Chakraw Living Foods

#SpoCOOLSpokane

One thing we have been looking at during the Sustaining Straight Edge Vegan Foods During September in Spokane (Challenge) is raw food. This is simply uncooked and unprocessed foods that haven't been heated to anything above 104-115 degrees (sources vary). It's certainly not a lifestyle I'd participate in fully or anything, but it's a good healthy addition to an overall diet.

Chakraw is a Spokane... outfit? Let's call it that... specializing in raw foods. They have classes and workshops, and they sell some products at Fresh Abundance.

And while not super cheap, some of their stuff is worth picking up, if only as inspiration for your own raw cooking. Their onion bread, for example, is excellent. It's not as much of a bread as it's a chewy cracker or cookie or whatever, and it's also very very flavorful. In fact, easy as it might be to stereotype raw food if you haven't tried it, I didn't even think of this as "raw." It was just really good.

Of course, we probably slapped the makers of the onion bread in the face when we crumbled it in some decidedly un-raw tomato soup. You know what, though? It was a good combination!

Some of their "scones" and breakfast cookies aren't bad either, if not quite as flavorful. There are a handful of other products to try out too. All at Fresh Abundance.

There are plenty of recipes online for raw foods, none of which seem overly complicated. For inspiration, though, check out Chakraw. They're not shabby at all.