I have a little confession to make...
For the past three years I have been fooling myself by trying to fool you, that raw chickpea hummus can be just as delicious as the cooked one.

I tried so hard to make this a reality, but at the end of the day- everyone will try my recipe, taste it, feel glad that they now know how to do it and then go off to the supermarket to buy their cooked one in a tub again.

Do you know why that is?
Answer: When you apply heat to raw living carbohydrates in food and apply it for long enough, those carbs turn into sugars. So by cooking our nutrient packed sprouted chickpeas, we are actually destroying a heap of goodness and turning them into a sweet by-product. Sugar is of course addictive, so when you try anything else, it simply doesn't compare and the voice of our tastebuds will always be louder than the voice of our intellect.

That's exactly why I always do my best to make my raw recipes taste amazing. I've even revealed my secret of adding dates to raw foods in my Amazon #1 Bestselling DVD Raw Food 101, in order to make a tastier hummus. The result was pretty good, but even I didn't hurry to make it myself. And there is something wrong with that picture. So I went on a quest to perfect my recipe and soon discovered that the secret is not in making raw chickpeas taste better, it was in replacing them with something else altogether!

I can't tell you what a revelation this was! And honestly, I think that if you enjoy a hummus in a tub, you will looooove this one. I do! Here you go...





3 courgettes, chopped
1 cup sunflower seeds, soaked
1 cup sundried tomatoes, soaked
½ cup raw sesame seeds
½ cup raw tahini
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
juice of 2 lemons
2 tsp cumin
optional: ½ tsp Himalayan salt, only if tomatoes weren’t preserved in salt

Put all ingredients in a high powered blender and blend to a rich consistency.

Doesn't it look and sound divine? It is a must-try, I tell you. Do it, do it! Everyone on my and Polly's Picnic & Punting event last weekend gave rave reviews to my hummus and all the other treats we made for the day...

Mocktails on arrival, curried flax crackers, raw sundried tomato hummus, summer guacamole, creamy cheesy dip, pizza, wraps with sunflower seed pate and fresh seasonal veggies and sprouts, marinated and pesto stuffed mushrooms, chocolate brownie bites, special indulgent cake, strawberries and cream, plus green elixirs. - See more at: http://www.betterraw.com/p/teaching.html

We were so fortunate to have the beautiful and shining Samjhana Moon of www.goddessportraiture.co.uk to capture our day! Here are just a few highlights...

Last weekend I was very blessed to have been invited for a very special day of meditation at The Nutri Centre in Regent's Park. This gorgeous centre is one of the world's largest suppliers of nutritional products and my favourite wellbeing book store in London. They even stock my DVD Raw Food 101!

The day was lead by a wonderful spiritual guru Andrew Smith, who is the author of The Revolution of 2012- The Preparation and The Revolution of 2012- The Challenge.



We all brought with us a healthy treat for a shared lunch. I must admit I didn't even stop to contemplate on what my contribution was going to be. This recipe has been a hit in all of my Beginners to Raw Food Workshops, Retreats, and more recently on so many blogs across the internet raving about it after watching the DVD. The only regret I had was not being prepared enough to take a better picture of the salad to show to you guys here. The photo really does it no justice at all :)



For the Dressing/Dip
1 cup cashews, soaked 2-8 hours
1/2 cup pure water
1/2 red bell pepper/ capsicum, de-seeded and chopped
1/8 red onion (small slice)
2 Tbsp lemon juice
2 Tbsp nutritional yeast
1 Tbsp tahini
1 tsp himalayan salt
1 clove garlic

For the Salad
5 large carrots, shredded
optional: sundried tomatoes, adzuki bean sprouts, mung bean sprouts, lentil sprouts

-Blend cashews with water first
-Add the rest of ingredients and pulse until creamy (use the tamper of your Vitamix blender)
-Add a little more water if needed
-Put all the grated carrots into a large bowl, pour the sauce on top and mix it all in
-Transfer into a nice serving dish and sprinkle with the optional extras
-Nom nom nom


If you like this recipe, watch me demonstrate the making of it step-by-step, as well as another 19 super scrumptious recipes on my DVD Raw Food 101- Your first steps to the healthiest lifestyle ever. The DVD is divided into there chapters: Intro, Equipment, Smoothies vs Juices, Milks and Calcium, Superfoods, Sprouting, Fermenting, Dehydrating, Sauces and Flavours, Quick Meals, and Sweets. The recipes are of course all deliciously raw and include nut cheese, superfood shake, 'meat' balls and spaghetti bolognaise, crunchy granola, chia crackers, raw chocolate and many more!

In Tanya’s 2.5 hour class you will learn all the basics, such as: ◈ Which equipment is necessary and which is just for fun. ◈ What superfoods are all about. ◈ The difference between smoothies and juices. ◈ Why dairy is not the answer to calcium. ◈ Why fermenting is so important. ◈ What on earth a dehydrator is and what you can create in it. ◈ Secrets to staying raw in winter time. ◈ Guidelines on sprouting at home. ◈ Practical tips and tricks to creating easy meals and snacks in under five minutes. ◈ How desserts can very much be a part of your diet. ◈ Hear truly inspiring success stories.

Sprouted Adzuki beans

Sprouted wheat

Sprouted Alfalfa

Sprouted Quinoa

Raw dry buckwheat

Sprouted Fenugreek

ü  Soak all seeds in glass/ceramic/stainless bowl in pure water

ü  Feed soaking water to house plants (they thrive on it!) and rinse seeds well

ü  Sprout in covered colander/ sprouting bag/ cheese cloth/ jar with mesh

ü  Rinse (or water if growing greens in trays) with pure water every 12 hours

ü  As a general guideline the sprout length should be roughly the same or twice as big as the seed, (exception: small vegetable seeds will be many times longer and green shoots will be 10cm from the soil) ü  Note, that I have experimented with all these sprouts in UK indoors and at steady semi-dry temperatures of around 23degrees C. Where it is warmer and drier, required sprouting time may double

SPROUTING CHART