New recipe column focuses on light, local

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Carol Devenot remembers visiting her grandmother's Buddhist temple for a special celebration and being fascinated by the faux meat dishes made from vegetarian ingredients.

Carol Devenot Grew up in: Kaimuki. Present home: Hawai'i Kai. Education: Kaimuki High School, 1959; San Jose State, bachelor's in home economics, 1968; University of Hawai'i, master's in education, 1996. Family: One son, three grandchildren. Author: "Island Light Cuisine" (Blue Sea Publishing, 2003). When she's not cooking: She's doing artwork, making jewelry, dancing hula. Food she can't live without: "I hate to say, because it's not healthy. It's a real treat for me to have ... chocolate." Favorite thing to cook: Chinese food. Future project: Lightening up recipes from other lands for a new book.

Devenot, who is Caucasian, grew up in a multicultural neighborhood in Kaimuki, raised by her Chinese stepmother, eating the typical East-West diet of a local family in the '50s and '60s. She loved it all, but she was equally eager to try new things. And she still is.

Her latest thing is Light & Local, a recipe column she is producing for The Advertiser, starting today. Light & Local will be published every other week in the Taste section and will focus on paring the fat, salt, sugar and refined carbohydrates from Island-style favorites. Occasionally, she may move farther afield and also share a recipe she just thinks local folks would like.

Her love of new and different foods would serve Devenot well when she became what was then called a home-economics teacher in the 1970s, and began to notice that her students at Kalaheo High could be headed for health problems. Food habits had begun to change, and it seemed to her even then that young people were eating too much fat and sugar — in part because they had cars to get around in and the time and money to eat at restaurants.

"When I was growing up ... eating in a restaurant was a big treat," she recalled. By the 1970s, it was becoming routine and, of course, today it's an almost everyday occurrence for many Islanders.

Devenot pioneered the idea of a healthy alternative to cafeteria food, helping her students to start and run a weekly health-food restaurant on campus called Internaturals. They'd make fruit and vegetable salads, teriyaki tofu, pita bread, vegetarian specialties and other such dishes, sell meal tickets in advance and sell out every week. "It was a tough thing to do because of time constraints and because we weren't really set up to do food service out of the home economics class, but it really went over big," she recalled.

Throughout her career — she retired early and now does recipe consulting working with, among others, Dr. Terry Shintani of Wai'anae Diet fame — Devenot amassed a collection of recipes. This became the core of her highly successful cookbook, "Island Light Cuisine."

"People want to make changes, but they don't know how and they're hungry — literally hungry — to learn all this information," said Devenot. "I used to talk about this at school and with my friends in the '70s and '80s and they'd say 'Oh, yeah, that's great.' Now with all these reports on childhood obesity, it's really brought the issue to the forefront."

What does she suggest for readers seeking dietary change?

• Read labels. Look at the fat grams, the carbohydrates. If you're concerned about salt, look at the sodium content. Be aware of what's in the food. (See today's Food for Thought column.)
• Eat fresh — that is, eat lower on the food chain, food that's closer to how it came out of the ground.
• Eat at home. "Eating out a lot is not a good idea," said Devenot. "We're putting the power of choosing our diet in other people's hands. You need to take control."
• Cooking right does take more time — but not as much as you think. Pick simple recipes. Shop at a health-food store for convenience products that have less fat, sugar and salt.
• Take the attitude that shopping for food is fun, a little adventure. Go to the health-food store a couple of times a month and try something new. Visit Chinatown or a farmers' market once a week and enjoy the sights, smells and sounds.

"We're so lucky in Hawai'i. We can get a lot of different kinds of foods. We have a lot of specialty shops, so why not go out and try all these things?"