Raw Review’s

Or more to the point, un-doing something old.

Heather, a committed vegan, stopped cooking and switched to eating only raw food.

“I promised my sister I would do it for three days only,” said Heather, who runs Bishop’s Bail Bonds with her father, Holly Bishop. But three days was all it took to hook the Longview woman on a diet even more stringent than veganism.

“I felt so different,” she said. “I had more energy and focus; I didn’t need as much sleep.”

In four months, Heather has lost 40 pounds and become a passionate proponent of the raw food diet. She spends hours learning recipes from dozens of cookbooks, goes to a weekly raw-diet group in Portland’s Pearl District, and will attend a world confab on raw food in Sedona, AZ in September.

Last week, Heather and Dawn served up a delicious lunch of raw dishes to several Daily News reporters, a photographer and Heather’s husband, cabinet maker Claude Ostgaard.

“I’m about 80 percent raw,” said Claude, who still craves an occasional pasta meal and “will never get rid of seafood, especially oysters.”

The lunch menu included tandoori balls, Thai wraps with sesame tahini dressing, nori rolls that looked and tasted like sushi, somosas with banana tamarind sauce, chips with a silky hummus dip, Tom Khai Soup, pad thai salad, and Heather’s original frozen dessert plus a rich layered sweet – something like cheesecake – in a raspberry sauce.

Don’t rush into the kitchen just yet.

Although some spices and condiments can be found locally, Heather orders a lot of ingredients at goldmine.com. Special equipment is required for preparing raw food that looks and tastes this good. And until the methods become second nature, it takes time to learn how to make a variety of dishes that will meet nutritional needs.

That said, every part of the lunch was beautiful, with bright flavors and pleasing textures.

Aside from an interesting take on sushi (her seaweed wraps around ground cauliflower rather than sticky rice), Heather tends not to focus too much on “fake” foodstuffs. Instead, she serves salads, appetizers, juices, smoothies and creamy, room-temperature soups.

The “pad Thai” salad that Heather makes with varying widths of shredded jicama, cabbage, mint and cilantro, was delicious tossed in a light sauce of liquefied almonds and tamarind (a tropical fruit).

She made the tandoori balls with pulverized almonds, onions, red peppers and curry sauce, with just the right balance of these flavors. Tandoori refers to a combination of spices including garlic, cumin, cayenne, ginger and garam masala.

Strong seasonings help pump up the flavors of raw foods. A staple condiment, for instance, is nama shoyu, an organic, unpasteurized soy sauce that is aged for four years.

That said, it takes practice to get Eastern food right, and Heather draws inspiration from more than 20 cookbooks and experiments the way any chef would.

“I love the process,” she said. “I’m not grabbing a jar.”

Instead of turning on the oven, Heather relies on a slicer called a mandolin, a high-powered Vita-Mix blender (they start at $350), a food dehydrator and a Cuisinart food processor.

Gesturing at the granite-topped island and custom cabinets made by Claude, she added, “This kitchen does not go to waste.”

When Heather and Dawn’s sister, Darla Gettman, died last August of a massive heart attack at the age of 49, “it was a wake-up call,” Heather said. “I want to do what I can do to protect myself.”

The staples of the diet are nothing new: fresh vegetables and fruits, lots of avocados and spices, and pulverized cashews and almonds — which provide a meat-like bulk and a kind of “milk”.

Raw fooders hold a special reverence for cacao beans, which contain high levels of sulfur and magnesium and may increase focus, alertness and well-being, according to a Raw Cacao Web site.

Cacao beans that are certified organic and raw are dried at low temperature and are used in making smoothies, brownies, pies, and truffles. The beans can also be ground into a coarse powder and brewed like tea or used in coffee-like drinks.

An acquired taste, raw food lovers prefer it to processed chocolates.

As with many food regimes, the raw food diet is an alternative to an American diet of fatty, over-processed food, which raw food converts blame for obesity, low energy and all kinds of illness. Books, articles, Web sites and seminars promote raw food as a cure for sleep problems, addictions and terminal cancers.

Claims about the raw food diet include the belief that raw food is “alive,” and temperatures higher than 105 degrees kill healthy enzymes in fruits and vegetables. Advocates say they have more energy, lose weight easily and have revitalized skin.

Kaiser dietician Janice Stixrud said she can see many benefits in eating more fresh, raw fruit and vegetables.

“We’re always beating that drum,” Stixrud said. “That’s the food group that most people don’t get enough of.”

She has not done enough study of a totally raw diet to advocate it or caution against it, the dietician said, but she’d be concerned about people – especially pregnant women and children – getting the right balance of nutrients, including protein and calcium.

“Some vegetables offer better nutrition when they’re cooked,” Stixrud said. Cooked tomatoes, for instance, have more anti-oxidants than raw tomatoes, she said.

“Not being able to cook might make it hard for some to digest the food,” the dietician said. “I don’t think it would suit someone with irritable bowel syndrome.”

Stixrud suggested a good reference work for people considering strict new diets: “What to Eat,” by Marion Nestle.

“She stresses common sense, fresh food, how to pick food that’s healthy. She’s open minded, she doesn’t hype things and she tries to educate the consumer.”

Heather Bishop said anyone interested in trying a raw food diet should talk to their doctors. She and Dawn, granddaughters of a Longview butcher, said they try not to be rigid about the lifestyle.

When they’re invited to friends’ homes to eat, they choose salad, and Heather sometimes asks the host if she can bring a raw dish to share. “Heck, I’m going to go -it’s about friendship,” she said. “I don’t want eating to inhibit my social life.”

Families can be a whole other challenge. Dawn said, laughing about how her kids call the raw food movement a “cult.” As she did with Heather, she urges her loved ones to try the diet because it’s healthy.

“What’s important?” Dawn said. “Rush, rush, rush, let’s get on the hamster cage? Or taking care of our families?”

Heather agreed. “A lot of people think this is extreme,” she said. “Dawn’s the one who told me, “Seeing all the processed food at the supermarket – that’s extreme.”

Reference: http://www.tdn.com/articles/2008/03/12/this_day/10141428.txt

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 6:35 AM PDT

By Cathy Zimmerman