trusty food processor, we got to work making some raw truffles. These are very popular at the moment as they are the perfect portable healthy snack, great for an energy hit and containing just 2 ingredients, dates and almonds. We rolled them into truffle shaped balls and our guests at the bookshop couldn’t get enough of them. A job well done.
It was an eye-opening (and mouth-watering) evening and really inspiring to see such a great turn out of people keen to learn more about the food that they eat. Raw food is much more in the public eye nowadays, which is wonderful. It never ceases to amaze us how times are changing and people are becoming much more open minded to alternative ways of eating, whether that’s for the benefit of their health or simply to feel better in themselves. The ‘wellbeing’ community is ever growing, and if a raw food demonstration can draw in a sold out crowd in a small market town in North Yorkshire, then anything is possible.