Since we're just babies at raw, we're still soliciting help. Our friends Danielle and Becky came to the rescue this week with info on raw sushi. This isn't to be confused with eating raw fish, of course; rather, it's about subbing (in this case) an almond carrot puree for the rice in standard sushi. In theory, you should really plan ahead and soak the almonds for 8 - 10 hours. Or, you can cheat like we did, as outlined below. We rounded the meal out with the Siamese Dream soup stolen from What the Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyway? , in turn stolen from RAWvolution. Stealing from our favorite thieves.

Raw Sushi

We stayed pretty true to the sushi recipe, except I only soaked the almonds for about 30 minutes. To make up for this, you'll want to add about 1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup of olive oil. I'd recommend soaking...but that takes more foreknowledge than I usually have. You might also consider peeling the almonds, as that's supposed to make them even tastier.

For veggies, we used spinach, cucumber, beet, and yellow pepper.

You'll notice that we cut it like a wrap, rather than standard nori-roll style. These are quite a bit softer than rice-based sushi, so they're a lot tougher to cut small. For the sake of your sushi's dignity, stick with the deli cut.

Siamese Dream Soup

This was very much like a raw Tom Khai, and almost mindlessly simple to make. The recipe calls for coconut water, which we didn't have handy, so we used 1 can of coconut milk and 1 cup of water. The recipe also calls for 3 cloves of garlic--which is way too much. We tend to double the garlic in most recipes, so don't write this off. One clove of garlic will suffice.

What's really interesting about this soup, is that you almost don't notice it's raw. Cooking only tends to mellow the flavor in garlic, ginger, and coconut milk. So you can get away with using less, without losing any flavor. In a lot of ways, this is one of the key points of eating raw. Humans picked up cooking largely as a way of killing the harmful bacteria in meat. As vegans, we don't really need to cook...though now that we've picked up the habit, it would be a tough one to kick without major motivation.

Since cats don't cook, Wobbly Bob (AKA The Beast) decided he had some useful skills to lend: