PORTLAND, Maine — Inside a modest, 1800s home with a picket fence, an apron-clad woman slides sliced chard, apples, pears, carrots, celery and cucumbers into a juicer.
“Next, I’ll make a hamburger,” the chef said, reaching for cashews, sundried tomatoes and cilantro to add to a food processor.
“Discovering raw food changed my life, and I need to share,” said Elizabeth Fraser, who started teaching “uncooking” classes in her Munjoy Hill kitchen six years ago.
Across from popular neighborhood bistros Lolita and Blue Spoon, invisible to passers-by, is Girl Gone Raw, an alternative approach to food and wellness.
People in cities don’t have blueberry patches or excess room for root cellars to can up a storm. But they do have kitchens. Portlander Elizabeth Fraser has maximized hers. When the career artist isn’t upstairs working on an oil painting, she’s teaching people to make cilantro, mango green smoothies, kale chips or to sprout their own lentils. A quick rearranging of her compact kitchen and class is in session.
The theory behind raw food is simple. “By not cooking the food, you are not killing the enzymes, which are known as life force. So when all the enzymes remain intact you get the nutritional value out of your food,” Fraser, who went raw seven years ago and hasn’t looked back, said. “You feel the difference when you eat a cooked meal.”
Fraser explained that raw food isn’t necessarily cold food. In the winter, she’ll cook stews or soups — as long as food hasn’t been cooked or exposed over 118 degrees.
At the heart of her diet is plant-based whole foods. Fruit, veggies, greens. She makes her own sprouts, lentils, chickpeas and alfalfa. She also makes kombucha, a fermented tea.
“I show people how to make really yummy food out of really simple ingredients,” Fraser said.
Those who find their way to her Caribbean-hued home, which she shares with her partner Maureen Roy, a massage therapist, seek vitality.
“They want to incorporate more fresh food in their lives. I’m vegan but am helping people who are omnivores. Sometimes they are new to veganism and need a little guidance.”
She holds raw potlucks in her home once a month and teaches a six-week course demonstrating the fundamentals of a raw food diet. Through one-on-one classes, she’s helped people with weight loss and become more mindful eaters. All demographics have expressed interest, from families to bachelorette parties.
“I’m an artist and oil painter,” Fraser said. “You are dealing with really, colorful, beautiful food.”
Her painter’s eye informs the way she cooks. The deep orange yams of local harvests, the burnt siennas of her palette, purple beets from a farmers market — “we eat with our eyes, and man it’s beautiful.”
Though ensconced in the city, she has no shortage of access to freshness. She shops farmers markets, coops and markets like locavore’s haven Rosemont across the street.
“There is an abundance of food. It’s amazing. Anything that you can imagine in the cooked food world can be replicated in the raw food world,” she said.
On the rare occasions when she goes out for Thai food or has cooked vegan meal, she feels less energetic. By shifting to a raw food diet, which happened when she received an uncooked book and on Roy’s suggestion challenged herself to a week of raw food, “I feel more connected to myself and the planet and other people than I ever have before.”
Her need to share has set people on healthier paths.
“It’s so rewarding,” she said. “Sometimes is about weight loss, sometimes it’s about health — it’s about everything.”