First visit to a gourmet raw food restaurant

Goshhh, it's been awhile again, I've been off from work and my self-prediction of updating my blog a lot during this time has proved to be wrong. It's been so good weather this week and 2 of my best friends have been visiting us so the time has been passing by like a blink of an eye, and before I realised, it was Sunday...

So what have I been up to? My plan of having one-day juice fast didn't go very well, on Tuesday I had 3 large glasses of vegetable juice but I also had salad for lunch and lovely salad and tuna steak dinner. It was just too busy for me to chill and sip greenies, I need to plan this into a life span when I have nothing to do, so I can just relax and enjoy my new-found love for freshly squeezed vegetable juices, mixing into this long hot essential oil baths, body brushing and hot&cold showers. Somehow this seems like a distant dream, me being a full-time working mum for 18-months old super-active toddler and a wife to a husband with no cooking skills whatsoever... I promise I will try again though.

Rest of the week has been mixed rawish and less rawish food, the weekend breakfasts have consisted of freshly squeezed orange and grapefruit juices with organic sprouted bread or rye bread with sheep or goat cheese. I did try a bit of smoothie and it didn't cause belly ache this time, so I'll have a go again next week with my smoothie breakkies.

Great thing is that I finally managed to go to one the best raw food restaurants in London. Saf in Shoreditch is a great place to spend a night with a couple of good friends. The food was great and we were all incredibly full after our starters and only managed to eat about half of the mains! Some reviews I've read said that the portions were small, which might have looked like that on those huge plates, but the food was really filling and we had no space for desserts even though we were dying to try the raw blueberry cheese cake. Next time I'll have just a main so I can taste some delicious desserts.

Pesto au Poivre - cashew cheese, sage pesto and pink peppercorns served with pepper flax crackers and reduced balsamic vinegar - incredibly delicious and something I'll try to re-create as soon as possible. Cashew cheese is now often in my fridge, I absolutely love it.

Cannelloni - courgette (zucchini in U.S), herbed cashew cheese, puttanesca sauce and basil - great flavours.

Sea vegetable salad - beetroot, carrot, daikon and avocado with ginger-sesame vinaigrette - love it!

My main course was Lasagne - raw bolognaise, sage pesto, olives, mushrooms and macadamia ricotta served with dehydrated tomato slices and courgette. Not best food choice for beginner raw foodist, I struggled with the mix of strong flavours and even though it tasted good, I couldn't finish it all - whether it was due to the richness of flavours or that I was full-up after starter, not sure.

Another main course was Spring Risotto - asparagus, radicchio and thyme. Rice was cooked but no cream nor parmesan. Seriously good!

And the third main we tried was Baked Tofu - miso marinated tofu, brown rice cake (cooked), asparagus and mange trout (steamed) - great mix of flavours, again very filling and would have been enough on it's own. I definitely recommend the restaurant if you're curious about raw, vegan food, they also serve great fresh cocktails and organic wines.