[RawFoodGrl]

Ah Ho!! Blessings to you this equinox, Corndancer!!

I would suggest NOT buying anything right now except a blender and perhaps a food processor.

Most people I know starting raw have transitioned slowly, and started simply, buy replacing their morning breakfast with blended smoothies (fruits or veggies), and added salads and other raw items (such as blended soups) to their regular lunches and dinners (eat your raw food before your cooked!).

Over time, add one entirely raw meal a week, then two, try new recipes, try new salads, and give your body time to transition. Besides giving yourself time to try new recipes and get a lot of options under your belt before going 100%, it gives your body time to heal more, transition more, and when you fully transition the detox will be less intense.

Most people I know do really well when they eat a lot of leafy greens (plus veggies), more so than eating a lot of deydrated things, which mostly include a lot of nuts and seeds. Juicing is wonderful, but it's also not entirely necessary, to my understanding. I don't have a juicer (yet) and eat lots of salads and some fruits, a few deydrated or premade raw things (like flax bars, raw breads, and raw food bars) and am doing great.

If you can get an Excalibur deyhdrator, everything I've heard about that says it's the way to go (be sure to get some teflex sheets to go with it!!).

For the juicer, while many people I know recommend the Champion, I am thinking about the Green Star. But the thing is good juicers are VERY expensive (as is the Excalibur), so just start going raw, see what you're interested in, take time to do some research.

I think a blender is key, as well as a cutting board, a knife, a bowl, a fork, and measuring spoons. A food processor is REALLY handy for shredding, slicing and mixing things that you don't want liquified.

(Anything that will be "liquidy" such as sauces, creams, soups, smoothies, salad dressings, goes in a blender. A blender needs a bit of liquid to function without overheating the motor. Anything "solidy" like pates, stuffings for things like Rawvioli, faux meatballs, faux burger patties, goes in a food processor. Food processors like a bit of moisture, which can even be from something like avocado or cucumber, as well as oil or water (unlike a blender) but do really well with less moist items.)

The other thing is don't be afraid of spending a smaller amount of money on something less than the "best" or has been used. We're getting a lot of good use out of our round deyhdrator. It's not an Excalibur, it doesn't have temperature controls, it doesn't have teflext sheets, it takes a bit more effort, but we can make crackers, warm through foods, make small tortillas, make "neatballs" and "rawvioli", just fine in it - and it only cost $3.00 new from a thrift store.

A while back a friend of mine gave me a juicer for free!! (He got a more powerful one and didn't need his old one.) Unfortunately that was way before I was into raw and don't have it anymore, but still, I had it, it wasn't the top of the line, but I sure wish I had it now as it would work fine for most things!!

I think the thing is to find out what you really want to do, what your needs really are, before buying something.

Yes, eventually we want to get an Excalibur and a great juicer (whatever brand we choose). But I'm finding I really prefer salads and whole fruits to anything dehydrated or juiced (or even blended, for that matter.) So even if we got one tomorrow, it wouldn't be put to all that much use. It would just make our current way of eating raw a bit easier in some respects. Perhaps we'll do fine never getting either.


At any rate, to get to your last comment - there are SO MANY WAYS to do salads, smoothies, desserts, all kinds of things, all kinds of salad dressings, all kinds of ways to mix things up, you can have a really wide variety of experiences - and you don't always need a juicer or a high end dehydrator to do it.