Today, for Thankful Thursday, I want to focus on a raw food related subject: Raw Recipe Books! Without the many mouthwatering, visually appetizing recipes that have been created and published, I don't know if I'd still be living a raw food lifestyle at this time.

About two years ago, when I made the decision to transition into a raw food diet, there were some fantastic raw food recipe books available. A few years before that, when I tried raw for the first time with a dear friend of mine, there were books available but none of them were truly gourmet meals. It's amazing how much things change in just a few years! The newer books are filled with colorful pictures of the most visually stimulating foods, which never looked like simple chopped up veggies arranged nicely on a plate. We have a page with many raw recipe books listed, if you'd like to see some of the ones that are available.

The gourmet raw food books are used like a bridge into raw foods. They present raw foods in a way that rivals the cooked ?foods we are used to eating. They have similar looks, textures, tastes, aromas. It makes eating someting uncooked quite similar to eating cooked foods. They are the bridge that take us to the truly pure raw food side of life. We at Pure Jeevan have found that we loved the bridge to the raw side, but once we crossed it we didn't require as many of the gourmet dishes anymore. Once in a while we'll take the time to prepare something that reminds us of our cooked days in the past (pizza, sandwiches, pumpkin pie, etc.), but for the most part we eat very simple raw meals these days.

However, even though we don't rely on the raw recipe books as much, we will forever be thankful for the role they played in our journey to this new raw world. If you haven't looked around at gourmet raw food books, you might be amazed at what you find.

You don't have to limit yourself to published books, however. Over the past year, or so, the amount of gourmet raw recipes available on the Net has grown tremendously! (Please see our Take the Time Tuesday entry from earlier this week for links to some great online recipes by Terilynn.) Today, on We Like It Raw's blog, they have shared Shannon Marie's recipes for Better than Girl Scout Cookies. Yes, raw cookies that rival those that the Girl Scouts sell! (Shannon Marie's blog is filled with amazing raw recipes!)

You'll be surprised at the amount of gourmet raw food recipes you'll find on the Net. The raw food world is growing larger every minute of the day! So, if you are interested in trying raw foods, in making your path to the raw food lifestyle a long-lasting one, don't be shy to take the raw recipe bridge to the other side! It's not a hard-core way of going raw, but who says you can't take the easy route like we did?