I have no intention of going 100% raw, but in the summer I like to play around with raw foods recipes rather than turn the stove on. This week I've got planned a wild rice salad (the rice is just soaked, not cooked) and raw "sausage" - soaked pumpkin seeds pureed with various Italian herbs/spices and then dehydrated. I'm stoked to finally use the Excalibur dehydrator that I bought from a friend literally YEARS ago but have never used.

Also some coconut milk smoothies whose recipes actually came from a paleo cookbook. Am I the only one who's noticed the paleo diet is basically the raw foods diet plus meat and fire?

How is the rice even remotely edible just from soaking? Never would have thought! The sausage sounds interesting! I'm jealous of your dehydrator.

I'm the same way in the summer not wanting to turn the stove on. My breakfasts and lunches have been a variety of salads lately. Today I have a fruit salad (peaches, strawberries, banana, mint, lime juice, and walnuts) for breakfast and cucumber, tomato, basil, mozzarella salad for lunch.

I do use the rice cooker, toaster, and grill a lot for dinner though

I'll let you know about the rice. I noticed this morning that it's expanded in size by nearly three times.

Soaking works just fine for wild rice. Per the recipe, I soaked it for 48 hours before prep. Many of the kernels split just like they do doing cooking. It was a touch "crunchy" but in my experience wild rice usually is.

I have no idea if this would work for conventional rice. Wild rice is actually a seed rather than a grain which is why I didn't question soaking it in place of cooking.

How did the sausages turn out?

I found a recipe on YouTube years ago for raw tuna salad. It was soaked almonds and sunflower seeds that were coarsely chopped and mixed with lemon juice, sea salt, and seaweed flakes. I liked to eat it on cucumber slices and thought of it as the grown up appetizer version of the tuna salad and dill pickle sandwiches I had as a kid.