The Stocks: Not Just For Punishment Anymore

This is a primer post for any of you guys interested in making stocks. I used to use the Martha Stewart guide to making stocks, until four or five of the chefs here pointed out some very obvious flaws in it.

One of the things I love most about the Kushi Institute is that there's hardly any waste. We have one bag of trash for the kitchen that we take out every 4-5 days, which is INSANE for a restaurant. At my last job, we took out 4 bags of trash a day, and that was for the same volume of people. We compost what we can, and save for the soup stock the savory parts of the vegetables that would enhance our soups.

The recipes on Snackrobiotic use Vegetable Stock, Mushroom Stock, and Dashi Soup Stock. I'm providing a list of substitutions that these stocks are great for. In American, European, and Asian cooking, beef, chicken, and pork stocks are all featured heavily. You don't need to sacrifice flavor for a vegan/macrobiotic diet!

Benefits of homemade vegan and macrobiotic stocks:

-No animal products (optional fish if you're macro but not vegan)

-No hidden yeast or sugar

-You control the sodium (optional no sodium)

-"Live" bacteria and live food, not freeze-dried or processed

-Seaweed stocks replace valuable minerals that are often depleted in our bodies

-Mushroom stocks cleanse the body of built-up animal fat and toxin deposits

-BEAUCOUP CHEAPER. For those of you on a money diet like me, how about not adding an extra $4 to your meal? Yeah, pretty cool.

-Saves waste. No packaging from purchased stock, less wasted food.

Stock Theory

For your basic stock, I'll provide you with a list of commonly composted/thrown away items. Keep this in a bowl in your fridge and cover, saving no more than 2-3 days before use. If you're not making a big "show horse" soup, you can simply use the stock to jazz up your morning miso.

Things that you shouldn't stock:

-Non-organic ingredients. Simmering the skins of non-organic veggies that have been coated in pesticides and fungicides does not feel terribly safe.

-Onion skins. The outer paper skins make the stock bitter. I usually compost the outer paper skins, and remove the first layer of the paper/juicy inner skin for the stock, just so my onion cuts smoothly. This layer is particularly succulent in the stock! I don't use the onion top, but I do use the onion bottom. Some skin attached to that is OK.

-Kale/Collard stems. They don't really do anything, and they turn the water green.

-Rotten/Pocked skin or vegetal material. If it's slick, damp, broken, moldy, hairy, or decomposing, let it go, man.

Things you should definitely stock:

-Cabbage hearts (the dense part on the inside that looks like a spider when you cut it in half)

-Green onion bottoms

-Leek bottoms

-Onion bottoms/inner layers

-Mushroom bottoms

-Celery leaves/roots

-Carrot tops/bottoms/skin

-Rutabaga/Turnip tops (if you want a sweeter flavor)

-Squash tops/bottoms/skins (not the woody part, but any leftovers)

All of the above combined and simmered for half an hour make...

Vegetable Stock!

Mushroom Stock

This one's easy. For a basic mushroom stock, I wait for a day that I'm making a dish with lots of shitaake mushrooms, and I save the soaking water. This hearty, "beefy" stock can be seasoned gently with sea salt and used in any dish calling for beef or pork stock. I use it sometimes in vegan shabu-shabu (replacing beef with thinly sliced shitaake mushrooms).

Dashi Stock

Dashi is a great basis for Japanese dishes. It's fantastic as a starter for morning miso, can be used in my Kimchee Soup recipe, and is fantastic as a basis for udons. When I'm feeling sad and lazy, I buy hon-dashi premade from the stores, but the macro way is to make it from scratch.

12 c. water

2 pieces kombu seaweed

2-3 c. shaved bonito flakes (NOT VEGAN. If you want to go vegan here, I'd just do kombu with 1-2 tbsp. tamari and a pinch of sea salt)

Tea Filters

I invented this recipe based on our method for brewing tea at the tea shop. I take a Size 4 t-sac and stuff it with bonito. I staple or fold it shut (I don't think stapling is terribly macro, but sometimes I get lazy) I boil the ingredients for half an hour to 45 minutes, until the soup stock takes on a dark, rich color. I season with sea salt, tamari, and mirin to taste. Usually 2-3 tbsp. mirin.

I hope you guys enjoyed this primer course and will have many happy days of stock-making in your future!

It's Hard to Write an Impassioned Post About Kidneys

Dear friends,

I wanted to come to you today and write about kidneys. I had the best intentions. This week at St. Michio's School for the Nutritionally Delinquent, I quit TV and dedicated myself to reading and study. I read about kidneys and studied Ann Rice's "Interview With the Vampire."

My conclusion was that I drink too much liquid, and I find Tom Cruise to be much more likable as the murderous demon Lestat. He just seems more approachable.

Like I said... This is what I wanted to write about. What I'm actually writing about is

KIMCHEE SOUP

This sour, tangy soup is one of the single best dishes I've ever made. It's stupidly easy to make, insanely tasty, and incredibly spicy. I'm a little scared to eat this with my new macrobiotic small intestine.

NOTE: Macro kimchee is notoriously hard to come by. The stuff you find at the Asian grocery store usually has red chili flakes, shrimp, and sugar. You can make your own by doing a simple online search, and there's a girl who was just here at KI who made an AMAZING one... There is also a guy in Tennessee who makes it homemade and vegan. My dirty confession? I use the Asian grocery store stuff.

I'm going to try to make my own homemade when I'm back in Boston. As the great minds of the 12th and 13th century used to say, "A monastic cell is not the place to undertake complex pickling."

Ingredients:

1 lb. kimchi

3 garlic cloves, minced

8-10 shitaake mushrooms, soaked in hot water for 20 minutes and minced

3-4 tbsp. sesame oil (use 1 tbsp. toasted sesame oil for some good flavor)

1 block soft tofu

bean sprouts

carrots

green onions

9-12 c. dashi soup stock. (I will post on how to make this from macro scratch later, til then, use the internets or Hon-Dashi packs for your recipe)

1-2 tbsp. mirin

1 tsp. sea salt

1 tbsp. tamari

love

Recipe:

Set your 9-12 cups of water to boil in a soup pot. This recipe calls for two pots, one for the dashi soup stock, and one for the "meat and potatoes" of the soup.

While it's boiling, take your second soup pot and coat the bottom in sesame oil. Heat over medium-high heat. Add minced garlic and fry for 30 seconds until browning begins. Add shitaake mushrooms and fry until liquids begin to seep.

Add pound of kimchi, neither rinsed nor drained. Make sure all that liquid and pickling juice gets down in there. Fry the mixture for 3-5 minutes, until kimchi leaves begin to take on a milky, translucent appearance.

Until the soup water boils in the other pot, reduce heat of kimchi, cover, and simmer. Once the water boils, add the bonito packs (or kombu if you're doing this vegan), mirin, and tamari. Keep at a rolling boil for 5-10 minutes. Keep an eye on your kimchi. If it looks like it's drying out, turn the temperature off and keep covered.

Combine soup stock and kimchi pot. You should have everything in one pot now. Add all your veggies, saving the green onions for last, your tofu, and your bean sprouts. Simmer for 20-30 minutes to allow the flavors to marry, remove any bonito packets you used, and ENJOY!!!!

*sniff* Favorite recipe ever.

Kitchen Nightmare

Today, I burned off all the hair on my left arm. It happened so fast. I have never truly understood the phrase, "Vanished in a puff of smoke" until today when I decided to cuddle the stove hood with my forearm.

For your viewing pleasure, I've listed the top three implements of injury, tales of woe, and explicit instructions on how to avoid macrobiotic peril.

Because you can strengthen your kidney and detoxify your liver, but that won't save you from wrecking your fingers.

The Circle Grater

Good For: Daikon Relish, Grated Ginger

Injury: Knuckle Grating, Mild-Moderate

Pain Factor: Eye-Watering

Karmic Retribution For: Thinking mean thoughts. Not replacing empty toilet paper roll.

How to Save Yourself: Spread goodness and cheer, and don't beat yourself up over grating that last inch of daikon radish. Save it for the stock. Your knuckles will thank you for it.

The Mandolin

Good For: Pressed Salad

Injury: Complete Finger Pad Removal

Pain Factor: Stitches

Karmic Retribution For: Double-Parking, Chewing Loudly

How To Save Yourself: Fact: 90% of mandolin injuries are immediately preceded by: "What?" Don't look up. Don't blink. If somebody asks you a question, calmly place the mandolin to one side of the cutting board. Don't freak out. Don't smile and gesticulate with your free hand. It doesn't impress anyone. It shaves off your fingerprints.

Additionally, there's an interlocking plate with a grid of spikes that holds your veggies in place and serves as a guard for your fingers.

The Microplane

Used For: Zesting Lemons

Injury: Knuckle Grating, Moderate-Severe

Pain Factor: Subtle Crying

Karmic Retribution For: Creepy Lurking, Eavesdropping

How To Avoid Injury: The thing about the microplane is that it isn't the grating... it's grating your knuckles, then getting lemon juice in the wound. The only way to avoid this injury is to use a new microplane. If your microplane gets dull, pitch it, recycle it, repurpose it... It's much easier to hurt yourself on a dull microplane one than a sharp one.

Pressure

These two have a lot in common.

In addition to being red, having layers, and needing a strong wash, they're both under pressure.

One because it's pushing down on me, pushing down on you.

The other because it's under a rock, about to become my salad.

Here at the Kushi Institute, we have pressed salad every day. Pressure "cooking" is very different than "pressure cooking."

The former involves pressing the liquids from thinly sliced vegetables mixed with salt so that it "cooks." The latter involves pouring some grains in a pot with some water, screwing on the lid, and ducking when it explodes.

I used to hate pressed salad. Growing up, I thought it tasted like cold, limp, salty cabbage. I used to gulp when I swallowed it. I didn't realize that there are as many kinds of pressed salads as there are "real" salads, and each one is a star in its own way. I'd love to share a couple of these with you now!

The thing you should remember is, pressed salad shouldn't taste bad. If it tastes bad, make it different next time. I learned this with the Worst Dish I Ever Made, Macrobiotic Yorkshire Pudding.

Überpressed Salad

Green Cabbage

Red Onions

Green Apples

Daikon Radish

Step 1: THINLY slice these ingredients. When I say thinly, I mean graze-your-knuckles thin. If it helps, bust out your handy mandolin and grate that way, avoiding your fingers. We have more injuries at KI from the mandolin than any other implement besides, perhaps, the Circle of Pain. I've lost years of youthful-looking knuckle skin to the Circle of Pain. I'm going to have hands like Jane Fonda before I hit 30 because of that thing.

I cut my ingredients to bite-sized widths before slicing. For onions, this means cut them in half once vertically (along the furry top, which has been removed first), cut it in half again long-ways (it should be in tall quarters now), and then sliced super-fine into what we call "Thin half-moons" at Kushi. I'm going to do a cutting demo any day now.

Step 2: After you've cut the apples, place the thin slices in a bowl of cold water. They're going to hang out here for the next two hours as your salad presses, so you can either forget about them or snack on them. It's really whatever you want. I live in your computer. I'm not actually judging you or anything.

Step 3: You hopefully have about 5-6 cups of shredded vegetal material. Add about a teaspoon of salt, and begin mixing and squeezing the vegetables in a LARGE bowl. Don't be shy. Squeeze them like you're wringing out a washcloth. Knead them like bread. Keep squeezing until a pool of water begins to form at the bottom of the bowl.

Step 4: Smush all your salad into a circle, and squish that under a small bowl with the U facing just like that... a U. Not a n. . The two bowls, the big one and small one, should kind of interlock. Now take something really heavy and stick it in the small bowl. Something REALLY heavy. Might I suggest:

-A rock

-A bag of rice

-Harry Potter 1-7 (Book, not DVD. Kids these days...)

-Guilt

Step 5: Wait two hours, remove heavy thing, and drain the liquid.

Sauce:

2 tsp. Mustard-Dill Dijon Mustard (We got it at whole foods)

3 tbsp. olive oil

3 tbsp. white wine vinegar

Squirt of lemon juice

Whisk until emulsified, then add to salad, add your green apple slices if you haven't eaten them all, and enjoy!

Healing Pressed Salad

Napa Cabbage

Green Cabbage

Radish Slices

Red Onion (If your system can handle it. If not, no worries.)

Follow all the steps listed above until Step 5. Here's the sauce I'd use:

1 c. umeboshi plum vinegar OR 1 c. brown rice vinegar.

Let the salad soak in the brine, taste, and give a quick rinse if it's too salty.

Party Pressed Salad

1 c. shredded green cabbage

1/2 c. shredded rutabaga

1 c. blanched crushed almonds

Follow Steps 1-5. Add almonds and ENJOY the sweet with the salty!

Tofu Cheese!

Greetings, snackers!

Well, little brother will be arriving at the Kushi Institute this weekend for his kitchen residency, and I couldn't be more surprised. If you had asked me two months ago the likelihood of my brother coming to KI, I would have said that it was DEFINITELY possible. In fact, I think he's volunteering with Dick Cheney, Paula Deen, and all four of the Beatles!

I'm really excited that he's willing to give macrobiotics a try and abandon the Standard American Diet, and I'll be excited to see what happens as his tastebuds adjust and he begins to detox.

On the topic of delicious foods that omnivores don't eat, TOFU CHEESE!

Tofu cheese is not soy cheese. Soy cheese comes in a little vacuum-sealed brick, contains appetizing effusions like "Now with non-dairy lactic acid!" and doesn't melt at any temperature lower than Chernobyl.

Tofu cheese is made from real, whole foods, so unlike soy cheese, it will actually go south pretty fast. This isn't going to be a problem, because (also unlike soy cheese), you'll probably eat it really quickly.

It's minimally processed, relying instead on natural fermentation to get that cheesy flavor. I have it filed under pickles because the fermentation method it undergoes is nearly identical to the pickling process. It isn't stringy. It has a consistency more like ricotta. Observe:

Step 1: The cold, cold smushing of the tofu.

Step 2: The tofu warms up, and what used to feel like a punishment actually feels kind of cool.

Tofu cheese is incredibly delicious, and the bacteria that form from the fermentation process have all kinds of goodies to offer a deficient digestive tract. I hear it's also really high in B12. This would be a fun one to make with the kids, because there's no cutting and no cooking involved, plus it's GREAT on pizza with a little basil, some onions, and some olives!

Tofu Cheese

2 blocks firm tofu, pressed and squeezed until most of the water has drained.

1-2 tbsp. umeboshi plum paste

3 tbsp. light miso (we used South River Miso's Chickpea)

3 tbsp. dark miso (we used South River Miso's Dandelion Leek)

Kneed ingredients together until they form a soft, squishy paste. I kneeded my tofu mixture for about ten minutes. I'm trying to work on infusing positive energy into my food, so I played some Usher/Ludacris collaboration for the benefit of my cheese. I'm anticipating a block of cheese with some serious mojo. That's not just any energy. Those are some pretty serious jams.

Press the tofu cheese in a glass/pyrex container, and allow to ferment (sealed) 6-12 days. On the far end of 12 days, I would definitely only keep for another day or two, and days 12-14, I would definitely cook it.

Enjoy, and I'll post pictures of our finished product!!

I Was A Shiatsu Dummy

What's the best thing about living at a healing school in the mountains?

FREE AMATEUR SHIATSU!

If you're like me, and the phrase, "I've only walked on a spine once, so bear with me..." doesn't freak you out, becoming a shiatsu dummy is one of the coolest things to do around this place. Second only to making tofu cheese. Last night, I did both. Hold on to your socks, kids.

What does it take to be a shiatsu dummy?

Not everybody can be a shiatsu dummy. I would say I'm especially qualified because I have meridians, arms, and unobtrusive body odor. I am the perfect candidate for a shiatsu dummy because I'm reassuring, friendly, encouraging, and I have no hobbies or interests, so I'm free every night. I would select me over other potential shiatsu candidates because I smile reflexively when you hit my lung points.

How long does it take to be a shiatsu dummy?

A lifetime. The best shiatsu dummies are born under the light of the full moon and are raised by wolves or living on abalone or some other extreme stuff. At the age of ten or eleven, they distinguish themselves among their peers by memorizing the dictionary or eating a lot of donuts at a state fair. I distinguished myself at age ten by breaking my arm putting on a t-shirt. This is true.

By adolescence, they are well on the road to becoming a shiatsu dummy. They've got tight shoulders, meridians ripe for massage, and a lot of core heat that needs to be released by a foot on the small of the back.

But if by "How long" you mean "How long does it take to be a shiatsu dummy... the massage part?" I would say two hours.

What is the one thing you wish people knew about shiatsu dummies?

I would say that I wish people didn't just assume we're all broke 20-somethings who don't want to pay for the real thing, but want to experience the luxury to which they've become accustomed.

Who like cookies.

And wear size 10 shoes.

I've Got A Potato Peeler...

Scrub, Scrub

Sorry I haven't been writing much. When all you do all day is live, eat, sleep, and breathe macro, it's hard to break it down into writing, let alone want to spend another minute thinking about a healing diet. Some days, it makes me want to take a bath in a vat of corn syrup.

I've had some amazing chats with some of you about healing. This time of year, it feels like you're all where I'm at. All you do is think about your health and your food, and you make a million adjustments to your life to try to feel better, and sometimes you just get SICK of it. Sometimes, if you're like me, you don't want to think about healing anymore!

On Friday, I was like, "IF ANYBODY COMES ONE STEP CLOSER WITH A CARROT, I'M GOING TO FREAK OUT."

This is the part where I'm supposed to say something that I've discovered here at the Kushi Institute that revealed the truth to me about how to self-care and not go bananas.

What I'm actually going to tell you is that I discovered something in Nashville that I no longer do that... come to think of it, would be really freaking helpful right about now.

Diet is only 20% of the macrobiotic lifestyle. If you're not working on your mind, if you're not exercising, if you're not trying to understand your place in the divine... you're a table with one leg. What I'm NOT saying is, "Hey, I hear you're really beat from cooking five hours a day. Take a yoga class and meditate."

That would be cruel.

Last year, when I got too tired of taking care of myself, when the weight of all this worry and food and medical bills became too heavy, I did something I enjoyed. I went down to Whole Food and I bought some scrubs, some soaps, and some herbs, and I... washed. I put on the Yanni, drew the curtains, and hung out. I figured, "Since I'm going to be going to bed at 10 PM because I'm 23-going-on-geriatric, I might as well smell good."

The point of a body scrub isn't to re-familiarize yourself with the location of your femur. It's to bring mindfulness back to the body in a calming way. It's to stimulate the skin and increase blood flow. I haven't been doing body scrubs here because it's a little awkward in a public restroom, but it's something I look forward to doing again once I leave KI.

Detox

On another note, detox is really lame. I ate "normal" Becky food this weekend, and got violently ill this morning. I didn't go too crazy. I cooked with olive oil, ate gluten-free bread with egg as an ingredient, and had some popcorn and a chai latte with soy milk. None of this really sounds that bad, but man... I thought I wasn't going to be able to finish my lunch shift. My insides felt like they were burning and I ran to the bathroom and got sick. I know that it's my body's way of telling me I shouldn't eat these foods, but it really stinks to feel like this.

My recurrent staph infection is also back in a new location, so I might have to talk to a counselor here about that. My roommate says it's detox, but I'm really anxious about it, and am monitoring it closely. It kind of makes sense to me, in a weird way. I feel like my whole body is flushing things out right now, so I'm eating really pure the next three days (no more fruit-sweetened cookies or sesame crackers for me!)

Prayers for focus and for this infection would be really great. I am trying to tune out stressful and chaotic energy right now and feeling really overwhelmed, so calming, centering energy would be a blessing.

Thanks all!