I have been a vegetarian for some time now.. and recently have leaned more to the vegan-side. I still did not feel like my diet was completely healthy and it was only until I started reading about raw dieting that I realized this was excatly what I had been missing. I will give the raw thing a try for a while. I am not a fad dieter.. but if I have a hard time churning out a decent recipe, it may be hard to keep me motivated to keep up with this diet. I get a lot of satisfaction out of eating and cooking and would never become someone who lives off of juices! Luckily I do have some equipment under my belt--but would like advice from others. At this point I am not looking to spend hundreds of dollars on new equipment--since I do not know yet if raw-fooding will be for me.

I currently have a Breville Juicer and a simple blender that was designed for making smoothies... I do not have a food processor and am wondering if this is something critical since I have a blender already. If so, what is the bare minimum I should look for you in a food processor? Also-- if all goes well I might consider a dehydrator and have heard excalibur is the best. which one do you recommend for one person??? do they all work similiarly?

Thanks for all your help. I truly admire all you raw-fooders!

Hello,

That's great that you have some equipment. When I started, I had only a knife and a cheese grater. I did the research and found that I had to slowly buy equipment as I prefer to spend my money once for something better rather than spend again and again for something cheaper. Sometimes this is to my advantage and some times not.

The first thing I bought was a juicer. The next was a blender. The following a food processor which I haven't used yet. I'm waiting for a period of time to study the manual and open up some kitchen counter space.

If you want a small blender, you can pick up a KitchenAid one for less than $100. I believe it is a 3 cup one. I did hear that one can use a cheaper $50 one to blend things. I waited a long time and bought the 16 cup Proline one. It was expensive even with a coupon. I used my Champ HP3 blender in the meantime or a knife.

A coffee grinder is good for grinding seeds. One of those are not too pricey. I did have one on hand luckily.

I've read that the Excalibur is the one most commonly used, too. I will order it in the future from the factory website: [excaliburdehydrator.com]

Of course, the simplest method to raw is to eat raw fruit and veggies cut up without all the fancy preparation.

Hope that helps. Therese