Tips for Hosting a Raw Food Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving is a time of sharing all that we have. It's a time of celebration with family and friends. Traditionally in the modern day Thanksgiving era, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving with a cooked meal. This article will explore ten tips for hosting a Thanksgiving dinner of raw food.

1. At first, guests may be reluctant for a raw food Thanksgiving meal. They want a cooked turkey, cooked stuffing, cooked mashed potatoes and other cooked vegetables. They may think that because this is what they have always known, this is how things should continue.

You can first remind your guests that Thanksgiving is more about the tradition of sharing and having a meal together rather than about what is served. What should be served is what is available at the time. Whatever the settlers had when they sat down and ate with the Indians was what their meal consisted of. The second point you can make is that raw foods are much healthier for you, and you won't then need that after turkey nap, so you can spend all afternoon watching the sports events instead of sleeping through them.

2. You may experience some difficulties in making authentic raw food. The first problem you could encounter is that the vegetables are of poor quality. Sometimes, you will find that you buy vegetables at the grocery store that don't seem to be quite right, they are either too ripe or not ripe enough, or there are imperfections. The guests won't want to see the bad spot on your tomato, so you have a challenge of being able to present the food absent the item's blunders. What you should do is carefully examine each vegetable and cut out any bad spots. Make this part of the decorative nature of the vegetable display.

Another difficulty in making raw food is discovering what will taste best to your guests. Some guests may like alot of seasoning, whereas others may not. To overcome this, you can have more than one dish of the same thing, letting people know that one dish is heavily seasoned. Just keep track of which one is which!

You may run out of creative ideas for having a full meal. You can find raw food menus and recipes on the internet, simply by doing a search for 'raw food Thanksgiving dinner.' This will pull up many options. Otherwise, think of having an appetizer, a salad, a main course with two sides, and a dessert. If you keep this in mind, you will end up with a full meal.

3. To keep with the theme of Thanksgiving, you can still display the traditional Thanksgiving decor. Spread out tablecloths in orange and yellow shades. Hang up Thanksgiving corn all around your house. Have a dish with squash and miniature pumpkins. Put a large pumpkin on your porch. You could even go as far as having pictures of pilgrims and Indians eating together.

4. If you have really picky guests, you can make your raw food into the shape of a turkey, or do something else to make things look traditional. You can make something raw mimic a dish that would have been cooked.

Here are some menu item ideas:

5. Salad- Always go with a salad for a raw food Thanksgiving dinner. There are so many ways to go with a lettuce salad. You can use any type of lettuce you want, such as romaine, green leaf, butter lettuce or plain iceburg lettuce. Spif up the salad and make it seem like Thanksgiving by adding Thanksgiving type foods. Put some fresh cranberries on top of the salad. Add fresh tomatoes and green peppers. Add any other vegetable to the top of your salad.

6. Vegetable salad. The great thing about a raw food Thanksgiving is that it will be so healthy for you! Go all out with a vegetable salad. To make this, choose some vegetables. You could use squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, broccoli, and cauliflower. Cut these up and put them in a bowl. Then try some type of dressing. I would recommend a cranberry vinaigrette dressing, homemade of course.

7. Cranberry sauce. This is a given for any raw food Thanksgiving meal. Simply crush up cranberries and oranges and walnuts, and mix them in the blender. Try adding some cherry juice for added flavor and to make the sauce more saucey.

8. Tomato juice or vegetable juice. As a great starter, or when the guests arrive, have some fresh vegetable or tomato juice ready for them. You can make vegetable juice with any combination of vegetables pureed in the blender. It is recommended to have tomatoes be the main part of the veggie juice.

9. Frozen fruit dessert. For dessert, try a frozen fruit dessert. What you do is cut up some fruit and let it sit overnight. Sprinkle some sugar or sugar substitute onto the fruit. The juices then come out into the dish. Take the fruit and juice and freeze it. Then, you can serve this as your frozen dessert instead of ice cream!

10. Sweet potatoes, the raw version. You can still have sweet potatoes, they just won't be cooked. Mash them in the blender, and then add some brown sugar and corn syrup. Let the mixture sit overnight so that the sugars seep into the sweet potatoes.

11. Bakeless pie. Get a pie crust that doesn't have to be baked. Then, you can add whatever filling you like. You could add the sweet potato mixture from the last recipe, or use pumpkin. If you use pumpkin, add some cinnamon to the mix.