I've been cutting out or minimizing tropical and exotic ingredients from our diet, anything that has to travel a great distance to get to us. It's hard.
I am also struggling to prepare the kids lunches of things they'll actually eat. This is beyond challenging. Good grief.

So, what I'm looking for is a book or a site that has very simple basic recipes containing ordinary ingredients that travel well and seem child friendly. I don't have time to cut out little animal shapes or make works of art out of their lunches, I just don't. And soup and smoothies are out of the question, these are ok for breakfast but come home from school untouched.

Thanks for anything you've got, I appreciate it.

Oh, I can do a bit of dehydrating if need be.

Storm and Jinjee's 'Garden Diet' ebook might work. No dehydrator required, no exotic ingredients except for Thai coconuts and you could skip those recipes if you don't have access to them.

They also have a ebook called 'Raising raw vegan children' that you might want to look into.

I have the 'Garden Diet' book; got it early in my raw journey. I have always liked their ethos (real food, no superfoods, no dehydrator). Recipes are not fancy, but I think they are solid and I use them frequently. They have 5 children that they have raised as raw vegan from birth, so they do seem to know what they're doing in raising a raw family.

i think trives list of lettuce wraps are very cool [www.rawfoodsupport.com]

and how bout gorrilla sandwhiches ! [gorillasandwich.com] you could put jsut about anything local (no tropicals) into it

fruitwise you could do the same with apples .. hollow them out a bit .. fill them witha neat nut cheese or something

this one has 90+ recipies in it but frankly ive never heard of the person .. so .. [rawkidsrecipes.com]

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2012 02:11AM by Jgunn.

im gonna get the ingredients and try russels garlic bread .. i suppose you could not put in the garlic and make it just a raw bread .. it looks really good and spongey
[www.therawchef.com]

that might open up some ideas for you

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

if you could make some flaxseed cones maybe you could duplicate some of this dudes stuff .. [www.rawdaddyfoods.com] might be interesting

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

oh crap sorry coco forgot to add .. there is a substition for the coconut in the raw bread recipie .. you use shredded peeled zuchini in stead (local and non-tropical)

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

My kids liked Bobbi Clinger's corn chips and raw apple pie. ( I forget where that recipe came from.) They also enjoyed the white peach leather I made with a little added agave syrup.

Thanks for all the info, will check everything out!

You might try Raw Energy by Stephanie Tourles. It include a lot of awesome snacks that would appeal to kiddos.

Hi, I've just posted a new topic about www.foodferret.com. From what you've said our website should be very helpful to you. Once you've set up a search and are looking through recipes you can very easily remove recipes that contain the ingredients you're trying to avoid. You simply click on the (exc) link next to the ingredient and all the recipes using that ingredient will be removed.

If you find the site useful you can set up the 'my Cupboard' feature that allows you to store a list of ingredients to exclude.

This is an example search set up to find raw recipes using walnuts

Hope this helps.

I second the garden diet recipes by Storm & Jinjee. I think you can buy a recipe ebook, they recipes are simple, yummy and dehydrator free. Not a lot of pre-preparation required. I have 3 kids myself, it's hard to spend time in the kitchen doing things !!

I have a book called Hooked on Raw by Rhio, I absolutely love it, the food is yummy and not complicated and I believe it would be kid friendly. Most of the ingredients are not tough to find or expensive. If you go to her website here: [www.rawfoodinfo.com] and click on recipes she got some recipes up so you can try a bit before you buy. (I love the spinach Ceasar salad! So does my vegie phobic husband and my 6 yr old, who doesn't like vegetables that much) Most of her recipes are dehydrator free, but she does have a section in her book for dehydrated stuff too. The book has so many recipes in it, It is my main resource at home alongside Nomi Shannon's Raw gourmet, but I don't think that one is as kid/husband friendly.

See, I love all this food but I just can't send things to school that I know they aren't going to eat without mama standing over their shoulder encouraging them. I'm working on figuring out a way to homeschool them but until them I can't let them go without food all day at school, they get crabby, they don't learn, it's so not good for their wee bodies. They'd be better off eating crackers than nothing, you know? Sigh. So difficult. I could personally live on salad all day long. What is Wrong with these veggie hating kids? LOL.

why don't you make most of their lunch a big colourful fruit salad. Add in some date/nut balls that you could make the night before or on weekends. Decide what you want them to eat if it's not raw, like maybe some cold potato salad with a raw dressing and baked beans. My daughter will eat carrot sticks with a mild dip, she'll have a few mouthfuls of salad here and there, and she'll have green smoothies, but she's not too great on the veggies either, and for the record my children are not raw, or vegan... I'm taking it as baby steps and just trying to educate them as best I can in the hope that they will make the right choices, with some guidance... I actually find that (cooked) soup is a great way for them to get their veggies in. My kids love pumpkin soup and tomato soup, but I can put pretty much whatever I like in the soup as long as I puree it and the resulting colour resembles orange or red. It's not easy. If my husband were most supportive it would be easier....... Anyway, don't stress coco! You're doing the best you can and I'm sure your kids much healthier for all your efforts :-)