Snackrobiotic

The Deceptively Simple Guide to Pickling

2012-01-19T08:25:00.000-08:00

It's been hard to keep this blog here at Kushi. When you're eating, sleeping, and breathing macrobiotics, at the end of the day, the hardest thing is to sit down and consider... "What's missing? It must be MORE MACROBIOTICS!"

One thing I set out to learn was how to pickle. May says I eat so many pickles, I'm going to pickle myself. She's probably right. I'm mummifying myself with every slice of briny daikon. Forever young, I want to be forever young...

When we pickle here, we don't use cucumbers. Here are some of the things we pickle:

broccoli stems ++ daikon radish ++ onion slivers ++ cabbage slices

To pickle, slice into matchsticks or THIN slivers (as thin as you can get them).

If you plan on making umeboshi vinegar pickles, do a salt rub... about 2-3 tsp for a 2-3 quart batch.

Submerge in a mixture of 3 parts water to 1 part fermented pickling mixture. These include:

shoyu ++ tamari ++ umeboshi plum vinegar

NOTE: if using tamari, I'd do maybe 3 parts water to 1/2 part tamari. For instance, 3 cups water, 1/2 cup tamari. It's much, much stronger than shoyu. If you pickles are still too salty, you can certainly do a rinse.

After thinly slicing your vegetables, submerge them completely in the liquid brining mixture. If in a hot climate, pickle 24-48 hours at room temperature. If a cold climate, 3-4 days should be good. It's very important that none of the vegetables are above the water level, as they can mold and rot in an aerobic environment. Translation: Keep them under.

After your time is up, you can store the pickles (preferably IN the brine) in the refrigerator for 7-10 days. Placing the pickles in the cold environment of the fridge slows the pickling process and keeps them from going bad.

Pickling encourages the growth of a kind of bacteria that the American diet is strongly deficient in. We eat pickles here at KI once a day, after dinner. It's the highlight of my culinary day. I hope you enjoy and have good pickling experiences!

Kushi: On Onions

2012-01-07T12:28:00.000-08:00

Onions can be the main vegetable of a dish.

We had some sesame teriyaki onions this week, and it was literally, a giant bowl of onions. It looked like jellyfish and tasted like magic. The other veggies, which were I believe burdock and carrots, made up the minority of the dish. It was 2/3 marinated onions, 1/3 other assorted vegetables. When you boil the onions and cook them over a long period of time, they take on a sweet, mild flavor. The heat associated with the onion that gets locked in with the frying is vastly reduced, and a very pleasing, sweet dish is the result.

To get this flavor, boil your onions until they take on a milky, translucent quality. Then you can mix them with your other blanched, slivered veggies, combine with teriyaki or another sauce, then enjoy!

When you're slicing your onion, one thing I didn't know that's important is to think about the poles of the onion. When you slice an onion vertically, you can see the way it grows:

What we're NOT seeing here are "tree-rings." We're seeing the long growth of the onion. A chef here told me that in order to make for more balanced eating, we slice the onion long-ways to get both the feminine yin energy and the hot, grounding yang energy. If you think about it, even from a flavor perspective it makes sense. The root is more spicy and hot, while the layers nearer to the outside are sweeter and more mild. Each bite should be balanced.

So was it written, so shall it be.

Spa Day with Ginny!

2012-01-07T07:23:00.001-08:00

I'm posting this to let you guys know about Ginny's spa package. If I were in Tennessee right now, I'd TOTALLY go for it. I did this program in December and it was a total lifesaver! I couldn't believe how well I slept afterward!

Sneaking Peanut Butter at Kushi

2012-01-04T15:02:00.001-08:00

The eagle has landed! I've officially begun my kitchen residency here at KI, and it's been so much new information and food that I'm only just now catching up! I've inundated my family and friends with information about how I've been settling in and my duties in the kitchen, so I'm going to just try to post the practical stuff here.

Like sneaking peanut butter.

The word around these parts is "detox." Nearly everybody I've met (myself included) is unloading toxins and bad mojo, or is in a clean body/mind state and ate some chocolate over Christmas that made them vomit or lose sleep.

I hadn't thought about detox in a long time.

When I first detoxed, it was Spring of 2010, and the first thing I noticed was that I smelled awful. I showered two or three times a day. All of the sudden I, who had never before had problems smelling fresh as a rose, began to emit this really bizarre smell. It drove me nuts. I sweated profusely and felt like a pariah. This period lasted about two weeks, and I was very relieved when it was done.

The second major detox happened in late spring. After moving out of my parents' house and into a macrobiotic house, I ate totally clean macro food for the first time. I sat down one night for dinner, and I cried. I cried for about two hours, and I went through every possible feeling you could go through. Afterwards, I felt calm, serene, and in control of my body in a way I had never felt before. It was amazing to fully inhabit myself. This experience is very common for macrobiotic detox.

I am curious what detox here will feel like. It will probably happen a little later for me, because I rolled in here with a big jar of peanut butter that sat calmly in my dresser for four days until it got cracked open today and I indulged in several tablespoons. It was delicious, but now I feel like goop.

I don't have high hopes for the next few posts, because I feel muddled and am acclimating not only to a new setting, but radically different and cleansing foods and treatments. I'm quite tired, and I sleep a lot. Which I'm going to do now. See you soon!

Bandana Drama

2011-12-27T20:12:00.000-08:00

Part of my new uniform for the kitchen is a bandana. I'm pretty psyched about it, because y'all know me and accessories. In my head, I was gonna look like the super-tough chefs at Veggie Planet who wear bandanas and have leather jackets with shrapnel all up in them that weigh like, twenty pounds. I have tried on these jackets before. They're like exoskeletons.

I tried out several styles. As it turns out, I can't wear a bandana without looking like:

A New Kid on the Block
American Al Quaeda
Lucille Ball

I'm not sure which of these is worse.

It turns out, some people just don't look cool in bandanas.

I have a friend from Dorchester who, every time she wears a bandana, I swear a Spanish guitar starts playing in the background and someone throws a red rose in her general direction. Another friend of mine has this amazing curly hair and has the most perfect bandana feng shui I've ever encountered. You know those friends you have who look really cool, and late at night you sneak into your bathroom and try to do that thing they did with the bandana? And they look like a magazine editorial and you look tired and crazy?

Yeah.

It's like that.

So over the next five months, we'll just have to wait and see if I can figure out a way to wear this that doesn't make me look like a pontiff or a mountie. I mean, I'm totally up to the challenge. Let's not play games. I'm totally going to conquer the bandana. But I might need to wash some of the starch out of this thing first.

The Elucidated Brotherhood of Baristas

2011-12-27T11:01:00.001-08:00

I love the Elucidated Brotherhood of the Service Industry. There is, among brethren in the service of the public, a code.

A bystander may hear the following interaction between a member of the Brotherhood and the barista behind the counter.

"You guys survive the holiday?"

"You in the service too?"

"Yeah, I'm at Downtown Crossing."

"Starbucks?"

"Peets."

"That's real."

This is what you're not hearing. The secret conversation.

"You guys survive the holiday?"

"Did you have a 211 degree drink thrown in your face too? Because I did."

"You in the service too?"

"I see that you, too, know what a gift card paper cut feels like."

"Yeah, I'm at Downtown Crossing."

"Your customers make you taste the drink you just made them because they think 'it tastes funny.' I found an unconscious guy in the bathroom at my location. I'm not sure which is worse."

"Starbucks?"

"Don't smile. If the cameras see us smiling, we'll be subject to a tribunal."

"Peets."

"Now is the time when you make me a free drink or give me a ridiculous discount."

"That's real."

"Of course, brother. Someday we'll meet again, in that big frother in the sky."

I mention this, because I just had this exact same conversation, and got a $3 discount at Starbucks.

Miso 3-Ways

2011-12-27T10:21:00.001-08:00

I've been feeling awesome lately, because I've been dutifully drinking my morning miso. I used to get these "morning colds," when I'd wake up and my nose would be running like crazy, and I'd be a sneezing and sniffling mess! I added morning miso, and that cleared up in two days.

If your miso is in a rut, there are many great ways to break free and get a great, lively morning dish!

Vary your dish in terms of protein, carbs, simmering flavors (celery and onion become bolder the longer they cook), and healing intention, and you'll never get bored. You can click on the image to enlarge it.

Miso 3-Ways

"Minnesota Miso" "Mirepois Miso" "Grounding Miso"

"Minnesota Miso"

Chickpeas
Leeks
Wild Rice

"Mirepois Miso"

Carrots
Celery
Onions
Whole Grain/Gluten-Free Spiral Pasta

"Grounding Miso"

Carrots
Burdock
Daikon
Onions

Holiday Eating

2011-12-26T08:13:00.000-08:00

Most of my posts are written as someone who has already been on the macrobiotic diet for some time, with those pitfalls and successes in mind.

I wanted to write for those of you who may be new to the lifestyle, considering a change for the new year. A member of my family is in this position, attempting to change from a VERY American diet to a diet that facilitates healing and freedom from disease.

If this is you, if your gift to yourself this year will be healing, I can't think of a better gift.

My mom and I were arguing this morning, because we come from two different schools of thought. Her school of thought is, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." My school of thought is, "Well, yeah, but grandma's pot roast!"

Basically, my mom's perspective is that the day you decide you're ready to put down that bacon and step away from the bacon is the day you begin to heal. I totally agree. The first step is crucial. When you're ready to commit to a new lifestyle, the sooner you commit 100%, the sooner you feel better.

That being said, food isn't just about food. If you're in a place where your food choices rule your quality of life, that cookie isn't just a cookie. And the holidays are the hardest time of year, because we eat certain dishes in an almost ceremonial way. It's dad's special turkey that you flew all the way home to eat. It's mom's Christmas cookies, written in her cookbook that you inherited when she passed. The holidays are a tender, emotional time, and food is integral.

It's not impossible to begin a new healing diet at this time of year, merely very very very very very difficult.

To make things even more complicated, in our culture of SUPER yin diseases (diabetes, kidney problems, Crohn's disease, cancer), winter is the time when our bodies are weakest, when our health often collapses. Those "seasonal flus?" What time of year do they happen in?

So here, we have family and friends sharing dishes that make our hearts feel good, while on the other hand, our bodies are bloated and falling apart. What are we to do?

I began my macrobiotic transformation under Ginny's guidance during the Christmas holiday. For me, it was a little easier because I couldn't keep the food down long enough to enjoy it. For many people, if digestion isn't your main symptom, it makes changing your diet at the holidays hard. I was punished at a 1:1 ratio. Eat the bad cookie, throw it up. But some people don't get directly "punished" ten minutes after they eat. It's more subtle. Does that mean that seven days of clean eating later, they wouldn't feel better? No. It just means that it's that much harder for them to do it, because they don't notice the difference right away.

I believe the most effective healing change you make is the one you make right away. That being said, be aware of your emotions.

1. Separate the food from the feeling. If you've had a painful, difficult year, you may associate the warm, comforting foods of the season with safety and nurturing. This makes sense. We're going back to our family and our loved ones, and they care about us and take care of us. You may remember loved ones who are no longer with you, and feel connected to them with the food you used to share.

It feels scary to give up these meals. It feels like we're losing something we'll never get back. But here's the thing. The food remains the same, but you've changed. Your body can't handle that stuffing and turkey like it used to. Letting it go isn't loving your parents or grandparents any less. It's loving yourself enough to know that you have limits, and it's time to establish new, healthier traditions so you can be around for your children and grandchildren. The way the food industry is going, these kids are getting horrible digestive disorders and allergies. It's up to us to create the healthy, healing holiday dishes that they'll remember for the rest of their lives. To create dishes they'll never have to give up.

2. Create new traditions. When I went macro, I cried a lot. I felt like everybody was leaving me behind, and I was left alone in this weird place with this weird food. My body had withered from a size 10 to a size 2, and I had the stretch marks and weird, deflated body of a very sick person. I felt so alone.

Then my friends caught up with me. They saw that I was struggling and isolated, and we started to hang out and make meals that I could eat. I got more adventurous in the kitchen, because I wanted my friends to love the meal I made them. A couple of these dishes gave us all such joy when we ate it, that the feeling stayed with the dish. I went home, channeled that happiness and peace and sense of belonging, and prepared two dishes for Thanksgiving. As I ate, I remembered the taste and how amazing it felt to have friends who cared for me and were willing to meet me on my level.

Ta da! The feelings are back! The ones we just talked about! Only this time, they're not wrecking my health! They're supporting and nurturing it!

3. Imagine who you want to be.

There's a moment in every macrobiotic counseling journey when the counselor asks the patient, "What is the one thing you want the most?"

For some people, it's a life without pain. Ginny has said in her book, she wanted to be alive and healthy to teach her children to ride a bike and play. I wanted to take journeys and live new places and work and study. I couldn't do any of those things throwing up every day. Honestly, even before that, when my health was collapsing, it was hard to do those things. I went to Scotland and had to leave a month early because my health was so bad. I wanted the strength to see the world.

You can't reach a destination if you don't know where you're going. Who do you want to be? What do you want to do?

This post is dedicated with love and appreciation to May, Allison, Eddie, Natalie, Claire, and friends everywhere who looked up "gluten" and "macrobiotic" on wikipedia, who took the time to call me and ask what a kuzu was or where one might obtain umeboshi vinegar. I could never have done this without you.

Christmas Sushi!

2011-12-25T11:19:00.001-08:00

Christmas Sushi!

Roll 1: Sauerkraut, Avocado, Brown Rice, Garbanzo Beans, Flat-Leaf Parsley

Roll 2: Teriyaki Shiitake Mushrooms (see below for sauce), Brown Rice, Green Onions, Black Sesame Seeds

Sushi Tips from The Land of the Rising Sun and Hello Kitty:

--If your nori is dry, hold it 6-8 inches above a burner on low heat until the edges begin to wilt. It rolls much easier!

--To get that real "Japanese Restaurant" flavor, AND to get those irritating grains of rice off your hands, use brown rice vinegar on your hands!

--A sushi mat is crucial. It's really tough to make the rolls without them.

Macrobiotic Teriyaki Sauce

3 tbsp. gluten-free Tamari

3 tbsp. brown rice syrup

1 tsp. kuzu dissolved in cold water

4-5 tbsp. mirin

Whisk your ingredients, and pour the combined mixture over whatever you're teriyaki-ing. It's pretty essential to fry whatever you're teriyaki-ing in toasted sesame oil, not just sesame oil (and definitely not olive oil).

Happy Sushi-ing!

Merry Christmas!!

2011-12-25T10:23:00.000-08:00

Ho ho ho! My celiac decided to flare on Christmas Eve (I guess I was bad this year!), so I'm steering clear of the yin, and indulging in other ways! I am totally in love with the stylist, Mrs. Lilien, so in an homage to her, I present to you, my Christmas indulgences!

By reading my blog and talking with me, you guys have given me an amazing gift in 2011. I can't wait to be back with bigger and better things in 2012!

Have a wonderful and safe Christmas holiday!

Healing Teas!

2011-12-23T22:48:00.000-08:00

When I began the macrobiotic diet, the thing that was possibly the strangest to me was the notion of "healing tea."*

*When I say "tea," I don't mean camillea sinensis, or black/green tea. I mean an herbal/vegetable infusion in hot water.

During my Residential Program with Ginny, she gave me what seemed like a constant stream of teas. There was umeboshi plum tea for my nausea, a special herbal tea to combat the side effects I was suffering from phenergan, and tea for sleeping. On top of that, there was the sweet vegetable drink (which seems a lot like a macrobiotic tea, being hot and made of veggies), and ume sho kuzu tea.

These teas were totally foreign to me. This isn't just Lipton we're talking about! Many of these teas take half an hour or more to make, and involve both fresh and foreign ingredients. One of my favorite teas that she gave me when I had a sinus infection was lotus root tea to clear out my lungs. It has a wonderful sweet, almost floral taste to it.

My family has weak kidney issues, and December-February are particularly challenging months for us. Three members of my family have suffered serious kidney ailments in the deep winter (myself included), and having already suffered the pain and discomfort once already, I wasn't eager to do it again!

Ginny has me drinking Aduki Bean Tea, which has been amazing in its efficacy. I can already feel the weakness in my kidneys strengthening. The puffiness under my eyes, an indication of kidney weakness, has already begun to shrink. I know that when the skin around my eyes clears from the breakout I have, my system will be in great shape. I use my skin like a barometer... when I have a breakout, it means that there's an imbalance internally. When it clears, I will feel confident that I'm in a place of good health.

The only side effect I'm having from the tea is some nausea and stomach weakness on the days I drink the tea. The Great Book of Macro said that some thinness or weakness of constitution can be expected with a strong tea like this, and to add a few drops of tamari if it bothers me, so I'm going to do this tomorrow. My stomach is none too happy at the moment.

I've also decided to drink this tea in the morning. I had it before bed last night and it was a disaster. But the benefits to my kidneys are so valuable, I've decided that a little discomfort is worthwhile. In the mean time, I'm eating the leftover beans from the tea with some plain daikon, and pushing the deep greens!

One last note, I am SO EXCITED about what my cousin and I have planned for Christmas. We're doing a macro Christmas meal of kale and bean soup, and sushi rolls. I'm remaking my old stand-by, beef negimaki, macro style. Beef negimaki is teriyaki beef with bright scallions. I'm doing a teriyaki shiitake mushroom maki with raw scallions, and I'm SO EXCITED! Pictures will, of course, be forthcoming :)

Taking the Sin Out of Holiday Sweets

2011-12-23T11:46:00.000-08:00

Merrrrryyy Christmas!

Gearing up for the holidays down in Nashville! After a positively sinful batch of gluten-free vegan iced sugar cookies that I sadly failed to document (I ate them too fast), I took a few days off from the indulgences of the season. I returned in full swing today, when I made lumps of coal. I didn't invent the recipe, and it's GENIUS, so I can't print it, unfortunately, but I'm sure you guys can come up with something like it.

So before we eat all this truly snackro junk, we need to take a dose of Vitamin Real.

Just because there's no sugar/gluten/dairy/eggs in something, that doesn't make it healthy. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but many people I served at Tealuxe seemed to think otherwise, and I want to keep it real with y'all. There are three kinds of foods that we need to be mindful of, especially during the weaker months of winter:

Health-Supportive, Neutral, and Detrimental Foods.

Health-Supportive foods are foods our body draws nutrition and strength from. Things like adzuki beans, deep leafy greens, and whole grains. These are foods that have centering energy that make us feel calm and well-supported.

Detrimental foods are foods that weaken our body and pull us too strongly in a direction. There are some foods that are obviously more weakening than others (Cheetos Xtra Hots, Red Bull, etc. are worse than organic, vegan, fruit-sweetened waffles), but it's important to be realistic with what our bodies can handle. For a person with an extremely yin affliction, like a severe candida overgrowth (yeast infection), that fruit-sweetened waffle can cause just as much pain and discomfort as the Cheetos cause a healthy person.

Neutral foods are "fillers," foods that aren't really bad for us, but can keep us from eating the good foods we need. I do this a lot. My big one is rice cakes with hummus. Bad for you? No! But if it replaces brown rice? Yes!

OK! So the dose of Vitamin Real has been swallowed.

On to the sweets!

MAKING DELICIOUS PARTY TREATS THAT DON'T SINK YOUR PROVERBIAL BATTLESHIP.

Let's take a recipe from Queen Martha and clean it up a little, the Snackro way.

Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti

Cause don't nobody not like biscotti for Christmas

First, we identify the problems with the original recipe.

Right off the bat, I see gluten. Some of you may not have a problem with it, but I have celiac, and this would sink my battleship. Let's cut it out.
There's some serious butter going down. Let's cut that foolishness before we get some mayhem.
I see a whole lot of sugar. I'm going to hit it and quit it.
Because I'm taking out the wheat and butter, I'm taking out the cornmeal so it's not too dry. Baked goods with corn dry out in a hot minute, and without the moisture that the gluten protein locks in, leaving this corn in would be a bad idea. Just be sure to replace this amount with more of your chosen flour mix.

I'm replacing the wheat flour with a mixture of brown rice and chickpea flour. I'm doing a ratio of 3/4 brown rice to every 1/4 chickpea. I'm doing it because brown rice isn't "sticky" when it bakes, so you need something a little spongier, but chickpea is too sticky and spongy if used alone, so we're mixing.

The butter can either be replaced with Earth Butter, which is a little processed for my taste, or replaced with flax seed or safflower oil.

I'm replacing the sugar with 1/2 c. orange juice and 1/4 c. agave nectar. Agave is SO sweet, it's incredibly important to do it in moderation.

NOTE:: If you replace the sugar with liquids, IT IS DIRE that for every cup of liquids that substitute dry sugar, you combine ALL LIQUIDS OF THE DISH (oils, agave, juice, etc), mix, and remove 1/3 c. for every cup of liquid added. Otherwise, you get soup, not biscotti.

It's also important at this point to add 1 tsp. kuzu root dissolved in cold water so that your mixture sticks together.

Voila! Just keep in mind, with animal products, gluten, and sugar, it's pretty easy to replace 2 of the 3 categories, but the more categories you replace, the farther the texture and taste get from the original recipe. Also, there's a MUCH greater difference between replacing 2 and 3 categories than there is replacing 1 and 2 categories. Meaning, if you replace 1 category, you probably won't tell the difference. Two, you'll be able to tell the difference, but it's still pretty good. Three? It'll be a whole different dish, and it will pretty much always taste like "health food."

Preparing for My Study, Teeth

2011-12-14T10:47:00.000-08:00

Six years ago to the week, I had my wisdom teeth removed. Because I have a form of hemophilia, this had to be done in the hospital, so I was scared out of my mind. A sweet friend of mine who is a cancer survivor graciously agreed to walk my chicken butt down to the dental surgery wing. At this opportunity, she could have said things like,

"Wow! Your wisdom teeth, huh? That sounds SCARY." Or, possibly:

"You think this is bad? You know what they call 'dental surgery' in Maury County? A string and a door knob!"

But she didn't, she was kind and patient, and she validated all of my fears about my first real surgery. People on my dad's side of the family have a pretty big resilience to anesthetics and tranquilizers, so on an IV sedation, I woke up about half the way through.

"AAHG AAHFRAAG." Said I.

"Little darlin', you just sit tight. These puppies are in there real good." Said the nurse.

"FRAGG ARR FRATHAMA." I countered.

"John, give her another hit of the sedative." Said the nurse.

"She's had all she can take," Said the nurse anesthetist.

"GRAHGRAaaghhhhh," I retorted.

When they woke me up and my parents came into the room, I requested a piece of paper and a pencil. I was trying to write "I was awake the whole time." What I ended up writing was a squiggle.

The next day, I was starving, but my teeth hurt too much to eat anything stronger than broth. My little brother decided to be a jerk and eat a giant filet mignon right in front of me.

"Hey Beckyyyyy.... You HUNGRY???"

He waved the steak in front of me. Blazed on painkillers, I took a swat at him. He grinned and leapt away, deftly tearing the steak from my grasp. He sauntered into the kitchen, busted out a bottle of steak sauce, and sat down to eat.

I can only blame what happened next on the narcotics.

I staggered into the kitchen, grabbed the dripping steak from his plate with my bare hands, and walked away with it.

For once in his life, my little brother was totally speechless.

I dumped the steak sauce in the blender, dropped in the steak, and hit "LIQUIFY."

This is the result:

I share this story because last night, my little brother had five of his teeth pulled for cavities.

I will see him on Friday, at which point I look forward to making him a Steak n' Shake.

Putting the "Dead" in Deadline

2011-12-12T19:03:00.001-08:00

We're on page 22. We've been on the road for two weeks. Jebediah got the snake in him, died just past Chimney Rock. Traded with the locals for a wagon axle and some popcorn.

Went hunting. Shot a buffalo. Caulked the wagon and floated it.

I am so tired of writing and researching. Don't wanna. Not gonna.

Okay, probably gonna.

I will keep this post short, because I have another four pages to write before I'm allowed to get in my jammies and go to sleep. Until then, I soldier on.

Woe are these deadlines.

It's Monday When the Rice Is On Fire

2011-12-12T09:32:00.001-08:00

Hello, Monday.

We meet again. I see that somehow you caught my pot of boiling water on fire. I didn't know that was possible. It feels counter-intuitive to everything I learned in Chemistry class. Then again, I didn't do very well in Chemistry, so perhaps I merely glossed over the chapter on "Burning Water."

But I don't think I did.

Monday, I see that you and Sunday Night were in cahoots. Last night, I almost vomited up my lunch because a woefully misinformed cupcake vendor told me that my cupcake was gluten-free. It wasn't, Monday. Not at all.

After my water caught on fire, which I still don't believe, I added my rice. Five minutes later, against all odds, my rice started burning. It was my last cup of rice, Monday. But I think you knew that.

I wanted to make the perfect macrobiotic lunch to make up for my sinning on Sunday. I felt bad about that cupcake. It was wicked and wrong. But now that my last rice is gone, I'll probably have to make bean burritos with Chinese bok choi, and do you have any idea how gross that sounds? They're not even from the same continent.

So here's the deal, Monday. I'm going to make my bok choi. I'm going to do something about the fact that the only other things in the pantry right now are capers and carrots, and I'm going to throw everything in a pot and call it soup.

And next Monday, when I'm at home, I'm going to have my mom cook for me. And you won't be able to stop me.

Becky

Kale Chips, Perfected.

2011-12-08T12:11:00.000-08:00

I have discovered the way to make the most perfect kale chips. They are more perfect than my previous kale chips, not to mention a good deal greener.

The correct way to eat these Kale Chips is laying in bed, wearing huge jammies, watching "Modern Family."'

TO CREATE A MORE PERFECT KALE CHIP

THAT IS CONSIDERABLY LESS TIME-CONSUMING THAN IT USED TO BE

AND HAS PLEASING GREEN COLOR.

1. Preheat oven to 425.

2. Take a bundle (or three, if you're me and you want to pickle yourself) of kale and rinse it in the sink. The NEW TRICK I've learned is to make the chips As Big As Possible. I rip off the bottom part of the stems with few leaves, but I leave the heads of the smaller leaves intact, and I rip the bigger ones in half just one time.

3. Take these leaves and place them in a salad spinner. Spin them with gusto.

4. Mix 3 tbsp. olive oil with 3 tbsp. white wine vinegar and a pinch of sea salt. My biggest mistake is always over-salting the chips. It's better to under-salt than over salt, believe me.

5. Place them in the oven and bake ten minutes until the smallest leaves look flat and dark green/brown. They might be a little crispy, but having crunchy, brown small leaves means that the big leaves are about perfect.

Here's how I look at it. We're in the Lord of the Rings. We're in Middle Earth. The kale chips are a pack of orcs crossing Rohan, land of the horse lords.

There are a few orcs that are stragglers, they are runty and small, and they've fallen behind the rest of the pack. Then there are the big, strong, scary Uruk-hai created by Sauroman who like to scream and apply face paint. If the small orcs get eaten, it means that the pack is stronger and can run faster. It also means that the Uruk-hai make up the majority of the pack.

Sounds delicious.

The Countdown Begins! And How Not to Make Azuki Beans

2011-12-07T13:10:00.000-08:00

Got my Greens, my Grains, my Beans, and my ~~Brains~~ baked salmon.

In three short weeks, I'll begin my macrobiotic residency. It's SO HARD to believe! My last day at the tea shop is on Saturday, and believe it or not, I'm going to miss my customers a lot.

Some of them.

Not Steve.

I'm trying to clean up my diet a little bit so that when I get there, I don't detox too hard and fast. I want to bring my A-game and be the best volunteer ever! I have a feeling that it will be a lot to learn, both in terms of cooking and also culturally. I have a big personality and even bigger hair, and I know that that's uh... not exactly the macro culture. I love glitter and rhinestones and interior design and Dolly Parton and third-wave feminism, so it's going to be an interesting ride.

I feel like this is a lot like going to Scotland. I lived in Scotland in college for about six months, and it was TOTALLY a curve-ball decision for me... everybody thought I was going to Japan. I thought I was going to Japan. Apparently not, according to Mel Gibson.

I was so nervous to go, and the first night, I cried for about three hours thinking I had made a horrible mistake. It didn't help that the lights didn't work, the internet didn't work, my phone didn't work, and it got dark at 2 PM. When you're sitting alone in a sleeping bag, it's pitch black, and your dorms were erected on the site of the largest communal witch burning in world history, it feels like a message.

It ended up being the most powerful, meaningful big decision I've ever made. It redirected the course of my life. I made some amazing friends, saw places I'll remember forever, and was in the right place at the right time.

I hope this is one of those instances. I hope this is one of those "right place, right time" kind of things. If I could throw out a couple of prayer requests, I would really appreciate it if you guys would pray for me. If you could pray that God preserve my health in the winter months (when I usually get sick), that I have a welcoming heart to everyone I meet at this internship, and that I have open eyes to perceive the blessings God is introducing into my life.

Now for the grub.

(Pictured above)

GREENS, WINTERIZED

Collard Greens

2 tbsp. grated ginger root, squeezed.

1-2 tbsp. gluten-free tamari

1 tbsp. lemon juice

2 tbsp. sesame oil

Fresh mushrooms (these are shiitake), sliced into strips

Fresh onions and garlic cloves to taste, minced

Mix your liquids into a sauce (not the oil). Heat sesame oil at the bottom of a big pot, then toss in your garlic. Saute 1 minute at med-high heat, then add your onions. I like to cook these 3 minutes, so they're nice and toasty and brown.

Add your mushrooms. Swish them around about 5 minutes, until they begin to release their delicious, mushroomy juice. Add greens, then add your sauce. Stir until all the green start to wilt, then cover and cook for five minutes. Don't forget about it. I did. I burned it. Stir periodically. When the greens are dark green, you're done!

HOW NOT TO MAKE AZUKI BEANS

When you soak them overnight, do not forget about them and soak them for two days.

If you do this, rinse and drain them, then cover them and put them in the fridge, and cook them ASAP.

When you cook them, be sure you read the directions and put exactly the right amount of water in. Don't eyeball it and add six cups for one cup of beans. This only ends in sadness.

If you've been soaking them for two days, do not cook them for two hours. They will no longer be categorized as "beans." They may not even be categorized as biological, plant-based material. They become a mineral. Or possibly an element.

Season them with a splash of tamari. Do not season them with anything else. Do not listen to the anime character on the side of the bag who says " 早く！砂糖を加える！”

Do not microwave them for breakfast the next morning because you can't be bothered to use a skillet like a civilized person.

On the Efficacy of Certain Botanicals

2011-12-01T13:23:00.001-08:00

As a tender of tea, I am often asked by the sick (and near dead), what teas will make them feel better.

As a tender of tea in Cambridge, Massachusetts, many of the people I encounter are mean and insane.

This morning, I told a woman on the phone that I wouldn't have her tea ready and waiting for her ten minutes before opening. She paused, then spoke.

"That's just not going to work for me... Becky."

I hate it when people remember my name so that they can try to manipulate me with it later. It's a common technique used by cult members. I took a course on cults in high school, and more to the point, I went to college in a shark tank, so I was prepared to respond:

"It's just going to have to work for you... Thanks!"

Some of these people aren't mean. They're just melting from disease. One of our regular customers came in last week. If we're talking desserts, he's usually a macaroon. Last week, he was old custard. It looked like if you left him on a warm windowsill, he would drip and stain the counter. A cursory examination revealed that he had a medieval plague.

"What..." he panted from the exertion of pushing his chair in, "What can you give me for a cold?" He sneezed and produced a maelstrom of snot.

"Nothing." I crossed myself for fear and took a step back.

"Seriously. I'll take anything."

"Seriously, there is nothing here that will save you. You need penicillin. Possibly experimental treatment."

He left a film of mucous behind him like Jabba the Hutt. I was relieved when he left.

Exhibit B is my favorite kind of customer. The kind that is obviously sick, and it becomes clear within ten seconds that they deserve to be that way.

Today a girl came up to the counter, eyes clouded, sniffling loudly, asking what I'd recommend for a cold. I gave her some ginger and ginseng, and she smiled and said she felt better already. Then she ordered a chocolate croissant with powdered sugar.

Um.

The all-time winner has GOT to be the next lady.

"What kinds of teas do you have for a cold?"

"Well, we have a lot of great herbals! Do you-"

"Just give me something that works."

"Well, I-"

"Look, I really don't care. I just want the best one you have."

"Our medicinal blend has rooibos, lemongrass, ginger, ginseng, and chamomile!"

"I want a large."

"Great! I'll-"

"I want it steeped in hot chocolate."

"Um..."

"..."

"Um... I don't think it'll really. You know what? Never mind. What kind of milk would you like?"

"Whole."

"Whipped cream?"

"Yes."

I don't think I need to say more. If you steep your medicinal tea blend in hot chocolate with whipped cream, there is no herb on this green planet that will save you.

Snacksgiving Is On The Horizon!

2011-11-22T07:34:00.000-08:00

At 6:20 AM, I was reading my wedding magazines on the subway headed home to Nashville when the cabin caught fire. Boston is a city of hardened, jaded individuals for whom ads have been placed on the streets and subway cars, reminding them to be nice. I ran out of the subway car at the next stop, looked behind me, and saw that with the exception of the conductor and a handful of sane individuals (who were all wielding fire extinguishers), the rest of the passengers were calmly reading their papers, engulfed in smoke.

This is because they would rather go up in flames than give their hard-earned seats to some Johnny-Come-Lately who got on at Arlington.

It's good to be home in Nashville. Down here, building catches fire, folks get out.

As you've probably gleaned, I'm here in Nashville ~~shopping~~... ~~finishing my grad school applications~~... cooking delicious Snacksgiving.

Here's the menu for my non-turkey, non-stuffing, non-hospital side of the table:

Scottish Salmon with a Caper "Cream" Sauce

Slow-Cooked Lemony Collard Greens

Buttered Vegan, Gluten-Free Rolls (It's Thanksgiving. There's gotta be rolls)

Cornbread Dressing

Almond Mousse Tarts in a Rolled Oat Crust

Two years ago, I spent Thanksgiving week hooked up to a morphine drip in the hospital. While that certainly has its merits (among them, strolling confidently through the ER in an open-back gown), I plan to spend this week eating health-supportive food, sleeping in a bed that doesn't get lifted up and down by remote control.

When I get back, I'm having a wonderful Cranksgiving in Boston. Cranksgiving is Christmas/Thanksgiving with your friends. On Cranksgiving, we eat leftover Indian food loaded into plastic Solo cups because we don't know what happened to the plates, and complain. Cranksgiving was founded by individuals in the service industry as a means of alleviating holiday stress. Let me tell you, there would be a lot more poisoned Christmas hams and tinsel stranglings if it weren't for this most hallowed of evenings.

Bech's Well-Tempered Frigidaire

2011-11-16T17:17:00.000-08:00

Today my coworker Mike told me that he needed a personal shopper to help him restock his fridge.

Mike's dilemma is a common one. He comes home, opens the fridge, and finds naught but an old jar of mayo and a wilted carrot. So he gets a meal in mind, goes to the grocery store, buys his cream cheese, a bagel, tons of dill, some capers, etc. After the meal, he has all these leftover ingredients, and nothing sensible to make with them! He'll need to go shopping AGAIN if he wants another meal.

Want to grocery shop like a pro? Honor the Four S's:

Scrambles

Soups

Sides

Snacks

With my shopping list, you'll never go without a healthy macro meal, and you'll save TONS of money!

SHOPPINGU-JITSU

The Way of Shopping

Our goal is to get our vegetables to do as many different dances as possible before they go bad. We also want a bunch of basic grains and seasonings that won't go bad and can be purchased in bulk and forgotten about. This will eat up the bulk of your spending as you can't really get these at Costco or Kroger.

PRE-BUY:

Brown Rice ($3)

Quinoa ($6)

Millet ($3)

Adzuki Beans ($3)

Other Beans That I Buy Because They Look Healthy ($3)

Umeboshi Plum Vinegar ($4)

Brown Rice Vinegar ($4)

Mirin ($9)

Shoyu/Tamari ($5)

Olive Oil ($5)

Sesame Oil ($7)

Sea Salt ($3)

Miso ($10)

Other Healthy Asian Sauces Like Fermented Bean Curd Chunk ($5)

TOTAL: Between $45-$70, depending on how comprehensive you want to be. The good thing is, these are long-term goods that you don't need to repurchase very often at all.

Here is your shopping list. Look at how 90% of these ingredients are used for the other 3 S's. The special ingredient section is what you can buy "day-of." They're things ONLY used in this section.

SCRAMBLE

Alias: Tofu Scramble, Fried Rice, Tacos, Pizza, Omelette (If you're eating wide)

The "Scramble" can take any of the aforementioned forms. It's basically a bunch of vegetables added in a sensible combination, cooked with a little oil in a skillet, and seasoned accordingly. It can take as little as ten minutes (tofu scramble, tacos, omelette), or as long as two-three hours (good quality "pizza" with an organic, whole-grain crust and some garden-fresh veggies. No cheese, of course.)

Known Associates:

Garlic

Onion

Carrots

Celery

Napa Cabbage

Bok Choi

Broccoli

Asian Water Spinach

Kale

Watercress

Special Ingredients:

Brown Rice Taco Shell

Gluten-Free Organic Pizza Kit

Eggs? (Substitute Tofu or Tempeh for vegan)

Soba/Mung Bean Noodles (Saifun)

SOUPS

Alias: Kimchee Soup, Nabeyaki Udon, Winter Veggie Soup, Adzuki Bean Soup, Miso Soup

I was scared of making soup for so long. But I've been living off of a "mother soup" for about three weeks now (a soup that just keeps hanging around because I keep adding more water and veggies... kind of like a sourdough "mother loaf.").

Known Associates:

Onions

Celery

Carrots

Bok Choi

Napa Cabbage

Bean Sprouts

Shiitake Mushrooms

Burdock Root

Daikon Radish

Special Ingredients:

Maifun/Saifun

Kimchee

Miso

Adzuki Beans

Lentils

SIDE DISHES

You can really have fun here. My advice? Look to the veggie that you have the most of, and really let it sparkle. Play up the natural sweetness of carrot by making a tamari and brown rice syrup teriyaki sauce! Use dark dandelion greens with bright watercress for a great steamed green dish!

Known Associates:

Whatever's In Your Fridge

SNACKS

"Macro Snacks" don't really exist. Most of them taste like the petting zoo pellets you buy for 25¢ at the zoo. The best macro snacks that I've found are either pickles or leftovers. That being said, this is where you can be spontaneous at the grocery store. As long as you stock your fridge (and your stomach) with the balanced, nutritious vegetables and grains mentioned above, you can get some fun little snacks here, like seaweed snacks or toasted seeds. My drug of choice is rice cakes with almond butter. Om nom nom.

There you have it! Bech's Well-Tempered Frigidaire!

Please Don't Feed the Andrewmals.

2011-11-13T14:34:00.001-08:00

So I have a pretty rad little brother. He is a man of few words who lives on buckets of fried chicken and devotes large quantities of time to the study of the way of the ninja. Andrew and I share a mutual appreciation of the N64 video game consol, and we both love to cook.

Andrew cooks bacon-wrapped beef with a wine reduction and a shaved parmesan crust.
I cook steamed collard greens with an umeboshi-lemon dressing.
Andrew cooks boxed Funfetti cakes.
I cook gluten-free vegan corn muffins.

We've been trying to talk him into a vegan diet, but Andrew's really against it. He exercises for 2-3 hours a day, lifts weights, runs with rocks, and grinds trees into sawdust with his bare hands. I get that.

My argument is that if he's going to keep eating meat, wheat, dairy, and sugar, these things should at least come from real, whole foods. It's one thing to eat a cake your grandmother baked from scratch. It's another thing to eat a bag of Skittles that contains chemicals used in embalming the dead.

I've planned a menu that uses real, whole foods. This is skirting the definition of macro, as Andrew is quite resistant to the diet. Those of you who are my regular readers will see how I've woven macro/vegan recipes into a menu that LOOKS decidedly "un-macro."

Appetizer

Spring Rolls a Sweet Homemade Hoisin Sauce

Main Course

Kimchee (Korean pickled cabbage) Soup

NOTE: Many jars of Kimchee have SHRIMP in them. If you have a shellfish allergy, be aware! It's worth scouring the health food store to find an organic, whole-foods kimchee. The stuff you get at Asian grocery stores is, for the large part, not macro. See my later post.

Side Dishes

Korean Beansprouts

Napa Cabbage with Fermented Tofu Sauce

Andrew doesn't like dessert and I'm on a real Honeycrisp apple/pomegranate kick, so that takes care of that. I'll post the cabbage recipe tomorrow.

The reason I'm posting this menu is that I'm sure we all have friends, especially teenagers and young adults, who are REALLY resistant to the macrobiotic lifestyle. But many of these people love Chinese, Japanese, and Korean food, which is just a few small simplifications away from a delicious macro meal!

If the person you are cooking with is not macro, and the thought of a vegan meal sends shivers down their spine, one could add thinly shaved pork to the Kimchee soup (recipe to follow), and the napa cabbage dish I'll provide above is typically done with tomatoes. If you're trying to stay within a pretty clean macro diet, you will, of course, want to leave these ingredients out.

The Holidays and Cooking with Intention!

2011-11-05T10:28:00.000-07:00

It's crazy to think that with Halloween behind us, the holiday season has begun! I don't know about y'all, but my mind is racing coming up with ideas for holiday meals that will support my health during the season of cookies and turkey!

Side note, Halloween was a blast. I avoided most of the temptations of the season (except for these ridiculously good Curtis Street gluten-free dairy-free pumpkin muffins my coffee shop carries... ate about ten of those). Here's a picture of me and May at the Halloween party we... WON THE COSTUME CONTEST AT! I mean... we're macro-bots. Consider that pun. I just came up with it. It's pretty good.

For many macro people, this is the season when the MOST people think that we're limited in our diet. It's glaringly obvious when we pass on the turkey, stuffing, and pies that we are living with a "restricted diet."

But to me, this couldn't be farther from the truth. This is the season in which we're reminded of blessings, and my heart is so joyful going into it aware of how far I've come!

The thing about illness, especially deep, digestive or organ illness is that it rarely exists in a bubble. I mean, if you're having problems that are bad enough that you're in the hospital for Crohn's, celiac, hemophilia, etc., chances are, there are other members of your immediate or extended family who are having health problems as well. I have a cousin, an amazing girl who really lives life to the fullest, who suffers almost identical health issues as I do. Last Thanksgiving, she and several other members of my family ate the macrobiotic menu I prepared with me!

I don't know about y'all, but I know I've been so lost lately in the anxiety of preparing for graduate school, budgeting for six months of unemployment, and getting ready for the holiday season, that I've been all anxiety and have forgotten to center myself.

The other day, I was preparing to meet with some professors from school who were going to evaluate my work and (hopefully) write me letters of recommendation, and I was so anxious that I cried. This happens a lot lately. Lots of things make me cry. Country music makes me cry. Ironic bus rides make me cry. Basements make me cry... I wonder if it's Freudian. Everything I learned last year about taking care myself flew out the window, and I had totally forgotten that God's grace is subtle and constant. Looking back, I hear Mark 4:40, in which Christ stands among His disciples and says, "And still you do not believe?"

Many people in my life are quite ill this year. When I come home, I know that at least three of the people who I'll cook for among my family and friends are contending with serious, life-threatening illnesses. I don't have the knowledge or ability to cook a macro meal that will heal them the way a counselor will, but I know that I can cook something beautiful and nutritious, so I'll put all my intention and care for them into the food.

Where the Heck I Have Been!

2011-10-29T12:44:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I survived the GRE's! That's the monster test I spent most of October studying for. May's taking it too (two weeks, so keep your fingers crossed and send good vibes her way!! She's studying across the table from me right now :) so we crammed studying in every available nook and cranny in our respective schedules. As we drove out to Kushi, we shouted words like "prevaricate" and "peregrinate" across the seat. We quizzed between macro cooking classes.

My life is now devoted to even thirds: coffee shop, grad school preparation, and sleeping. It's been hard to squeeze macrobiotic cooking into the schedule, but I've tried. I'm writing this blog post because all the blood in my body is currently in my stomach making headway on a heavy pumpkin muffin, and I find myself unable to write anything really funny.

I made a truly righteous set of Honey Coconut Cornbread muffins this week that were surprisingly delicious. They were extremely mild in sweetness, and were sweetened entirely by Boston-area raw organic honey.

Here's the recipe on that. I don't have a picture, so here's a picture of the pumpkins we made for Halloween (the originals from the internet). Happy Halloween!

1 cup yellow cornmeal
3/4 cup garbanzo bean flour
½ cup coconut shavings plus more for garnish
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon powdered kuzu root, dissolved in cool water
1 cup soy milk
2 large eggs
1/2 stick vegan margarine, melted
3 to 4 oz. raw organic honey

Preheat oven to 400. Mix liquids, then solids. Mix liquids forever, because the soy milk and honey congeal, and it's a serious pain to get it looking nice. Line 12-16 cups in a muffin pan with aesthetically pleasing cupcake liners. I used pink polka-dot. After filling tins 2/3 full with batter, sprinkle the tops of each muffin with a generous pinch of shaved coconut and cook for 15-20 minutes.

NOTE: These cupcakes were great, but they were kind of small. Going back, I'd probably do 6-10 in a deep pan. Great recipe, and really cheap to make. Coconut shavings cost a little more than sawdust. It's great.

Faking Bacon

2011-10-09T06:35:00.000-07:00

There is never a good reason to have bacon. There are terrible reasons to have bacon, and then there are great reasons.

Terrible reasons:

Being hungry
Free continental breakfast
Eating a BLT
Hating swine

Great reasons:

Ironic accidents

That’s pretty much the only one I can think of. If you just got hit by a car on your birthday, for which you were given a ski trip to the Alps, I’m not going to be the one to stop you from eating bacon if that’s what makes you happy. I’m just macrobiotic. I’m not unreasonable.

But barring strange and unusual accidents, you should probably steer clear of the sizzly stuff. Look at it this way: Back when the Old Testament was written, they had leprosy, typhoid fever, bubonic plague, massive, carnivorous desert lions, and God banned pork.

That’s unsettling.

If you’re like me, you were raised on bacon. If you’re Southern, it’s in everything. Its ubiquity in home cooking warrants a place on the periodic table of the elements. It’s in your meat dishes, your vegetable dishes, your French fries, your desserts… and it’s usually stored in a reusable run-off jar under your kitchen sink.

When I became macrobiotic, one of the last meals I ate had bacon in it. I threw it up, and it lost some (but not all) of its appeal. Last week I was screamed at by a regular customer at the coffee shop who wrecks my world every Tuesday morning. I very much look forward to addressing her shortcomings in my final week at the shop. I came home and for the first time in several years, truly, deeply needed bacon.

Did I mention I also had six ears of corn hanging around?

So here's how you fake bacon in dishes. Don't go out and buy "facon." For one thing, it's almost never gluten-free. For another, it's usually processed to the point that it's no longer real food. If something has been flattened, mashed, and dyed to resemble the food it's avoiding, for your health's sake, you might want to just eat the original. At least you know where it came from.

I LOVE this fake bacon because:

1. It's from real, whole foods.

2. It's cheaper than fake bacon.

3. It tastes amazing

4. It can be easily crumbled into "bacon bits."

Mmmm...

TEMPEH BACON

1 pack of tempeh, I prefer wild rice.

2-3 tbsp. toasted sesame oil

2-3 tsp. Bragg's Liquid Aminos

Slice tempeh into thin, bacon-esque strips. Heat sesame oil at medium-high in a cast iron skillet. Throw in the strips, and as they sizzle, hit them with a generous squirt of Bragg's. Let it really sizzle. Flip, and allow further sizzling to occur.

The important thing is that when you remove the strips, you allow the tempeh bacon to dry properly. Otherwise it gets soggy and limp. Lay strips on paper towels on a plate so that the oil gets absorbed properly.

Enjoy "bacon" adventures!

Super Soakers and Seaweed

2011-10-01T11:09:00.000-07:00

Ever since visiting Kushi last week, we've really been focused on slow food. I've always dreaded soaking my beans and rices because it feels so labor-intensive. You have to know, at least a day in advance, that you're going to be in the kitchen in twelve hours soaking aduki beans, and as someone who likes to cook exactly what I'm in the mood for when I want it, this has always struck me as a burden.

Big surprise, it wasn't.

In two days, we soaked four different items, and because of it, had AMAZING, fresh tasting dishes that brought so much fun and joy to the kitchen!

The Soaker: Short Grain Brown Rice, Tuesday Night.

The Dish: Rice with hijiki, carrots, and burdock Wednesday Lunch.

The Soaker: White Kidney Beans, Wednesday Morning

The Dish: Moroccan Bean Stew, Wednesday Dinner

The Soaker: Short Grain Brown Rice, Thursday Morning

The Dish: Steamed Collard Greens with Blanched Onions, Poached Salmon.

The Soaker: Hijiki Seaweed, Wednesday Morning

The Dish: Hijiki, Carrot and Burdock Salad, Wednesday Lunch.

The cool thing about soaking seaweeds is that it doesn't take too long, and when you rinse it, it takes a lot of the sodium and salty flavor out of it. It's important to watch your seaweed intake so you don't get too many minerals, but if you vary the kinds of seaweed you consume, you can get some great dishes:

Nori

Uses: Sushi, dry-roasted snacking, crushed as seasoning

Wakame

Uses: Soups, raw salads with seasonings and other fresh ingredients

Kombu

Uses: Soups, dashi stock

Hijiki

Uses: Cooked hot in dishes, mixed with other vegetables

GRE's and Tea

2011-09-28T11:05:00.000-07:00

As many of you may know, on October 21st, 1 PM, I plan on settling my affairs, walking through the front door of an office building in Brighton, and feeding my soul to the Great Devourer, ETS.

I'll be sitting the GRE's, the test that determines whether or not one is intelligent enough to be considered for admission to higher higher education.

Here's a sample problem:

If there are 10 fully-funded openings at Masters University, 5,000 applicants, and the school requires a minimum of a 750 out of a possible 800 on the verbal portion of the GRE, approximately how many tears must an applicant cry before she has enough water to sail her imaginary boat down Anguish River?

I like to think that I'm the most English American I know. Despite being born in a part of the country that took a Scottish accent and cooked it for 300 years at 115˚, I've overcome the geographical disadvantages of my birth to become... positively smashing, as it were. A British man told me I had a caustic wit because I told him that he was besmirching his tea by adding milk, and asked me if we could be friends.

Why do I mention this? Because I decided that in the face of such adversity, I would keep calm, carry on, and do things the way the British do.

Rather than get the entire English department of my chosen university wildly addicted to cheap imported opiates, I thought I'd do the other Really British Thing:

Drink a cup of tea.

Let's Talk About Tea. It's My Job.

What is it, really?

Tea, black, white, green, oolong, pu-erh, and twig, all come from the exact same plant. One species of bush, camellia sinensis, is responsible for it all. The differences in taste comes from the part of the world it's grown in, the altitude (high in the mountains or down near the sea), and the treatment of the leaves after they're picked. White tea is the top bud and first leaf of the tea bush, while twig tea is, as you may guess, the twigs of the bush. But you could have asked Wikipedia all that.

This is Snackrobiotic. What teas do Macro people drink?

Tea has a role to play in the macrobiotic diet. Just keep in mind that when they say "tea," many times, they don't mean camellia sinensis, or Tea tea. Many of the teas your macro counselor will ask you to drink are actually, technically herbal infusions under the alias of "tea."

This is important, because some day you may be talking to a nerd and you'll make him really angry if you say you're a tea drinker and show him a box of "Throat Coat." He'll go off on some diatribe about how he studied under a Chinese tea master in San Francisco, you'll be trapped in a spell of boredom, and you'll really wish I had told you all this.

Twig Tea (Kukicha) *

Roasted Green Tea (Hojicha) *

Barley Tea

Genmaicha *

Umeboshi Plum Tea

Ume-Sho-Kuzu Tea

Yellow Dock, Dong Quai, Burdock Root, etc.

Rooibos Tea

Lemongrass Tea

Ginger Tea

The teas with the star next to them come from the proper tea plant. From a macrobiotic perspective, you shouldn't drink any of those teas on an empty stomach because the acidity of Tea tea is too strong and often results in nausea, abdominal pain, and excessive sweating.

I had a lady come into the tea shop last week who said she was allergic to black tea, but green, oolong, and white were okay. I tried to explain to her that this was incorrect because it's all... um... the same bush, but she told me, "I KNOW I'm allergic. When I drink black tea on an empty stomach, I throw up."

I'll bet she does. Because of the drying process of black tea, it will peel the inside of your stomach and small intestines like a grape if you drink it on an empty or acidic stomach.

Herbal infusions like yellow dock and dong quai can be amazingly effective, but should be ingested in the amounts recommended to you by your macrobiotic counselor. Many of these herbs can be too harsh for the body when ingested too frequently, so follow the instructions of your counselor closely to avoid side effects. For instance, a kuzu root tea can be amazingly effective at treating certain kinds of inflammation when taken 2-3 times a week, but any more than that can cause constipation.

What are some of the health effects of Tea tea?

This is where I'm going to nerd out for a second. Tea is an amazing plant, and some of the health benefits are, for the lack of a better word, really cool.

1. There is no such thing as a weight loss tea.

If you want to lose weight, stop eating sugar and put down that pitcher of whole milk. This is probably the most commonly asked question we get at the tea shop, and while Teavana will tell you something different so that you can spend $50 on their products, at my tea shop, we keep it real.

2. That being said, there are appetite-suppressing teas and teas that make you poop a lot.

The former, genmaicha, is a really warming blend of toasted, popped brown rice mixed with the high-quality Japanese green tea, gyokuro. Don't drink it on an empty stomach, but it's a pretty great way to avoid snacking while feeling satisfied.

The latter, pu-erh, is one of the most delicious, expensive teas on the market. It literally tastes like dirt and smells vaguely of fish. It's black or green tea that has been aged and fermented for months or even years!

It often is sold in a brick, and bricks can go for up to $1500. The best pu-erhs in America can be found in San Francisco's Chinatown, and are often sold to connoisseurs in back rooms. This is no joke. It's an "I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy in Chinatown who has a brick of the good stuff" kind of a deal.

If you drink pu-erh, in about 8-12 hours, you poop. Lots. It's pretty remarkable, actually.

3. Rooibos is a lifesaver for colds.

The second most common question we get about tea is which one to drink when you're feeling ill. I like to start with a rooibos base and create the following:

Rooibos: African red bush tea, naturally caffeine-free and full of Vitamin C.

Cardamom Pods: These things really blast open your sinuses.

Peppermint: Also blasts open your sinuses

Cherry Bark: Smoothes and coats the inside of your throat

Slippery Elm: See above.

Cloves: Natural anesthetic. Numbs the pain.

4. Twig tea is a huge winner, and in our opinion, not enough people drink it.

This tea has a bit of a bad reputation in Japan, where it's associated with the post-WWII poverty of the nation. Because the nation's economy was crippled by the loss of the war, those who couldn't afford green tea turned to drinking the supposedly inferior twigs and discarded leaves of the bush for a darker, nuttier cup at a fraction of the cost of higher-grade national teas like sencha and gyokuro.

It's a shame it's got this reputation, because twig tea has many of the positive health benefits of green tea with far fewer of the negative effects, like caffeine stimulation and high acidity. Far more gentle and alkaline than its green counterpart, twig tea is the darling of the macrobiotic diet.

WOW. That was a ton of text. I hope you guys enjoyed it, and that you'll read when I share some fun and creative ways to cook and bake with tea!

The Flu That Came and Went

2011-09-27T12:39:00.000-07:00

So after a breakneck week of studying, working, and driving out to the Berkshires, my health collapsed on Sunday, and all day yesterday, I felt rotten.

In many ways, my illness was a wonderful teacher because it was a very forceful, immediate reminder of what my body could and couldn't handle. Last year, if I stayed up past 1 AM or mixed the wrong foods, I got horribly nauseated.

Now that my health is so much stronger and I can "cheat" without too much immediate consequence, I get these irritating colds a bit more often. It's hard to force myself to observe strict macrobiotics when I can get away with being vegan/no processed foods so easily. It was a real eye-opener being at Kushi this weekend and realizing how far I have to go to recenter my cooking.

My body served as an excellent teacher again with this cold. We made a few huge pots of macro soups and concentrates, including one with stewed bok choi that was pretty life-changing. I went a little heavy on the mirin, though, and was rewarded with some pretty extreme congestion an hour later.

That being said, my body reacted very well to this return to a simple, slow-cooked diet, and when I woke up this morning, the cold was completely gone. I had a high fever the night before and was MISERABLE, and all of my friends were sick as dogs. So I'm so thankful to have benefited from this healing food!

Rocking Collards

2011-09-25T11:57:00.001-07:00

I don't have a picture of these awesome collard greens I made the other day, so I'm just going to put up a picture of my dog.

I was trying to cobble together a dinner using rice, the fish in the fridge, and some collard greens. I was totally sick of all my collard green recipes that I've made a billion times before, so I got hit with a crazy idea.

Lemon juice.

The result was light and bright, a perfect compliment to the spiced tuna and jasmine rice.

LEMON COLLARD GREENS

-1/2 lemon, juiced

-1 bunch collard greens

-1 small yellow onion, sliced into thin strips

-4 garlic cloves, minced

-pinch coarse sea salt

-(optional) pinch ground black pepper

Slice the onions into thin strips, mince garlic cloves. I am a garlic fanatic and did six cloves, but not everyone shares my obsession. Pan-fry the garlic until it just begins to brown, and then add the onion, cooking 3-4 minutes at medium-high heat. I typically slice my collard greens into 3-4 inch thick strips, and add them just after I finish the onions.

At this point, it's important to be judicious with oil. It's really easy to see the ingredients sticking to the pan and slosh some more oil in here, but I've found that adding 2-3 tbsp. cold water works even better, keeps the flavor light, and keeps it low-cal. If you add the water, let it simmer down a few minutes and then add your lemon juice and spices.

The whole cooking process takes between 15-20 minutes and results in a totally rocking collard dish!

Life Changes and Lattes

2011-09-20T19:15:00.001-07:00

I was reading back on some posts I did a couple months ago before I went home. Turns out there were some big life changes headed my way, and I'm pleased to announce that beginning in January, I'll be taking on a five month macrobiotic apprenticeship!

My friend Natalie was telling me that there's a difference between a "pull" and a "call." A pull towards something means that you feel a nervous urge to do it, whether from guilt, desire, or some sort of need. A call is quieter, and often much more subtle. It can be long term, never "pulling," simply waiting at the periphery of your life for you to decide that it's the right thing to do.

I have felt a call to take on a more serious study of macrobiotic practice that has been growing for some time, and once I stopped fighting the urge to be right in the thick of things here in the city, it became clear that it was the right thing for me to do, and that this is the right time for me to do it.

I plan on setting down some major roots in the next two years (graduate school, a dog, a lease with my name on it and checks that don't have hello kitty on them)... so this feels like the right time for me to do this.

Ok, onto the next. I had two major culinary accomplishments today:

1. Homemade vegan lattes.

2. "Buttermilk" Scallion-Corn muffins.

As you know, I am a purveyor of artisan crafted beverages by day, so on my days off, I find myself utterly bereft of steamed foamy drinks. This morning I went to the yuppie grocery and got two soy lattes. This evening I needed another, so I cleverly heated soy milk to boiling, put on an oven mitt because it was insanely hot, and used the $3 Ikea Milk Frother to make a drink that looked nothing like this:

But it tasted pretty good.

My second victory was a modification of a positively stellar Martha Stewart recipe that blew my mind with its utter goodness. I told May I'd make her dinner because she's been cooking all kinds of insanely good Chinese comfort food lately for my cold-ridden self. The theme? Southern Comfort.

We had vegan chili with kidney beans, organic local onions, and a bunch of other stuff I'm not too sure about. We had patatuh salahd, as it were. And we had these amazing freaking biscuits. I know that I just wrote a tirade about making vegan substitutions and calling it healthy. So hear me say:

This is not healthy.

There we go. I feel heard. Onto the muffins:

Ingredients

1 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup garbanzo bean flour

1/2 cup brown rice flour

2 tablespoons agave nectar/ brown rice syrup
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoon coarse salt
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons rice or soy milk
1 tbsp white or white wine vinegar
4 tablespoons oil
2 large eggs, whisked
1/2 cup chopped scallions
1/2 cup fresh corn, cooked first

Directions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Lightly grease 6 cups of a standard-size muffin pan with vegetable oil. In a large bowl,
combine cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Make a well in the center; stir in buttermilk, oil, egg, and scallions. Fill muffin cups two-thirds full and bake until a toothpick inserted in center of a muffin comes out clean, 10 to 13 minutes.

Courtesy of Martha Stewart. Modifications by Becky to make it dairy free and gluten-free and more delicious. I was privileged in my muffins to have both local scallions and local corn, which totally heightened the experience, because the cornmeal I was using was so generic it was probably GMO'd to glow in the dark so it could be picked at night.

How Not to Be A Healthy Vegan

2011-09-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

So I just picked up the Humane Society's "Guide to Meat-Free Meals" from my local vegan restaurant. I love the HS. They do amazing work for animals and prevent needless cruelty and suffering among the most vulnerable members of our society.

That being said, the guide is totally insane.

Almost ever article in the fourteen page guide mentions the health benefits of a vegetarian/vegan diet. And I quote:

"There is no question that largely vegetarian diets are as healthy as you can get."

"The health benefits are clear. People who eat fewer animal products have lower rates of obesity, dementia..."

"The population with the longest life expectancy isn't the Okinawa Japanese or the Mediterranean Sardinians, but California Adventist vegetarians, who live up to 10 years longer than the average American..."

Ok, so here's what's up. I subcontracted for the Adventist church last year and saw how the vegan diet was woven into the fabric of their faith, and it was pretty amazing. There is an entire Adventist subculture devoted to natural healing with foods that should sound pretty familiar to um... everyone reading this blog.

That being said, don't believe every study you read. To say that the Okinawan people (who consume more or less a macrobiotic diet with occasional fish) aren't quite as ripe in the years as the Adventist vegetarians quite literally means that they, on average, die a whopping 17 months before their California counterparts. I'll bet those centenarian Adventist ladies are shaking their wooden ladles in a victory cry right now.

Why am I bringing this up when I totally believe that a (mostly) vegan diet is the secret to a happy long life?

Because the important word in that sentence isn't vegan. It's diet.

And this is important, because in this guide for vegan newbies, the recipes they provide are nutritional crap. And this is important because anybody who eats this food and thinks that they're reducing their chances of obesity, dementia, hemmorhoids, constipation, sudden death, etc. has another thing coming to them. And that thing is probably a yeast infection.

Exhibit A:

Creamy Macaroni and Cheese Casserole

8 ounces pasta, any shape
3 cups Daiya cheddar style shreds
3 tablespoons margarine
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast (a cheesy-flavored inactive yeast full of vitamins and minerals)
2 cups unsweetened soy or rice milk
½ cup bread crumbs
¼ teaspoon paprika
¼ cup vegan parmesan cheese (optional)

It's vegan, and they managed not to fit a single vegetable in it!

Exhibit B:

Cupcakes

1 ¼ cups flour
¾ cup sugar
½ cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon instant espresso powder (optional)
1 cup nondairy milk
1 teaspoon vinegar
1⁄3 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ cup vegan chocolate chips (optional)
Sweet & Sara Vanilla Marshmallows

Frosting

½ cup soy margarine, melted
2⁄3 cup cocoa powder
1⁄3 cup soy, rice, or almond milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups confectioners’ sugar

Ironically, this recipe is juxtaposed against an article about Alicia Silverstone's guide to losing weight on a vegan diet. Here's a great place to start: Don't eat these cupcakes, for the love of God.

Nearly every recipe has some kind of "meat" replacement. Here's what's true:

1. Soysage will never taste like sausage. Ever. Trying to convince people to give up their sausage for soysage is like trying to get someone to give up their Volkswagon Beetle for a wagon.

2. Great vegan food isn't about replacing meat with "meat." It's about eating amazing fruits, vegetables, beans, and grains that could never be replaced by meat. It's about being creative, exploring new foods, and finding out how your body can heal and grow through diet changes.

There are enough great reasons to go vegan without bringing up fake meat. Fake meat and fake dairy are not great reasons to go vegan. They certainly shouldn't be paraded as healthy. That's why this blog is called "Snackro" instead of just "Macro." There's a difference between snack food and real food, and if you're writing a guide telling people how to get healthy by eating a bunch of processed soy and nutritional yeast, that's bogus...

Don't Make Kitchen Sink Miso

2011-09-12T10:16:00.000-07:00

Hello friends! I have a HUGE LIFE CHANGE I'm dying to share with y'all, but until it gets finalized this week and I sign the dotted line, I remain in limbo and have to sit on this big news.

I've really been lax this summer as the sun and warm weather have supported my health, but we're all going to have to be more mindful as we move into the fall and the ragweed comes out.

Lately, I've been experiencing a lot of congestion.

Thankfully, there's a great macro fix for that. If you're sneezing and dripping and you're not eating morning miso, I've found that the next day my sinuses will clear up after a hearty bowl.

Here are my usual morning add-ins, but I like to switch it up so that I get a variety of veggies:

MISO VEGGIES!

-The holy trinity: Onions, Celery, Carrot. This makes the most tasty bowl, in my opinion
-Napa cabbage/bok choi
-Chickpeas
-Wakame
-Shiitake mushrooms
-Dried daikon / dried burdock

Play around with specific combinations rather than just making "trash can soup." You wouldn't just throw everything in your fridge on a sandwich, so be discerning and try to have directed flavors in your miso. It's much more palatable that way. For instance, I like some oven-roasted leeks and chickpeas for flavor with something that's a little more mild, like daikon, for health.

As tempting as it is, Ginny always reminds me to make my miso mild in the morning so that I'm not craving salt or sugar all day. I use about 1 tsp. South River Miso per pot, 2 if it's especially full.

Enjoy your miso, have fun with it, and don't forget that just because it's healing, doesn't mean it can't have flavor.

Seasonal Transitioning

2011-09-01T13:30:00.001-07:00

Hello snackers! It's Thursday, I have the next three days off, and I'm doing a macro re-focusing weekend!

CLEANSE

I find that both my life and the weather up here in Massachusetts are about to undergo some pretty major changes, and during times of transition, it's crucial to support our health. Also May told me that my eyes looked cloudy and that I had gotten too yin, and she can tell if you're getting sick a month away, so I defer to her :)

The tricky thing about this cleanse is that the grocery stores around here have been pretty thin on groceries lately. I feel like I've eaten so many carrots that I'm going to turn orange. I haven't seen a daikon or burdock worth its salt in weeks. I had a wonderful leek stir-fry a couple days ago, but having cooked so much "snackro" and not enough "macro" lately, I over-salted the heck out of it, and it was more like pickles than vegetables.

NAUGHTY VEGETABLES

The problem is that the veggies that are seasonal at the moment are not macrobiotic veggies. Like, all of them:

-Potatoes

-Tomatoes

-Eggplants

-Bell Peppers

-Corn

-Jalopenos

One macrobiotic website referred to tomatoes as "Cancer Apples." Um. Extreme.

I hate bell peppers, so that's no problem. After reading about deadly nightshade, the near relative of eggplant, I now have no desire to ever eat an eggplant again. If I am tempted, I try to think of it as a Pokemon, and file it under "vegan prohibitions."

But corn? Potatoes? That's just depressing.

Here are the recipes I'm going to try to knock out this week:

+ Carrot, Onion, and Hijiki Salad with Wild Rice Mix and steamed seasonal vegetables

+ Mochi waffles!

+ Mustard, collard, and watercress greens with umeboshi plum dressing

+ Coconut shredded blueberry pie

+ Steamed green stack with light lemon flax dressing

Wish me luck! We'll see how it goes!

MON DIEU OH LA LA, C'EST RATATOULLIE!

2011-08-21T11:08:00.000-07:00

The CSA had an insane number of zucchini and squash, so what was there to do but pop in Disney's Ratatouille and make the dish itself! Typically it has more cheese than a Whole Foods dairy aisle, but May and I were having none of that, so we cut butter and cheese where we could, and replaced the rest of it with soy and rice cheese.

To date, this is my favorite snackrobiotic dish we've ever made. It was probably one of the best things I've ever eaten. It's labor-intensive, but if you really want to rock the minds of your vegan friends, I have to say that this is a truly stunning dish.

* 1/4 cup olive oil
* 6 cloves garlic, minced
* 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon dried parsley
* 2 eggplant, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
* salt to taste
* 2 cups grated soy cheese (try either rice cheese parmesan or soy cheese mozarella)
* 4 zucchini, sliced
* 2 large red onion, sliced into rings
* 4 cups sliced fresh mushrooms
* 4 large tomatoes, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Coat bottom and sides of a 1 1/2 quart casserole dish with 1 tablespoon olive oil.
Heat remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Saute garlic until lightly browned. Mix in parsley and eggplant. Saute until eggplant is soft, about 10 minutes. Season with salt to taste. Follow these same steps for the mushrooms, cooking about 10 minutes until most of the liquid is released and evaporated. Add to the mushrooms one sprig of fresh thyme.

See the steps below for pictures of what happens next!

It took a long time to slice these by hand. I'd recommend using a mandolin where it's available, and doubling or tripling the recipe to make at least two pans of it. If you're going to do the work, might as well have a tray of leftovers, because this thing will be consumed to the last drop.
It's key to saute the mushrooms, eggplant, and then (separately) the onion slices. The former two because they'll make the dish too liquidy when it cooks, and the latter because onions lose their flavor when they are raw and touch acidic tomatoes in the oven. You have to saute them a little while first, so that their flavor comes out and is sealed in.
Coat the bottom of the pan in mushrooms and eggplant like the bottom of a pie crust.
Begin layering all of your ingredient discs, alternating materials (squash, zuc, tomato, onion) all the way up and down the pan. Once a level is complete, cover it in soy/rice cheese, and start building the next level.

Pop it in the oven and cook for 45-60 minutes! I hit it with one last layer of soy cheese and let it really brown...

It was such a perfect night. We sat in the sun room, which is this great turn-of-the century construction off the side of the house that is all windows, popped in the movie "Ratatouille," and enjoyed this incredible dish together. What an amazing experience!

Macrobiotic Theory: Planting on Good Soil

2011-08-21T10:35:00.000-07:00

So we talked in our last post about how nobody really wants to stop eating meat and cheese, but they do it anyways.

Now we're going to talk about getting your mind right. We take things for granted. "I have really bad skin." "I'm just never going to be skinny."

For every person who makes their life better through macrobiotics, there is a shift, like seeing a Magic Eye picture right for the first time. There are two kinds of people reading this blog: devout Christians and dedicated atheists, and I have a feeling that if we had a Snackrobiotic potluck, it would probably end with a surobachi being upturned on somebody's head. But here's my point:

You have to believe that something spooky is going on. You have to believe that something amazing is about to happen to you, and you have to know that it's because of events and changes that are bigger than you can control. It's about grace. I'm not necessarily talking specifically about Biblical grace, but to eat with the seasons, sleep at night and wake up with dawn is to feel a power from which we have previously been divorced.

To experience the gentle healing that accompanies this realignment with nature is to experience something that touches your soul. It's to understand that healing and vitality is right and natural. It's frustration when you see the vegetable you want to eat has been covered with pesticides and genetically modified, but it's from that frustration that you begin to see the desperate need that we have to heal our nation.

It starts small. It starts micro. I decide I want to heal my health, so it's winter and I go to the store to buy winter squash. I'm feeling good, eating my good food, and I'm upset to see that the only squashes they have are covered in pesticides and grown across the world. I want to find food that is local and healing. My need to heal becomes a community issue. It goes macro.

The Gospel of Luke tells us, "And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."

When I decided to heal my stomach, I began making decisions rooted in good soil. As those changes grew, they began to manifest a hundredfold in my life, as my skin cleared, my weight dropped, my cramps got better, I didn't get sick, and my friends and family began to make changes and see good health in their lives too.

So if you're looking to change your health today by changing your diet, know that you're planting seeds in good soil that will begin multiplying and expanding in ways you never expected or intended.

Detox.

2011-08-19T21:02:00.000-07:00

So last year when I was detoxing all the prednisone, pain medication, anti-emetics, and all the other fun drugs they gave me over the last two years, a small bump on my hand developed.

Small turned big over the course of a year, so I went to the dermatologist, who assured me it was definitely a build-up of scar tissue, hit it with a locally injected drug to treat it, and went on her merry way. Apparently, it wasn't, because it got considerably bigger over the year, so I went back last week.

They took a biopsy, which they said would be nothing, and it has hurt considerably all week (not as bad as my last surgery, but it kept me up last night), and now not only has my body been unable to form a clot over it in three days, but it's an open wound. I work in food service. Awwwesome.

This has not been a good week. In fact, it's been spectacularly bad. I would like to go to a small Scandinavian fishing village where we can spend all day drilling holes in the ice and taking pictures of seals and NOT having creepy side-effects of narcotics I had to take last year.

I am really upset right now, and have eaten accordingly, which I'm sure I'll suffer for tomorrow, but right now I'm pretty much in an extremely agitated place and probably have to have a bigger surgery later this week. Will it ever end?

I could really use some prayer right now. I know that God has a greater purpose in this, but I feel so small and powerless when I have these health problems. It's a scary and vulnerable place. I am so freaked out at the prospect of more surgery, more medical bills, and figuring out what this thing actually is.

Step Away From That Pot Roast: Macrobiotic Theory

2011-08-17T08:31:00.000-07:00

My last meal was a prosciutto and gouda grilled sandwich on artisan sourdough dipped into creamy tomato basil soup.

I threw it all up about six hours later, but I wasn't sorry. Yet. I threw up all night, and again the next morning, and sat on the couch holding my stomach and crying until my mom loaded me into the car and drove me out into the country to Ginny's house. To this day, I still get a little green when I smell fresh sprigs of thyme.

When I refuse food at dinner, many people tell me that they could "never give up meat or cheese." There seems to be this illusion that I, as one who eats neither meat, nor dairy, am some kind of "healthy person" who doesn't LIKE meat or cheese. This is incorrect. I love meat and cheese. Probably more than they do. Given my way, I'm a pot roast-slamming, fondue-dipping, powdered sugaring maniac who only eats a vegetable if it's been sauteed in day-old bacon fat.

The difference is that at dinner, I made a choice.

Here is a list of things I took for granted:

I am a person who gets horrible period cramps every month.
I am a person with volatile skin.
I get sick all the time, and have to take steroids for my sinuses.
I am tired and irritated all the time.
I am just not a thin person.

As it turned out, I was choosing these things. Imagine if you knew that if you ate cheese on the first day of your period, you would get horrible, agonizing cramps. You could eat cheese the day before or the day after and it would be no problem, but for that one day, eating cheese would mean cramps.

You'd be crazy to do it, right?

We make that choice every day. Every day that I eat (as I ate this morning) a honey-corn muffin, I am telling myself that in three weeks, life is going to be painful for a day. I earned that. I paid for it. So last month when, after a few days of loose, non-macro eating, I found myself with pretty uncomfortable cramps, I made the choice not to take pain killers.

For one thing, my body is much stronger than it used to be. Now, because I eat so clean, a few days of bad eating will only give me minor cramps for a few hours, as opposed to my pre-macro days of a whole week of agony punctuated by brief periods of advil-induced relief.

The most important reason I mention not taking pain killers is accountability. Not only are pain medications horrible for your liver and kidneys, but I needed to feel the consequences of my eating. This is my body communicating with me, saying "I don't need the food that did this to me."

When we take pain medicine to cover up what our body is telling us, we feel better. For now. But we're delaying a later, much stronger, much angrier response. It's like plugging our ears. You may not get the memo next week, next month, even next year. But eventually, all that symptom-covering will come back, and all the drugs we took to cover it will make this backlash even worse.

So that's the first part. Getting rid of stuff you don't want.

But the best part is when the good stuff gets even better. And that's for tomorrow's post!

Macrobiotic Beginnings: Intro

2011-08-17T06:52:00.000-07:00

This week I've spent a lot of time in hospitals. Unlike past hospital experiences, I've been blessed with healing and am not the patient, but this time, the visitor. Truthfully, I can't say which experience is worse, that of the patient... frightened, expected to trust unfamiliar faces every day, alone, and in pain, or that of the loved one, who must sit at their side helpless, as they are expected to make impossible choices that they have no idea how to make.

It is impossible to sit in a hospital chair watching the ones we love suffer connected to wires in a cold, sterile room and not ask ourselves if there isn't a better way. This week, I visited several terminally ill loved ones in the hospital, and I came to several conclusions. The first is that there is nothing I can do to help them. This is a hard realization to come to. I don't know about you guys, but I know that after seeing the amazing power the macrobiotic diet had to heal my body, I felt like I had an "in," a special knowledge that there is healing possible, even from the most grim prognoses.

While I still believe this is true and have shaken the hand of people who should have died 20 years ago, this week, the lesson for me was that for all of us, there is a time to heal and a time to die. Sometimes the best we can hope for as those who understand the healing properties of food, is to bring some comfort and alleviation of pain to those who are terminally ill.

I'm writing a series on beginning the macrobiotic diet that I hope you, my regular readers, can forward it to friends who are curious about beginning the diet. I hope it will answer some questions and will lead them to seek out a macrobiotic counselor who can help them begin this lifestyle.

For every one of us, there comes a moment when our life could truly, radically change. My life changed last winter, and I've never looked back. I hope that these posts can help someone else get curious about changing their own life.

Update and Happy 100 Posts!

2011-08-07T18:41:00.000-07:00

Happy 100 posts, everybody!

Sorry it's been so dead over here. Things have been really chaotic and I've neglected both cooking and posting about it. I made a truly incredible ratatouille the other week with local organic vegetables that was probably the best thing I've ever eaten. I'm going home next week and making it for my grandmother, so I'm really excited about that.

There's a great chapter in Ginny's book where she writes about her grandmother cooking a meal for her when she was healing. She was worried that because her grandmother wasn't familiar with the macrobiotic diet, that the food might alter her fragile health. The macrobiotic practitioner she spoke to smiled and told her that if it was made with good, fresh, whole ingredients and with a loving, healing intention, the food would be nutritious and healing.

Right now my grandmother is recovering from major surgery, so I look forward to cooking a meal for her with all my best intention! My grandparents are both quite ill right now, so I'll be going home for a week to be with them and support my family. If you guys could pray for our family right now, that would be great. God sometimes speaks in incredibly literal ways, and I know that He reached into my life and spoke to me last week.

I have a particular affinity for the book of Jonah, because it was the first scripture that we studied when I joined my church, and the book and verses from it always seem to pop up in my life when God wants to make sure I get the message. I also really identify with Jonah as a fellow stubborn person who literally has to be forcibly digested before I concede defeat.

To me the most poignant part of Jonah is the break in the text where the entire rhythm of the document shifts, and he sings from below the water.

From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,
and you listened to my cry.
You hurled me into the depths,
into the very heart of the seas,
and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
swept over me.

What an incredible moment. It's so quiet. The silence and the stillness, represented by the break in text are so profound. I can just remember in my life last year being so sick and fighting like crazy to be back up North and fighting against my body and everything that happened in my past as hard as I could, and finally, after one particularly painful hospitalization, I just stopped. When it's time for a change in direction, when you're ready to come up for air and to go some place new, if you humbly submit yourself to change and are willing to accept and trust the unconditional love waiting for you on the other side, it's going from drowning to safety.

I know that this is particularly relevant in my life. I tend to fight and kick and scream my way through everything, and as my friend Allison so aptly put it, "do things the most difficult way a human being can ever contrive to do them." I often confuse defending things that are important to me with being defensive. But it's important to remember that God knows the things I love and the things that are important to me. It's a pretty awesome concept. So I am going to try to put down my fists and accept what God has planned for this unexpected turn in my life.

The Long Awaited Pickles Arrive!

2011-07-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

My brother-in-law Jeff embodies what many hipsters aspire to be. He's a lumberjack. He turns wooden bowls. He can grow a mustache.

Most importantly, Jeff makes his own artisan beers.

I am not as skilled as Jeff. The last tree I lifted from this mortal coil was the rose bush I puked on that withered and died a couple weeks ago. I can't turn wooden bowls. I am literally allergic to beer.

But after reading a stirring biography of Dom Perignon, I figured that if a 17th century Benedictine monk and my brother-in-law could find the time and storage to ferment, why couldn't I? I mean, what's my excuse? Dom Perignon didn't have the internet.

YOU CAN PICKLE, I PROMISE: A RECIPE AND MEMOIR

DAY 1, HOUR 1: ACQUIRE CUCUMBERS

We had about 10 kirby cucumbers from May's CSA membership, as well as two long, soft, anonymous cucumbers that were withering away quietly in the back of the fridge. They would see glory before they died.

Above, the cucumbers have been sliced into spears and COVERED in salt. We rubbed it in. We then covered and refrigerated it. We then refrigerated it for six hours-twelve hours. We probably watched reruns of Doctor Who for the duration of this process.

DAY 1, HOUR 6 OR 12:
Construct your brine. We used this recipe with McCormack brand pickling spice because it was $4.79 a jar, and to use the more delicious recipe, it would have been like $16 and we would have had excess celery seed that would have taken years to use up. The best way to do this is to use a recipe like Martha Stewart's Dill Pickle Chip recipe and purchase the seeds at your local bulk spice distributor.

12 3 to 4 inch long pickling cucumbers
2 cups water
1 3/4 cups white vinegar
1 1/2 cups chopped fresh dill weed
1/2 cup white sugar
8 cloves garlic, chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons coarse salt
1 tablespoon pickling spice
1 1/2 teaspoons dill seed
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste
4 sprigs fresh dill weed

May took the reins from here on out. She heated the water and vinegar and spices until it boiled, and let it cool.
DAY 1, HALF AN HOUR AFTER THAT:
We rinsed the salt off the pickles and tossed them with chopped dill sprigs. May then packed them artfully into recycled jars, where they would nestle 'mongst the brine and spices which have been ladled in subsequently, for the next 3-4 days.

DAY 4. SUNRISE:
It feels like Christmas morning. You run to the fridge, throw open the doors and grab the nearest of seven jars of pickles. It might look a little cloudy. That's okay. From the top down, it looks gorgeous.

Wow. What we're seeing here are cucumbers, dill sprigs, cloves, crushed garlic cloves, and little balls of mustard seed floating around the jar. It really is killer for looks.

I drained out the liquid here so you can see how great it looks. It was time-consuming to wait four days, but we've been enjoying them for nearly a week and a half, and have a billion cucumbers to share with friends.

Looking back, I wouldn't use the McCormack pickling spice. It's so sweet that it's really better suited for corned beef hash. When we pickle next week, we're springing for the dill seed and celery seed to get a more savory, more dill-ish pickle. But that was easy! And it would make a KILLER Christmas present if Christmas was in August!

A Vegan Trapped in New Jersey

2011-07-25T16:46:00.000-07:00

Last week, I went to the Jersey Shore. You may recognize it from its recurring role in television and pop culture. There was fist-bumping. There was high hair. There were people of Caucasian descent who had laid out on the beach so long that their forefathers were roasting in their respective graves.

As soon as I saw my first sorority girl in yoga pants with rhinestone angel wings on each cheek, I knew that if I wanted to find anything resembling a vegetable in New Jersey, I should take a fork to the astro-turf on the mini golf courses.

TAKING MISO THROUGH HOMELAND SECURITY

Many of you are probably familiar with South River Miso. If you aren't, you're missing out on one of the macro diet's great delights. It's incredible, flavorful, and creative miso with beautiful packaging and an amazing presence in food. It's the macro chef's secret weapon. It's also only available in most parts of the country October through April. Thankfully here in New England, we're able to get it directly in grocery stores year-round.

I thought I'd surprise my mom with a tub of the amazing Chickpea Miso, and satisfied that it was neither gel nor liquid nor firearm, I packed it in my shiny gold purse. When you've got a food allergy, flying is a nightmare. You can get trapped in airports for hours with no food, and the only thing you can hope to find is a $7 bowl of naked lettuce with no dressing, an apple, and some incredibly rancid nuts.

I got through the scanner when I saw the all too familiar congregating of security agents, whispering, pointing, and button-pushing. I remembered this from the Great Adzuki Bean Debacle of 2010, but this time I was ready. I had 11 months of retail and service industry rage built up, and I was ready to rumble. They were going to peel that miso from my cold, dead fingers.

Not to get all crazy conspiracy theory on y'all, but really, there's no recourse when it comes to things like "national security." I understand that there are terrorists out there, front line of defense and all that, but let's be real: a lot of this is just posturing to make people think these things are more effective than they are. Case and point: I had to talk to two heads of airport security to get my miso un-confiscated and fished out of the trash, and ten minutes later, a guy got all the way through airport security and boarded a plane with a taser gun.

I arrived in New Jersey and my mom and I headed to the grocery store where we stocked up on tons of macro veggies like bok choi, kale, collard greens, mushrooms, onions, and brown rice. We cooked most of our own food during the week, because the concept of olive oil is truly lost on this proud race. I was informed that my broiled fish at dinner had "nothin' on it 'cept butter."

The entire island served nothin' that didn't have butter. I went to breakfast and had fruit and a sunny side up egg... with butter. A steamed potato... with butter. I think because it was an island and they're constantly slathering their backs with sunscreen, it just feels wrong that food should be some kind of exemption.

After about two days, my stomach and intestines were expressing their discontent. I had all but given up hope, and had just completed my fourth round of mini golf when I saw it, sitting there on the boardwalk.

Pure Tacos.

It was situated between a funnel cake shack and a purveyor of hermit crabs. It was like a mirage. I thought I was hallucinating. The funnel cake shack had a banner that said, I kid you not, "NOW WITH GUMMY BEAR TOPPING." Because when I look at funnel cakes, the thorn in my eye, the gaping hole that gnaws at me, is the painful and pointed absence of gummy bears on top.

I saw it. "GLUTEN FREE." "VEGAN." "ORGANIC." I thought it was some kind of sick joke by the funnel cake man. I looked closer, and it was tucked away in a deep, zen red crevice. It was a burrito shop that had only organic and gluten-free taco ingredients. It was amazing. My mom and I were blathering idiots at the counter, stammering like teenage girls at a Justin Bieber concert about what a huge deal this was and how huge it was to ~~meet~~ eat them.

The food was pretty good. As you can expect, the place was totally deserted, while there were lines out the door at the curly fries joint and the home-fried donut shack. We were freaking out about napa cabbage while some little girl walking by was eating a green sno-cone that looked like nuclear runoff.

I have to say, if you're vegan and looking for a holistic retreat, I probably wouldn't recommend the Jersey Shore. I'd probably recommend Northampton or San Francisco or Santa Fe or even Detroit before I'd send you to the Jersey Shore. It was an awesome weekend with my family, but the food situation was... well, you get the point.

Whoops... I've been eating the wrong vegetables

2011-07-25T16:34:00.001-07:00

Greetings friends.

I write today a humbled woman who has discovered why one of my recurrent infections has returned. I'll be following the diet very closely for the rest of the week to see if I can't knock this thing out before it gets too bad.

I've been eating the wrong vegetables. There's this great macrobiotic tome that we have at home called something like The Natural Guide to the Medicinal Qualities of Vegetables and Fruits and Which Ones Have Bad Juju, or something along those lines. It was pretty easy for me to refer to it in times of question to see how the ingredient I had just purchased landed on the scale of Macro. I've kind of been going on intuition here in Boston, and apparently my intuition has been pretty off, which is most likely why I'm feeling cruddy.

I've been eating a ton of chard and beets because that's what's been in season up here, but apparently, those are incredibly acidic. I had really banked on those nutritionally, because I only have time to cook one hot meal a day, so I've been using what's local and fresh, but apparently I shouldn't have used those. I now have a raging flare-up of one of my favorite past infections, and I know that it's my fault... Urgh.

This week I'm going to cut back on my beloved lattes and cut out the bread and popcorn that are my greatest weaknesses in an attempt to recenter my body. I'd really like to get off sugar again. I feel like it makes me mercurial and tense, and I'd love to kick this infection where it hurts.

Sometimes I feel really frustrated because I tell myself, "But I eat healthier than 80% of Americans at least!" But that's not productive thinking at all. I need to look at all the unhealthy things that are in my diet and remind myself that even one thing with sugar or honey in it per day is one thing too many. My body has gotten pretty puffy and I've put on a little weight in the past few months, so I know that my body is sending me the message that it's time to simplify again.

I'm really going to try to do this, and I'll keep writing on here to be accountable to you guys, but it's really something I struggle with, so your continued reading, support and prayers as I work to achieve good health are incredibly meaningful to me. God has blessed me so many times over by setting this lifestyle as the course for my life, so I am praying for the strength to be more focused and be better so that I can live the purpose He intended me to live!

Hair!

2011-07-23T07:11:00.000-07:00

Hey all! Sorry for the long hiatus. I've been working non-stop up here and undertaking journeys and working on um... THE COOLEST NEW MACRO APPLICATION EVER!!!!

Well, maybe it's not the COOLEST ever, but it's dead useful and should make everybody's life a little bit easier.

Anyways, I've been wanting to do this post for a really long time, so today's the day!

My favorite, FAVORITE health impact from making the switch to a whole foods diet has been...

HAIR!

In the year since I've become macro, I've developed thick, strong, shiny hair. It's AWESOME.

My senior year of college, I was on three full-time prescription medications (with another 3-4 waiting in the wings that I would take about once a month), and my hair looked awful. It was stringy, patchy, and brittle. There was a bald patch on the side of my head at one point. I was pretty self-conscious about it. Granted, this is nothing on a lot of people I've met who have had cancer and have lost their hair, so please keep in mind that this is written from a place of personal insecurity, mindful of the fact that this problem is, in the grand scheme of things, really not the end of the world.

I began to notice last summer that after about six months on the diet, my hair was growing really quickly. The thin areas were beginning to fill in, and the hair was growing much faster than it had before. Ginny had firmly put the kabosh on my pathological dependency for hairspray and leave-in chemical conditioners, so I was putting much gentler products on my hair. Because all the oil from meat and dairy was gone, my hair was much less oily, so I didn't have to wash it as often as I did before.

I also started to play around with natural beauty remedies like avocado oil and cosmetic clays. I don't really do these things as much any more, because here in Boston time is at a premium, but the fact that I don't have to wash my hair every day is awesome. I have this sneaking suspicion that a lot of this is from the sea vegetables and deep leafy greens and all the nutrients they provide.

Anyways, I feel so much more confident than I did before, so I'm really thankful for all this.

LET THE BEET DROP.

2011-07-10T04:47:00.000-07:00

Har har har.

Last night, China and I cooked some of the myriad beets currently residing in the fridge. They came as part of a CSA, and it seems like nobody can cook them fast enough... they just keep coming! May had to use about ten of them in a roast the other night, which I am jealous I didn't photograph, because she used three varieties of beets and the resulting rosemary-sea salt bake was quite lovely.

So I got some oil on the lens of my cell phone camera... occupational hazard of shooting photos while cooking, so some of these look a little blurry.

We removed the beet greens from the beet, because they leach nutrients from the beet and go bad more quickly when they're attached. If cooked separately, they're quite nutritious. I'm cautious with how many beets I eat, because they are high in oxylic acid, which causes kidney stones. As my kidneys look like a zen garden, I'm cautious with my beet consumption.

Beets go in. I put them in a tin-foil airtight pouch and baked them for about 45 minutes.

Martha Stewart claims it's easy to pull beets out of their skins if you only refrigerate them. Things that are not true. She drove China to distraction.

Here's a closeup of the salad. Sorry it's kind of blurry... my camera lens has olive oil in it. Ansel Adams never had to deal with that.

RECIPE:

10-15 fresh beet roots

----dressing----

2 tbsp. grain mustard

1/4 c. white wine vinegar

Squirt agave nectar, to taste

1/4-1/3 c. olive oil

Fresh cracked salt and pepper to taste

----salad----

Mix of fresh summer lettuces. Here we used Bibb and Butter lettuces

Wild Rice Tempeh

Red onions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. After thoroughly washing beet roots, slip them in an airtight aluminum foil pouch and bake at 400 for 45 minutes. When they come out, slip them immediately in the freezer for 10-15 minutes to cool, then pull them out of their skins. This sounds easy. It's not. It's infuriating, and if you quit and decide to eat popcorn for dinner, no judgement.

While the beets are cooking, slice your tempeh into 1/8 inch thick strips, and fry like bacon in a skillet. Try to use minimal oil here. Think of Michio Kushi watching you, clicking his teeth every time you reach for the bottle. I seasoned my tempeh with a sprinkle of sea salt.

Slice your raw red onions. Assemble your dressing. Add your beets, and enjoy your salad!

Done! This is a beautiful salad filled with fresh ingredients from the garden. What a blessing to have so many fresh ingredients and wonderful people to cook for. Thank you guys for sharing your vegetables and your meal time with me!

Food and People! BBQ Con't.

2011-07-09T06:38:00.000-07:00

My friend Ajay took these amazing pictures at the Macro BBQ that I wanted to share. They make me so happy!

In case you were wondering, this is how much pressure you need to get the tofu so flat:

This was truly a household collaboration. My law school roommate provided the Constitutional Law book, my art school roommate provided the Harry Potters, May provided the Biological Psych/Neuroscience books, and Ajay provided the chemistry books. The dorky Robert Jordan book on top is, of course, mine.

The tofu is between the two cookie sheets.

A Macrobiotic Barbecue!

2011-07-05T06:27:00.000-07:00

I hope you guys had a safe and fun Fourth of July! Our house gathered together to make an amazing Macro BBQ that was vegan, gluten-free, and full of 4th classics!

Speaking of America, I'd like to look at Macro Accessibility for just a minute. A dear friend of mine is beginning her journey for health, but like 90% of this country, she doesn't live by a natural food store, and can't just duck into Whole Foods for a tub of miso and some umeboshi plum vinegar. In a country where Good Housekeeping, Better Homes & Gardens, and the Joy of Cooking are our standard sources of recipes, it can be incredibly frustrating to find recipes that won't freak out our family and friends and can be purchased at Kroger's.

The unexpected resource that made all of today's macro cooking possible was MarthaStewart.com. It's amazing how many recipes on there are packed with fresh veggies, gluten-free, and vegan. Martha Stewart Living is available at most grocery stores and book stores. Each issue features a healthy cooking and lifestyles section that contains recipes that have been consistent with the place I'm at in my diet.

May was the firepower that made this meal happen. I had to work on the 4th, so she stayed behind and cooked and did prep for 6-8 hours. I was on standby with my phone at work, so when the Great Potato Crisis of Noon happened, I was on it.

MENU

Click dish for jump to recipe

Cool Cucumber Dill Salad

Tangy Potato Salad with Scallions

Balsamic Marinated Mushrooms

Oven Roasted Corn on the Cob with Cilantro-Lime Rub

Caramelized Onion and Rosemary Cornbread

BBQ Tofu Strips

Cool Cucumber Dill Salad

May in front of the Cucumber Dill and Potato Salads (respectively). Every time in this document that I write "We made" replace that with "She made." She seriously did all the work.

This is a recipe from Martha Stewart that we modified to make vegan. It's gluten-free, and I love it because it doesn't require any heat to cook. This is Martha's picture because in our picture, the food got whited out by the sun unfortunately :(

Ingredients

1/2 cup tofutti vegan sour cream
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (from 1 lemon)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill, plus more for garnish (optional)
Coarse salt and ground pepper
4 to 6 Kirby cucumbers (about 1 pound), halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise

Directions

In a medium bowl, combine sour cream, lemon juice, and dill. Season with salt and pepper, and whisk well to combine.
Add cucumbers, and toss to coat. Garnish with more dill, if desired. Serve, or refrigerate, covered, up to 4 hours.

Tangy Potato Salad with Scallions

This was our FAVORITE dish. Amazing, no substitutions, alkaline (except for the potatoes, which are not strictly macro, but I have a feeling you could do this with some steamed root veggies for a more strict adherence to the code).

Ingredients

Coarse salt and ground pepper
4 pounds Yukon gold or other waxy potatoes, scrubbed, halved, and sliced 1/2 inch thick
1/2 cup white-wine vinegar
4 scallions, thinly sliced
1/2 cup olive oil

Directions

Set a steamer basket in a large pot. Fill with enough salted water to come just below basket. Bring to a boil; place potatoes in basket, and reduce heat to medium. Cover, and steam, gently tossing occasionally, until crisp-tender, 10 to 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, combine vinegar and scallions in a large bowl; season with salt and pepper. When potatoes are cooked, transfer to bowl with vinegar mixture. Toss to combine; let cool, tossing occasionally.

When potato mixture is cool, mix in oil; season potato salad with salt and pepper. (To store, refrigerate, up to 1 day.)

Balsamic Marinated Mushrooms

So I feel like a huge tool using this picture from my cell phone when Martha's version looks like this:

Here's the recipe. This thing takes no time, is great the day of, and is even better the next day.

Ingredients

1/4 cup olive oil
12 ounces white mushrooms, halved (quartered if large)
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon coarse salt
1/4 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
Freshly ground pepper

Directions

Heat oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms, and cook until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Stir in vinegar, salt, and red-pepper flakes, and season with pepper. Cook 1 minute more. Transfer to a bowl, and serve.

Oven Roasted Corn on the Cob with Cilantro-Lime Rub

Here's a picture of the work-in-progress:

And here's the final corn:

Ingredients

4 ears corn
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) Earth Butter vegan margarine, room temperature
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped cilantro
1/2 teaspoon grated zest of lime
1 1/2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lime juice

Directions

MODIFIED BY BECKY: Remove husks and silk from corn. Rub with the below butter combination and wrap in tin foil. Bake in foil for 25 minutes at 425 degrees.
Meanwhile, in a small bowl, stir together butter, cilantro, lime zest and juice, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and a pinch of pepper until blended.

We replaced the butter with Earth Balance vegan margarine and it was awesome. We also couldn't grill the corn and thought that microwaving was crass, so we buttered the ears of corn, wrapped them in tin foil, and baked them at 425 for 25 minutes. The corn was phenomenal.

Caramelized Onions and Rosemary Cornbread

We've done this cornbread before for this blog and it's worked out really well. Just follow this link over to that recipe... Before you put the cornbread in, caramelize your onions for 1/2 an hour to 45 minutes, break some rosemary sprigs on top, sprinkle some fresh-cracked salt, and you're good to go!

BBQ Tofu Strips

This is the one I'm pretty devastated I don't have a picture of. I think my roommate has a pro-level picture of this, but somehow the picture I took of the tower of books got erased and I'm totally sad about it! Here's a glimpse of the process:

There was a stack of about 15 textbooks to press this tofu, including:

Biological Psychology, Neuroscience, Anatomy, Constitutional Law, Harry Potter 4-7, and A Game of Thrones

INGREDIENTS

2 Blocks Extra-firm Tofu

Olive Oil

BBQ Spice Rub

BBQ Sauce

DIRECTIONS

Get started early, because this is time-consuming. Squeeze all the liquid out of the tofu. We did this by putting it on a baking sheet under a cutting board with 15 textbooks on top. After tofu is pressed, slice into 1/4 inch strips, place another cookie sheet on top, and replace cookbooks. I tilted the sheets at an angle so the juice would run off.

We then rubbed the tofu strips with this Memphis-Style Williams-Sonoma BBQ Rub. We baked in the oven for probably 20 minutes, and were thrilled when the strips began to puff and rise and get crunchy and crispy. We used a minimal amount of oil, but it tasted fried. We then covered it in BBQ sauce, and it was delicious!!

LAID LOW: A Stomach Flu Story

2011-07-03T08:47:00.000-07:00

"I haven't been eating enough macro food lately." I thought to myself.

Five hours later, bok choi, some dandelion greens, a handful of toasted pumpkin seeds, some brown rice, and carrot-daikon relish were indecorously deposited on a neighborhood rosebush.

My biggest regret was that I was vomiting macro food. To quote the Dixie Chicks School of Philosophy, "If I fall, you're coming down with me." If I was going to be sick, I wish it had been from really delicious food, like beer and cupcakes. It's no fun being punished for eating health food.

Was it celiac? Was it food poisoning? Was it the flu? I'm not sure. All I know is that I haven't thrown up with violent unpredictability on a street corner since I was in first grade and our teacher left the class Christmas party unchaperoned for fifteen minutes. I went to go visit a friend named Forrest after that (who I believe now has an illustrious career as a venture capitalist), leaned out of my mom's BMW, and threw up all over his driveway. Forrest held himself together. That's probably why he's a successful entrepreneur and I am an impoverished writer. It all comes down to pyloric sphincter control in the end.

I am back on solid foods today, and am hoping that all is well by the Fourth of July so that my Macro Barbecue can go as planned. I'd also like the opportunity to thank May for keeping me strong and on the macro path and encouraging me to try macro remedies instead of reaching for the anti-emetics. I'm SO glad I didn't take the anti-emetics!!!

And I'd like to share the fact that Bok Choi is probably one of the worst foods in the world to throw up. It's disgusting. It'll be about a year before I can feel okay about Bok Choi again.

Four Great Macrobiotic Blogs

2011-07-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

As much as I love my own blog and think I'm pretty freaking fantastic, here are a few blogs that have really blown me away. I love each of these for their own unique reasons:

MACROCHEF:

http://macrochef.wordpress.com/

A visually stunning blog with mind-blowing, professional level recipes and beautiful pictures. It's the great divide between gluten-free cooking and taking it macro. In particular, check out these muffins: Whoa.

THE KIND LIFE

http://www.thekindlife.com/

Alicia Silverstone's FANTASTIC macrobiotic blog. It covers everything from sustainable fashion to the great Yogurt Myth... I have a personal vendetta against yogurt, both for feminist reasons, as well as for macrobiotic reasons.

COOKING MACRO THE ITALIANO WAY

http://macromarinelli.blogspot.com/

If you guys haven't checked out Marisa's blog, you MUST! It's a fantastic primer to macrobiotics, and it's a really clear and straightforward, great presentation of what a healing journey can look like.

CROHNS + TEENAGER + DIET = HEALING?!

http://harley-crohns.blogspot.com/

I always really enjoy reading Harley's blog. She's really young to have experienced so many health challenges, and reading her story is so inspiring! I can't imagine going through middle school and high school being as sick as she is... That period of life is hard enough as it is!! She's so brave and you guys should TOTALLY check out her story!

I hope these blogs provide y'all with some interesting reading material!

Pumpkin Seed Dressing!

2011-07-01T11:54:00.001-07:00

I'm mighty chuffed to present the following recipe to you guys. It's a family favorite, and I recently made it for May, who declared it to be her Favorite Macrobiotic Dish, Ever. There are some great pictures of us eating it that'll be added to this post soon.

This week, I've been on the continued recovery track, but things have been pretty good and I'm blessed with strong health. Last week my recurrent skin problem came back, and the last two times that happened, I had to get surgery and go on antibiotics costing a thousand dollars that I definitely don't have.

This time around, I treated it macrobiotically, and experienced healing in about four days. This is really huge, because the last two times this infection came up, I had to have it surgically removed, and I went from healthy to needing surgery in about four days. It happens really fast.

Here's what I did:

-Burdock Root Tea, Nightly for three nights.

-1/2" Green Clay Compress, applied for 12 hours at a time, three days in a row

-Cut dairy, sugar, and reduced soy and "snackro" foods for a week in favor of the real whole foods I probably should be eating all the time. I'm a big fan of eating gluten-free "fake" foods, like gluten-free pizza with soy cheese, but I know it's just a short-cut, and that these can be damaging to your health as well.

To celebrate at the end of all this, I cooked a huge macro meal with mixed rices, fresh garden greens, pickled bean sprouts, and PUMPKIN SEED DRESSING!!! Here it is!

Pumpkin Seed Dressing and Greens

Watercress and a bitter green (Dandelion greens, collard greens, kale, swiss chard, etc.) steamed

1 1/2 c raw pumpkin seeds, roasted by you at 375 for 10 minutes or so. Keep an eye on these because they burn quickly!

2-3 tsp. ume plum paste

3-4 minced scallions

Water as needed to achieve desired consistency

Pour your roasted pumpkin seeds in a coffee grinder. As these grind, add them to a large bowl and combine plum paste, scallions, and water to bring to a hummus-like consistency. Eat with green veggies or as hummus type dip.

Setbacks

2011-06-17T15:22:00.000-07:00

Hey all. So I really cheated a lot on the diet around my birthday (think clotted cream, a few glasses of wine, tons of sugar, etc.)...

Consequently, my body decided to let me know how it felt about all that by kicking my butt this week. Woke up Monday night at about 2 AM feeling rotten, so I took my prescription anti-emetic in a fit of stupidity.

I hate anti-emetics. It is quite beyond my comprehension WHY I did it. It was 2 AM, and I was freaked out. Anti-emetics are a class of drug prescribed to treat nausea due to radiation, chemotherapy, or surgery. They were given to me (along with eternal refills) by my doctors, who had no idea what was wrong and were pretty sure that removing my gall bladder was a good way to find out. Their side effects caused me to go from having no opinion on medical marijuana to having quite a few opinions on the topic.

I really hate meds. Last time I was given this one through an IV, I had already thrown up all over the nurse (awkward...), so as I told her in my morphine haze, "A little bit of a moot point now, don't you think?" But on the bright side, I finally lived the dream of actually vomiting as a response to a frat boy's body odor later that day on the subway. Every girl should get to do that once. It's like doing dinner and a show in New York City. Iconic.

I've felt pretty crappy all week. I haven't helped it by all the maté and soy milk I've been drinking, nor the popcorn I just consumed waiting for my dinner to arrive. Popcorn... that's a killer. I should have known better. But it was lunch today that really did it. I was so horribly sick after lunch... my bones hurt. I don't really know what that was. It felt like a violent reaction to an avocado, but since I make avocado ice cream a lot, it doesn't seem like that could be it. It was pretty harmless... beans and rice with tomatoes and cilantro and a little corn and some guacamole. I'm not really sure what the deal was, but MAN it was rough. It felt like there was a rodeo going on in my pancreas.

Mysteries... Tonight, I'm sipping miso and doing a strong morning miso with steamed greens for breakfast. Taking a break from the gym (working on my 'finness,' as they say.) and doing some laundry.

Fish n' Chips and Macro Root Veggie Relish

2011-06-13T13:26:00.001-07:00

Here's a fun summer recipe the whole family can enjoy. It's cheap, accessible in terms of ingredients, and a familiar food for those of us of Anglo-Saxon descent. It also would go REALLY well with the cool yogurt sauce of the previous entry. This is truly junk food, so I recommend mixing it with the root veggie relish listed below. If you're doing the relish with the fish, I'd either cut back on or eliminate the oil so that you don't have to do overtime at the gym tomorrow. Throw in my fresh summer steamer greens, a scoop or two of fresh watermelon, and you've got yourself a barbecue!

GLUTEN-FREE "FRIED" LEMON-BREADED COD FILLETS

Via Martha Stewart's Body and Soul:

Serves 4

2 cups Erewhon's Gluten-Free Brown Rice Crispy Cereal (Whole Foods), partially crushed
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest (from 2 lemons)
3/4 teaspoon coarse salt
4 cod fillets (4 ounces each), skinned
3 ounces baby spinach (4 cups)

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine cereal, oil, parsley, zest, and salt.
Set a wire rack on a rimmed baking sheet. Press fish in crumb mixture, turning to coat. Transfer to wire rack. Bake until golden brown and cooked through, 14 to 16 minutes. Divide fish and spinach among 4 plates.

GABRIELLE'S RAW ROOT VEGGIE RELISH

1 c. carrots, grated on a cheese grater through the big holes
1 c. daikon radish, grated
options:
Tiny diced red onions
Diced green apple
Celery

Apple cider vinegar, bragg's liquid aminos, dash avocado/grapeseed/flaxseed oil, organic vegan Italian dressing to taste.

Combine liquids into a sauce and add shredded root veggies. Toss. Can be saved and used over several days, and you can re-shred and add new veggies to the same old sauce if you want more. I'd go verrry easy on the dressing if you want to serve it with anything fried.

Cool Down with Cool Soy Yogurt Sauce

2011-06-13T13:01:00.000-07:00

I swear I have a picture of this sauce somewhere, but with the limited space available on my cell phone camera, I think it may have been replaced with this picture of my dog:

So this is not a post on how to cook Homer. We keep it vegan around here.

I don't love using "fake" vegan products made with soy or corn, because I believe that too much of anything is no good for you, even if it's for the noble purpose of avoiding animal products. When you start doing "soy" this or "soy" that, it slowly creeps into taking a major place in your diet, and with all the Monsanto soy shadiness going around, I don't like to use any soy products that aren't guaranteed non-GMO.

That being said, this sauce is freaking delicious. I'm putting it on here to be used with fritters, fish fingers, or any other fried goodness that needs a cooling sauce. It also makes a great "ranch" substitute if you're looking for a party dip for carrots and celery stalks.

COOL SUMMER HERB SAUCE

1/2 c. Soy Yogurt
1/2 c. Soy Sour Cream
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tbsp. lemon juice
3 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. chopped parsley
2 c. cilantro chopped OR 1 1/2 c. garlic scapes, which might be the most delicious herb never mentioned.

Run all ingredients through the food processor until it looks green and dippable. Raise thy stalk on high and dip thee low unto the sauce, and chew it mightily, for it is good.

Steroids: A History.

2011-06-10T13:16:00.001-07:00

Note: This was a really emotional post for me to write and even reflect on, and I hope that it covers some topics that haven't really been addressed by macro literature.

I recently looked back at a picture of myself three years ago when my celiac symptoms were beginning to appear, and I was taking steroids to manage the constant recurrent infections. I'm so emotional in doing this, and it's hard to pinpoint the reason. In some ways, that period of my life was one of the happiest, as I was traveling and studying under a professor whose research would permanently alter the path of my academic career. I was reading new authors and making incredible new friends. I was also beginning a three year battle that would culminate in two surgeries, countless hospitalizations, and enough prescription pills to stock a reasonably sized pharmacy. I would become intimately familiar with my kidneys, ovaries, and GI tract. In fact, I have a really neat scan of my ovaries that I'm TOTALLY framing and turning into bathroom art as soon as possible.

I guess I just can't believe that was me. I can't believe I was that sick, can't believe I was that disconnected from my body, can't believe all the medication I was on... It's so many things. It's really emotional. I feel I don't even know that girl. I worry a lot about getting back there. I know my propensity for sweets and for yin foods, and now that my diet is a little wider, maintaining moderation is really something I have to struggle over.

Sometimes when I read the macro books, I feel like this doesn't get addressed. I wonder if anybody else feels this incredible sadness looking back. When you know the pain and sickness that are going to rock your future world, you just want to reach back and shake that person by the shoulders and say "WAKE UP AND PUT THE BISCUITS DOWN."

The only thing I can glean from this is asking myself today what I'll be shouting back tomorrow. What am I doing today that I'll regret tomorrow? I think I made some of the best and worst choices of my life that year, but there's no doubt that it was one that would shape the rest of my life.

Spring of 2008 // Spring of 2010

Why Are We Eating This?!

2011-06-10T11:56:00.000-07:00

I am too poor for Xanthan gum. It's $15.99 for a one-pound bag. Since most gluten-free baking recipes call for about one teaspoon of the stuff, this bag will last about a hundred years. What's wrong with that, you ask?

For starters, I don't really know what it is. I know that it's a mysterious white powder from a food engineering plant in Iowa. Xanthan gum was corn, once upon a time. Not only is corn an insidious vegetable that has woven its silky tendrils in everything from dog food to gasoline, it can be very hard to digest if you've got any sort of digestive issue.

The philosopher Wikipedia in his infinite wisdom had this to say on Xanthan gum:

Xanthan gum is a polysaccharide, derived from the bacterial coat of Xanthomonas campestris, used as a food additive and rheology modifier,[2] commonly used as a food thickening agent (in salad dressings, for example) and a stabilizer (in cosmetic products, for example, to prevent ingredients from separating). It is produced by fermentation of glucose, sucrose, or lactose by the Xanthomonas campestris bacterium. After a fermentation period, the polysaccharide is precipitated from a growth medium with isopropyl alcohol, dried, and ground into a fine powder. Later, it is added to a liquid medium to form the gum.[3]

You had me at precipitation from growth medium. Color me hungry.

Nothing makes a plant by-product more appetizing than knowing it's a primary ingredient in my cosmetic products. Sometimes, I like to munch on my facial cleanser if I'm too lazy to call for takeout.

The thing that really gets my goat is that it's ubiquitous in gluten-free, vegan cooking. It's everywhere from About.com to my holy grail, the BabyCakes NYC cookbook. As far as I can tell, there is nothing inherently beneficial to one's health in using Xanthan gum. Is there a better way?

As far as I'm concerned, yes.

It's kuzuko, or powdered kudzu root. Studies have shown that in addition to smothering your house and crushing your abandoned backyard automobiles, this super-plant can actually alleviate symptoms of excessive alcohol consumption, lessen alcohol cravings, strengthen the intestine to soothe diarrhea, and reduce bad "surface heat."

It's also awesome in cupcakes.

I know where it came from... Probably the side of a highway in Arkansas. I make a mean gravy with it. I feel good about serving it to my friends and family. It's a traditional Chinese herb. It's not corn. And maybe if we eat it, it'll stop eating us.

Tomorrow: SECRET RECIPE

2011-05-27T19:23:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I'm trying out a covert, secret recipe for a friend of mine. It's a variation on a dish I like to make, and if it goes well, I'm TOTALLY adding it to the official arsenal of recipes. If it goes well, I shall dance up and down in my house. I'm really bummed because one of my secret ingredients is in Boston with no way to get it here in time, but hopefully the substitutions will work well.

Speaking of arsenals, I'm looking for something cute to store my favorite recipes in. Kate Spade Fanatic that I am, I've been considering this bad boy:

I also really like Anthropologie, and usually they have a couple cute recipe books...

Of course, the Martha Stewart Collection Recipe Box.

Any recipe boxes you guys like?

Don't Tell Michio Kushi!

2011-05-24T09:22:00.001-07:00

There HAS to be a loophole on the diet for the Starbucks Hazelnut Soy No-Whip Hot Chocolate. I'm trying to justify it to myself by saying that life is a balance of yin and yang, and that for everything there is a season. This may be the reason why I can't fit into my favorite Jigsaw dress. I can rationalize everything.

And I'd just like to say that in 20 years, some things never change...

Matcha Cupcakes

2011-05-24T06:53:00.001-07:00

I'm back in beautiful Nashville taking a few days off from the high-stakes game known as Tea-tending. For those of you who may be wondering what such a lovely and gifted individual does for a living, I'm a bartender/sommelier, but for tea. The image above you is a sign I made for a really cool tea commodity known as matcha. Matcha will heretofore be written in green, because the thing you need to know about matcha is that it's a Nickelodeon shade of green.

Matcha is finely powdered Japanese green tea, ideally from a high-quality green like Gyokuro. In the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, it's whisked in a small bowl with 170-180 degree water and unlike "regular" green tea where the tea bag is removed after steeping, the matcha has no filter and is consumed together with the water into which it was blended.

Matcha tastes familiar to many Americans who have enjoyed it in green tea ice cream, and it's pretty incredible blended with powdered sugar and steeped in hot milk as a latte.

We've got an even better way.

Vegan, Gluten-Free Matcha Cupcakes.

BE ADVISED: These are some expensive friggin cupcakes. They are quite costly due to the high quality and cost of matcha powder, as well as their dependence on yuppie groceries like gluten-free flour and almond extract. Are they worth it? Totally. You can reduce your costs considerably by purchasing a bulk green tea and pulverizing it with a seed grinder. I did this when I forgot my matcha powder and needed to make the cupcakes on the fly. It's not quite as good and can be a little... grassy, so be aware.

Source: Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero

EDITS BY BECKY PAXTON

1/2 cup soy yogurt

2/3 cup rice milk

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1/3 cup canola oil

1/2 tsp almond extract

1 1/4 cups gluten-free flour (I recommend making your own almond flour or Arrowhead Mills Baking Mix)

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp. powdered kuzu root, dissolved in a little cool water.

3-4 tsp matcha tea powder

1/4 tsp salt

2/3 cup Agave Nectar. Be SURE to see the liquids step below because stuff needs to get removed before adding the agave!!

Green Tea Glaze (recipe below)

Preheat oven to 350ºF and line cupcake pan with liners.

In a large bowl, whisk together the yogurt, rice milk, vanilla, oil, and almond extract, beating well to blend in yogurt. REMOVE 1/3 CUP OF GENERAL COMBINED LIQUIDS. Then add agave and mix well. Sift in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, matcha powder, and salt.

Fill liners two thirds full and baking 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on racks before topping with glaze

Glaze:

If you're using matcha/powdered sugar combo:

1 c. matcha/powdered sugar mix

4 tbsp. earth balance soy margerine

2-4 tbsp. soy milk

pinch salt

dash vanilla extract

If you want this to be sugar free:

3-4 tbsp. matcha powder

1 c. powdered soy milk

4 tsbp. earth balance soy margerine

agave nectar as needed

pinch salt

dash vanilla extract

Lotus Root Chips

2011-05-22T17:34:00.000-07:00

We're entering my favorite season. The days are getting longer, celebrities are getting thinner, and magazines are getting thicker. It's Blockbuster Season.

Between the Twilight sequel, the Pirates sequel, and the last Harry Potter, what's a Snacro girl to eat at the theater? The only thing in the theater snack case that's seen anything remotely close to a vegetable are the peanut m&ms.

So I decided to try my own series of Macro Movie Snacks. I should start with the ones that didn't work:

-Wakame Chips. This was my weapon of choice in high school, and it alienated entire rows.

-Daikon Veggie Rolls. We've discussed on this blog how daikon smells like a cadaver once it ripens. Don't and say you did.

-3 Course Fish Dinner. May had the soups in her cup rests, I kept the salads on my lap, and the salmon fillets were on the floor. It was a lovely meal by Legal Seafood enjoyed while watching True Grit, but I'm not gonna lie, it was really uncomfortable trying to hide those fish fillets going in. And everybody in the theater seemed pretty surprised that somebody would smuggle a full formal dinner into a movie theater.

Successful Macro Snacks:

-Trader Joe's Seaweed Snacks. These thin sheets of nori seaweed are toasted in sesame oil and dusted with sea salt. The price is right at $.99, but you should be prepared to buy at least three, because they'll be gone in 60 seconds... har har har.

-I would say granola bars, but these are a lame snack food. They only last about a minute. True movie snacks are built to last at least thirty minutes.

-Little Lad's Herbal Corn. This stuff is amazing, and for $5, you'll get a bag you can repurpose into a tent to live in. The bag is huge, and rather than be smothered in the normal buttery trappings of theater popcorn, it's got fresh dill sprigs and nutritional yeast. Yum!

And that brings us to the delicious...

Lotus Root Chips

Pictured above are the Sweet Lotus Chips

Ingredients:

2-3 lotus root pods (available at your local World Mart or Chinese/Japanese grocery store)

Bragg's Liquid Aminos

Olive Oil

White Wine Vinegar

Nutritional Yeast

Sea Salt

SAVORY LOTUS CHIPS (Crunchy and salty)

Heat olive oil in skillet. Slice lotus root into thin rounds (about half the width of an oreo cookie). Toss slices into the skillet and squirt about 2-3 tsp Braggs into the skillet, cooking until all the liquid is gone and the slices are chewy like bacon. Throw into a ziplock baggie, sneak into theater, and enjoy!

SWEET LOTUS CHIPS (Similar to sweet potato fries or taro chips)

Whisk 3 tbsp. olive oil, 3 tbsp. white wine vinegar, pinch sea salt and 1 tbsp. cool water in large bowl. Place slices in bowl and allow to soak 1-2 hours. We agreed that this is the best because then the lotus roots can really absorb the flavor.

Place soaked roots on cookie sheet and coat in a generous dusting of nutritional yeast. Bake 10-15 minutes at 400.

Localvore: A Made-Up Word, But I'll Take It.

2011-05-22T05:32:00.001-07:00

Paxton Family Cherries

Normally I shy away from the Localvore crowd in Boston because I feel like they judge me for the fact that the only crops my neighborhood is known for are potted aloe and certain unmentionable fungi.

I remember as a teenager drizzling out my nose in the spring and wheezing as I declared that there was no way I could have survived before the mid 20th century. With my debilitating allergies to every tree, flower, bush, and animal that isn't a cactus, I wouldn't have lasted a day without my air purifier.

Last week I had a fascinating conversation with one of my coffee shop regulars who told me that he cured his seasonal allergies through the use of local honey. It's amazing that something as simple as eating locally can literally inoculate us to local allergens. A coworker then came up to the counter and reported that he too experienced far fewer allergies since eating local honey.

They both used to take allergy shots, which my mother is convinced do some weird hoodoo on your life. She's probably right. The Kris List of Things That Do Weird HooDoo on Your Life is a pretty extensive list. It encompasses everything from FloNase to certain pieces of mid-19th century landscape. If any of you have met me and wonder why I have some of the odd aversions that I do, it's because of this comprehensive and exhaustive directory of Things to Be Avoided.

Anyways, I was thinking about last summer and the incredible healing I experienced from reaching into the garden to pick my collard greens, kale, and carrots, and it became so clear to me that we eat so much produce from South America that we're probably inoculated against their pollen. Between the bleachings, waxings, pesticide sprays, and long-distance shipping, are we losing some of the all-important germs that we should be eating? What ever happened to "God made dirt, dirt don't hurt?"

Now I am sitting down eating steamed collards from the front yard and cherries from my brother's cherry tree. I'm not going to play games and say I'm a good gardener... May left her plants in my care for a few days and I put them too close to the radiator and... it was like that scene in the Lord of the Rings where the Ents were trying to take out Isengard.

Burning limbs everywhere, and the slow, creaking sound of tree death.

it's 5 AM.

2011-05-11T02:03:00.000-07:00

Ok. It is 5 AM and I am MISERABLE from eating watermelon. I am so mad. I am 23 years old. My body is not supposed to fall apart like this. It's insanity. I'm so over it. The infection I had turned into a rash, and I'm broken out all over my body. I should have known when I started craving rolls that it was a bad thing. I had a roll and some watermelon, and now I'm itchy and rashy literally from head to toe.

This is insanity. I've met septuagenarians who are healthier than me. I literally want to claw my skin off right now. AAAGHHHHH!!!!!

The thing that really makes me mad is that it was JUST WATERMELON. It wasn't like I was doing hard drugs. I wasn't even taking TYLENOL, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. I just want to cry. Partly from the discomfort, partly from the fact that I can't live my life because I'm constantly being punished by my stupid body. I am just freaking out right now. This is insanity.

I know I'll be better in a few days... but does that mean I have to be MISERABLE in the mean time?

Sinus Infection

2011-05-04T12:42:00.000-07:00

My name is Becky, and I have a sinus infection.

Three days ago, I was fine.

I had a bright yellow Kate Spade sweater, new yellow Chucks, and a dress with cowgirls on it. The world was my oyster.

If I had known then what I know now, I would have put those cookies down. I would have stepped away from the muffins, and I would have thrown that delicious, delicious brownie promptly in the trash. By the way, the brownie was from Glutenus Minimus in Belmont, and it was the most delicious thing I have ever tasted. But that's neither here nor there.

I am a princess, and I receive tribute. The tea shop that I work at was shopping for a new baker since our old one quit, and caterers from across the land were bringing tribute to us in vast boxes that weighed thirty pounds and smelled of heaven and butter.

There were cheesecakes of Traditional and Strawberry flavors in tall square boxes. There were boxes of flaky browned croissants and sugar-dusted berry scones. There was sheet after sheet of oozing chocolate cookie. One company brought us three boxes that were 3'x4' that took up three seats on the subway when I brought them home for my roommates. They had pastries I had never even heard of in there. Every possible variation on sugar, butter, flour, and chocolate was in those boxes.

And then there was the box from Glutenus Minimus. I scuttled away like a crab with a hot piece of detritus. I don't need to list what was in the box, because remembering it will just make me sad and hungry, but there was pumpkin tea bread, red velvet cupcakes, muffins, scones, and one brownie that took me to a higher state of being.

You can see where all of this lead. Such are the wages of sin.

Diagnosis: Celiac. Remedy: Sweet Tattoo.

2011-04-27T10:41:00.001-07:00

I've been speaking with a friend who is in a place that I'm sure many of us are familiar with. My friend was in a place of poor health on a very strict macrobiotic diet when her healer told her that she needed to be doing even more to heal herself.

Part of what's so hard about doing a healing diet is that the entire onus is on you. It's work. Not only is it work, but it's work at a time in your life when you are physically unable to do work. You're often not even able to do normal things like walk, bathe, eat, feed yourself, and do your job, and now you're expected to take responsibility for the entirety of your healing. Subtract from that the support of people in your life who think you're insane for not taking the Western medical route, and you've got one incredibly difficult time.

One thing I'd like to discuss here is that sometimes, illness is rooted to deep emotional or spiritual imbalance. Dredging up these issues can be difficult in the best of times, and overwhelming in the worst of times. Yet often, our body forces us to deal with them while we are at our worst. Our body and mind are weak, and the boundaries we set up to protect ourselves are totally torn down as our body weakens, and the problems overwhelm us. It feels like drowning, and it's terrible.

I wish I could say I've only had one or two of these moments, but I can think of about ten times in the past two years where I've thought that I would crack because I couldn't handle anything else. Letting go of my life in Boston last year and my dream of grad school and changing my identity because Tennessee isn't exactly a great place to be a liberal flamer... none of it is easy. And the illness itself can be painful, isolating, and embarrassing.

The only thing I can say is that it makes you tough as nails. Not hardened necessarily... just harder to crack. A lot of the emotional weight behind my illness is gone. There is a time for illness, but there is a time for healing. I believe that we stay ill with emotional and spiritual wounds much longer than we should, and it takes a serious physical illness for our body to teach us that there is a time for sickness and a time for health.

I read in a book recently about a town that burned down. A man said "The Creator willing, we'll rebuild. The Creator not willing, we'll do it anyways." That's the place I reached. Laying there cracked out on morphine from my kidney stone, I was like "Not only am I going to go to grad school, I'm going to Harvard. And if I don't get into Harvard, I'm going to earn enough money to buy a big, big house. And in the back yard of that big, big house will be the dog house for my big, big dog. And I'm going to name that big, big dog house Harvard. And then we'll see who makes the admissions decisions."

And when I've been better for a year straight, I'm getting a totally sweet tattoo.

If Hospitals Were Like Restaurants

2011-04-27T09:53:00.000-07:00

I was in the car yesterday with my dad listening to the Sean Hannity show, and Sean graced us all with this arrow of truth to the heart: We don't need to fix health care, because hospitals, like restaurants, are a part of the free-market economy. If they were really that bad, consumers would just choose other hospitals, and the rotten ones would be forced to improve or close down.

Here's what the world would be like if that were true. If hospitals really were like restaurants.

You're wandering down the street on a warm Friday night with a couple of girlfriends wondering where to go to dinner when somebody pops out from around the corner and knocks you insensible. You wake up strapped into a white-linen dinner table at Ming Tsai's Blue Ginger, and the appetizer has been pre-determined. A napkin has been tucked in like a bib around your neck, and you don't have any pants on.

They ask you if you have any allergies. You're dazed an a little confused, because the menu is twelve pages long with an explicit statement that you don't actually get to choose anything, and that U.S. Health Department requires you to waive your right to read the soups. You sign a release statement at the end of the page stating that Ming Tsai has eaten far more food in his life than you, and has fed many more people than you will ever feed, and any notion of "choice" you may be foolishly entertaining is hereby waived.

A waiter comes by the table and asks you if you have ever eaten bell peppers, shucked an oyster or have been to Africa. He will proceed to ignore all of this. If you are a woman, you'll see him examine you up and down, pause, and scrawl "PREGNANT- NO SUSHI" in a large, messy hand.

The plates begin arriving... plate after plate. More than you could possibly eat. Several plates that look like things you shouldn't eat. You're getting nervous. You're beginning to wonder how much this will cost.

Everything stops dead.

The waiter looks at you like you're dribbling and crazy. Like you're frothing at the mouth. And not just from that queer-looking Lebanese crustacean you ate ten minutes ago.

You're feeling awkward. You apologize for asking. The waiter looks positively scandalized.

Someone whispers that you'll be lucky if he doesn't tell Chef Ming what you just asked. Somebody jokes that next you're going to ask to see a menu.

A cadaver gets left out by your table sometime after the second course that doesn't get wheeled away 'til dessert.

And three months later when the monumental bill arrives, you ask if you can negotiate, because that funny Middle Eastern lobster gave you the runs for three days, and if you want to talk picayune details, you were kidnapped. There is silence on the other end of the line.

"But you chose that lobster."

How To Find A Vegan Restaurant in New Orleans

2011-04-11T09:53:00.000-07:00

When looking for vegan food, seek out the radical animal rights activists with bullhorns screaming "MEAT IS MURDER" in the French Quarter.

We got really lucky on about day 2 of our trip and hit a PETA protest going down right across the street from Cafe du Monde.

After two days of eating omelets and potatoes to avoid gluten and meat at all costs, we had pretty much given up hope of finding any vegetables anywhere. The only place with soy milk was a Starbucks I saw at the airport, and there was no tofu from here to Atlanta. On one memorable occasion, I ordered a Vegetarian Omelet that I discovered, upon taking a bite, contained that famed cruciferous vegetable known as "bacon."

As we wandered the streets, our hopes of healthy food were dashed as we passed tourist after tourist with a grenade in one hand and a grease stain on the shirt.

That was when we saw the giant truck parked on Decatur Street with a picture of a chicken mid-slaughter. I've never been so glad to see a giant portrait of tormented livestock.

Beautiful young drifters in Urban Outfitters faux-rags with white-people dreadlocks sat cross-legged with clipboards and guitars. I even saw a bicycle. I knew I had found my people.

As we passed, they fumbled at their clipboards and asked us if we would consider vegetarianism. May and I looked at each other and said "Oh... we're vegan," the cries went up and suddenly a slew of dejected, beaten-down elitist liberati youth rose up and shouted "OH MY GOD! REALLY? YOU GO GIRLS!"

It was awesome. I felt like I had just won a prize. They gave us restaurant recommendations, and we got our vegetables, and somebody told me I seemed like "a pretty awesome human being."

Becky Paxton

April 11, 2010

Pretty Awesome Human Being

Making the Big Easy a Little Easier

2011-03-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

So here I am in gorgeous New Orleans trying to bring my gluten-free macro life with me. This city uses butter for crude oil, so this is no easy task. When I did my customary pre-trip "gluten-free" "vegan" restaurant searches, I was met with resounding silence. I had a really rough time living in Nashville eating out, and that was WITH a lifetime of knowledge about the city and the secret restaurants and hang-outs.

Here is my strategy for traveling macro:

1. Search for local restaurants and grocery stores that cater to the health food community. Even rural Mississippi has one or two vegans.

2. Plan on packing a suitcase entirely devoted to food. I stock up on things like microwaveable veggies, brown rice, and healthy snacks from Trader Joe's.

3. The night before, do all your cooking and bring a cooler as your carry-on. This is how I usually travel with relatively "stable" dishes, like greens-based dishes or squashes. Daikon radish is not, was not, and will never be a "stable" dish. From the second it leaves the frying pan it smells like the recently exhumed dead, and it will earn you a special place in the heart of Homeland Security.

I stuff my suitcase with macro goodies like microwaveable brown rice and packets of tuna fish, and strap granola bars to my person like Rambo straps bullets. Last year when I flew up to stay with May in Boston, she told me I stashed granola bars like a drug mule.

Here in New Orleans, my plan is to stick to lots of steamed fish and vegetables. I'm allowing myself to eat omelets because I had my miso this morning, but I'm really trying to stay away from dairy and sugar, because I sure as heck am planning a stop on Bourbon Street. It would be wrong to pass it up. It's New Orleans, for crying out loud!!

Just remember. The great thing about using your luggage for food is that as you eat, you make room for all the new stuff you buy shopping.

I am studying for the GRE's right now. There's nothing graduate school testers love more than word-based math problems. Here's one for you:

Becky packed a 11" x 4" x 22" tupperware container of nishime vegetables. The combined cost of the ingredients was $17.

After eating the nishime, Becky puts a box of Kate Spade Aggie Shoes in Yellow, size 10.5 in the suitcase in a box that is 7" x 6" x 23". The cost of the shoes was $298, and worth every bleeding cent for that matter. How much more per square inch did the Aggie shoes cost than the vegetables?

And the real question... with cute shoes like this, does it really matter?

Committing to Change

2011-02-21T13:56:00.001-08:00

I've got a post coming up about tofu scrambles and delicious things of that ilk, but I wanted to do a reflective post today about my decision to come to macrobiotics.

To say the decision was a last-ditch effort would be putting it mildly. For someone as young as 23, there were a lot of things that I "knew."

I knew that vegetables weren't stronger medicines than prescriptions given by the doctors.
I knew that there was nothing a macrobiotic healer or acupuncturist could tell me that a doctor and tests couldn't.
I knew that no natural healing, whether food, shiatsu, acupuncture, or supplements, would give relief as fast or as strongly as medication.
I knew that when I got better, I would get my life back.

I can't stress this last one strongly enough, because it's the one thing I've heard myself and every single other person I know who has suffered through a long illness say all the time.

Here's the single hardest pill that I had to swallow in my life, and I can't say I wish I had known, because I think if somebody had told me (and they did, numerous people, numerous times), I wouldn't have believed them.

You're not getting your life back. At least, not the life you used to have. For me, "getting my life back" meant that I could walk down the street and if I was craving KFC, buy a giant tray of puffy biscuits, thick gravy, and crispy fried chicken, eat it, and feel fine afterward. "Getting my life back" meant going clubbing with my friends and having drinks if I felt like it, then doing it again the next day.

And for a time, getting my life back meant being strong enough to spend the night outside of my house. It meant being strong enough to get on a plane and fly without throwing up from the exertion. It meant not being afraid to eat a meal that I didn't prepare myself. It meant not getting up from my work to run to the bathroom and throw up.

The important thing to know if you're seriously ill and are considering natural medicine is that no matter what happens, whether you choose natural medicine, or whether you choose medication and surgery, your life will never be the same. It will change in different ways depending on what you choose, but even if you go mainstream with Western medicine, you still won't get the same life back that you had six months or a year or two years ago. In some cases, the medications you take or surgery you choose will alter your body's functions for the rest of your life. In other cases, you'll find that you'll be on a cycle of medication, on and off for years.

Rather than focus on the end goal, which is to return to where you started before you were sick, remember that the life you lived before you got sick was setting you up for illness. Something that was going on in that life wasn't sustaining you. It was a train on a course for illness. Logically, to go back to that life is to go back to a life that is preparing to collapse. To go back to that life is to get back on a train that you already know will crash. You should know! You were on that train the first time!

The real difference between natural and Western medicine is that natural medicine forces you to reflect on your old life and see what was setting you up for this illness. Western medicine in most cases ignores this, stating "These things just happen sometimes." or "We don't really know all the causes of ____." Rather than take medicine that masks symptoms so that you can carry on "business as usual," in macrobiotics your body lets you know when the old ways aren't working.

Example: Friday night, for the first time in two years, I went to the club and drank (about half of what I used to drink pre-macro). My tolerance for alcohol had all but vanished, I was absolutely blind drunk by the end of the night, and for the next two days, my body and mind were an absolute wreck. The next day I felt puffy, my gut and intestines hurt like crazy, my skin broke out, and I cried two times from such weighty matters as my nails getting chipped from work, and getting a friend's voice-mail instead of her phone. Crises, I know.

Perhaps more importantly, I couldn't imagine doing that more than maybe MAYBE once a year. When I was in college I used to go out and party three or four nights a week. Now I can't even imagine how I used to do that.

I used to pray and pray that God would give me my old life back. I would get mad and cry and tell myself that God abandoned me when I would land in the hospital. Obviously He wasn't hearing my prayers when I told him how I deserved the life of a "normal" 20-year-old, and that if I had my life back, I would be normal again. And don't we all deserve to be normal? Normal people don't get randomly hospitalized with recurrent skin infections that require surgery, kidney stones, rupturing internal cysts. Most importantly, most people don't throw up every meal for months on end, to go from a size 12 to a size 4, to cry every night to just be knocked unconscious because the nausea and vomiting are so bad.

God knew that I deserved better than just getting my old life back. If you are reading this tonight and you are sick and want to know why God doesn't just give you your life back, it's because He has the foresight to know that you deserve better.

As far as the things I "knew" went, each one of them was wrong. The first night I was at Ginny's, she saw me take the antiemetics (anti-vomiting medication) prescribed by the hospital. (Note: You know that nobody has any idea what the hell is wrong with you when they write you a prescription for 100 pills and they tell you to call when you run out).

The next day, she stopped my hand and gave me a tea to drink instead. I knew it wouldn't work, but what the heck, right? The pills the doctor prescribed me sure weren't working.

30 minutes later, my nausea level had been halved. I couldn't believe it. Ginny explained to me how and why it was working, and unlike the doctors who cleared the room seconds after giving the medication to see the next patient, she sat with me for several hours, checking on me and making sure I was doing okay.

I can't really describe the difference that macrobiotics has made in my life. I went from taking 3 pharmaceutical drugs a day to treat everything from chronic yeast infections to chronic sinusitis, more antibiotics when I'm sick and a bunch of pain killers for cramps... I don't have sinusitis anymore. I treat yeast with diet and it goes away in a day or so, I don't need antibiotics because I only get about 1 cold a year, and I don't get cramps. And this is just my first year of macrobiotics. I thought as soon as my nausea got better, I'd get off the diet.

Instead, I can't wait to see what next year brings.

Saving Face with Seaweed

2011-01-27T20:23:00.000-08:00

I took a look at my face last week in good lighting, which is a scary thing to do if you don't do it very often and like to spend 3 out of 4 days subsisting on a diet of peanut butter and coconut rice.

I also don't wash my face. Ever.

You wouldn't either if you had a massive case of impetigo at the age of 15 and spent weeks sponge-bathing your blistered face while mournfully singing selections in the shadows from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and shunning the harsh light of day.

As of last week, my skin had taken on the unhappy splotchy and lumpy look of a teenaged boy who can't summon the fortitude of spirit to ask Jenny to the prom. It looked like cottage cheese.

At the prompting of May, we went on a week-long sea vegetable binge, and WOW, what a difference! I should note that May grew up using traditional Chinese remedies that are usually the exact same thing as macrobiotic remedies, so she's got a great intuition when it comes to "prescribing vegetables." We did a push on the winter seasonal vegetables (squash, root veggies like daikon, carrots, and burdock, and short grain brown rice), and my skin is already starting to smooth.

I also bought soap for my face. Lots of soap. More cleansers, exfoliators and toners than I know how to handle. They arrive in a few weeks, and I'm pretty amped to get washing. I plan on being very clean. I might just buy a special "face only" wash cloth for the occasion. It could get crazy.

After this week, I can truly reaffirm what I've said before: eating sea vegetables is one of the best ways to get beautiful skin and hair from the inside out. Here are some fun ways you can get your sea veggies in:

-Toss raw soaked wakame with sea salt and raw garlic cloves.

-Throw some wakame in your morning miso soup.

-Cook all your beans with a strip of kombu.

-Roll those leftover pickles with the leftover brown rice in a strip of nori.

-Make a stir fry with hijiki! It adds amazing flavor, and is especially hearty and delicious in winter. If I cook with hijiki, I usually make sure to use a heavier sauce so it doesn't taste too "oceany." I will make a "cream" sauce using grated squeezed ginger juice with tamari, or a thick white miso sauce cooked with some sesame oil for creaminess.

I don't go too crazy eating sea veggies with every meal. Let your body be the guide. I find that if I eat too many of them, I feel a little nauseated, so it's best to take a day off for me in that case.

The other amazing long-term effect I've had of eating sea vegetables is stronger and thicker hair. I've been told by every single hair dresser I've ever been to that I have the finest strands of hair they see outside of children under the age of four. My hair is usually as soft and fine as infant hair, and breaks just as easily. Since beginning my macrobiotic journey last year, one thing I've noticed is that the thickness and texture of my hair has become totally different. It's now thicker, tougher, and my eyelashes are fuller. Take that, Latisse!

Seriously, in three days I've seen amazing improvement. Add some sea vegetables to your diet today, and look forward to better skin and hair in the long run!

*Note: Wash your sea veggies before cooking. I found a tiny shrimp in my miso last night. It was intense and reminded me of last year when I found a lady bug inside my Tazo tea bag.

Seasonally Inappropriate Chocolate Peanut-Butter Ice Cream!

2011-01-26T15:01:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd repost an earlier recipe with my new modifications now that I've made it a billion times. I have a picture this time, and in my head I made it with peanut-butter. I didn't put actual peanut butter in it because my copilots May and China don't love peanut-butter with the scary intensity that I do.

But in my head, it's in there.

Beautiful Vegan's Gluten-Free Raw Chocolate Ice Cream

Modifications by Becky. Re-modifications still by Becky.

(I typically ~~double~~ quadrouple this recipe. Replace Agave with your preferred sweetener)

From BeautifulVegan.com :

In a blender mix:
1 avocado (pitted and peeled of course) -should be a ripe one
3 heaping Tbsp of raw cocoa powder (you can use normal cocoa powder if you don't have raw)-
1/6 c raw agave nectar

1/6 c brown rice syrup

more agave nectar if you're addicted to sugar like i am.
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 tsp vanilla extract (or the scrapings from a vanilla bean pod)
1/2 c water (or more depending if your blender wants more water to work or not)-sometimes it needs quite a bit more.

healthy dollops of peanut-butter. go ahead. go nuts.

Make sure it's really creamy, use a spatula to get the pieces of avocado that get missed. And that's it. I know it sounds weird to make chocolate pudding with avocado, but it turns out creamy and absolutely delicious! It can be used for a breakfast, snack or formal desert. Just add berries (especially strawberries) or use it as a fondu with cut up bananas and other goodies. this recipe serves 2 big bowls.

Becky's Notes:

I don't care what haters say about agave, I still cook with it. I've heard convincing arguments both ways, and I rarely use it anyways, so I'd say that a little in moderation goes a looong way towards achieving butteriness. I don't use only agave in the recipe above. I think it dominates the flavor of the vanilla and overwhelms the dish. Since I double the recipe, here's the break-down:

1/6 to 1/4 cup agave, with the rest of the 2/3 cup of sweetener as brown rice syrup

1 extra tsp. vanilla

When I dollop this into the frozen popsicle maker in my head, I add 2 tsp. cinnamon and a TINY hit of cayenne pepper. Ole!

Winter Wonderland: Vegan "Meat" Chili with Cornbread

2011-01-26T12:08:00.000-08:00

As regular followers of this blog can attest, there are few refrigerator staples I rely on as much as I rely on Soyrizo. The stuff is amazing. I've made Sloppy Soyri-Joes, Soyrizo Spaghetti, and I'm about to bring you:

VEGAN "MEAT" CHILI ON CORNBREAD

Why yes, that is an enormous pat of vegan butter waiting to melt on hot cornbread. And indeed, I HAVE gone up a dress size since beginning my Snackro-cooking this fall.

I always have trouble timing my dishes in macrobiotic cooking. I think it's because I have spent the last five years subsiding wholly on takeout, and when you order takeout, it's all done at the same time. So here's a chili chronology:

CHILI CHRONOLOGY:

24 Hours to Chili: Soak beans

2 hours before: Preheat oven for cornbread to 425 F. Gather your ingredients, rinse kombu I didn't rinse my kombu this morning, and I kid you not, I found a tiny shrimp in my miso today. Out. Rageous.

1 hour 15 minutes before: Begin cooking your beans

1 hour before: While beans are cooking, make and bake your cornbread.

30 minutes before: While beans and cornbread are cooking, begin caramelizing onions.

CHILI RECIPE (see previous entry for Cornbread):

Ingredients:

-Aduki beans (1 to 1 1/2 cups)

-Kombu

-Soyrizo (1 package)

-2 onions

-Organic sugar-free marinara. (about 1/2 to 1 cup, as needed to loosen up the chili)

-1 tsp garlic salt

-1 tsp red pepper flakes (leave this out if it's too radical for your system)

-1 tbsp. oregano flakes

-1 tbsp. dried parsley flakes

-Grated vegan mozarella to taste

Soak aduki beans overnight. I used about a cup/cup and a half.

The next day, cook your aduki beans, covering with water and add your strip of kombu. No sense losing the valuable nutrients provided by kombu! Bring to a boil uncovered, then reduce heat and simmer for about an hour to an hour and a half. Sample the beans. They should be soft but not gelatinous.

I discovered that the secret to this chili is to put a ton of onions in it. I love onions. I cut up two good sized onions and caramelized them for about a half an hour when the rice was going, and it was a wise choice. See the timeline to get all of this right.

After your onions have caramelized, add Soyrizo and marinara, and begin to season. I season as needed, but as the marinara and the beans can make things too sweet, I'm pretty generous with the garlic sauce. Once the soyrizo and marinara are heated, dump in your beans. I would stir it all together and taste test, and then spice as needed.

Grate your soy cheese, take the cornbread out of the oven, and enjoy it all!!

Becky

Frightening Frosting

2010-12-20T21:12:00.000-08:00

Several words were thrown out to describe it. Here is a sample:

Spackle, cement, semen, crazy glue, that stuff that shoots out of Spiderman's wrists.

What was it?

It was Cherrybrook Kitchen's "Allergen-Free Frosting."

It looked like a high school ~~prom limo~~ chemistry experiment gone horribly awry. When we opened the "Gluten-free Ready-to-Spread" can, which I'd like to add cost a pretty $5, we were surprised by how decidedly un-fluffy it was. It had all the lightness and spreadability of the LaBrea tar pits.

Despite my fears that sticking a knife in might pull out a fossilized dire wolf, we boldly attempted to apply it to the cupcake. It stuck so tightly to the initial point of application that when we tried to spread it, it ripped the entire f-ing cupcake in half. It was extreme. And not weather channel tornado chaser extreme. It was like, monster truck expo extreme. To paint you a mental picture (since all photographs were erased to make room for Christmas pictures), the cupcake looked like what happens to planets when a dwarf star implodes. It basically ceased to be cupcake-shaped, and instead became a series of cake boulders held together by a nebulous core of force that defies conventional physics.

The taste was... Well, for the first time in my life, I actually had to force cupcakes down. And I do mean literally, force. That frosting was fighting digestion. It clung to my esophagus. The entire experience was traumatic.

May and I asked ourselves, does frosting really need to be like this? Love should never hurt. We decided there had to be a better way. A way that doesn't cost $5 for a tub of icing that could be used as bathroom tile grout.

Here is that way. You just sit down in that chair right there and let me show you how it's done.

BECKY'S BETTER WAY GLUTEN-FREE VEGAN FROSTING:

(Fire on the mountains, run boys, run)

2 cups powdered sugar

1/4 cup softened g/f vegan margerine

1-2 tbsp. soy or rice milk, as needed

1 pinch salt

2 tsp. vanilla extract

Beat until light and fluffy. Refrigerate until it stands on its own. This frosting holds up great, and lasts about a week. And bonus, it's totally the opposite of gross.

Granny does your dog bite? No child, no.

Healing and Snacking

2010-12-08T10:51:00.000-08:00

It's the holidays, and that just makes you pause, look back on the past year, and conclude.

That was f'ing weird.

In the past year, I've been hospitalized, shed a kidney stone, taken more morphine than a baroque poet, become a wellness vegan, become a moral vegan, been cut open at 3 in the morning, talked to a deer eating from my waste bins at 6 AM, and vomited more than I ever thought was possible for anybody to do. Ever.

I also became a gospel singer, a private chef, styled a fashion show, moved across the country, and programmed for MIT. Huh.

C.S. Lewis warns that finding God is like telling your mother your tooth hurts. All you want is some aspirin to survive the night, but you know that if you tell her, she'll give you the aspirin, but the next day she'll cart you to the dentist who will not only remove the tooth in question, but will begin fiddling around with all sorts of other teeth that were apparently unrelated to the original problem.

Right now I'm stressing about what I'm going to do to make money and where I'm going to live in the next few months as I try to live a macrobiotic life and live by the principles that have become important to me, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't holding my breath until the next drug-resistant infection or kidney stone or whatever lands me in the hospital again, but the same health problems that I'm paying for, that I'm waiting for, are answered prayers.

For me, the definition of "low point" was probably being pulled out of a cab by paramedics as I threw up on myself from pain. It's excusing yourself from a business meeting because you have to spend the rest of the day vomiting. It was vomiting up the nausea medication. File that one under "irony."

I am having trouble concluding this, because to say that "your illness is a blessing" is to trivialize the pain, fear, and loss that my friends and readers have experienced. May told me that contrary to popular belief, it can sometimes actually harmful to refer to veterans "heroes" because it simplifies and glosses over the pain, doubt, and hard choices they've had to make and can make them feel isolated and alone. There is nothing glorious and redeeming about sickness, just as there's nothing glorious and redeeming about war.

That being said, I can only speak for myself, and I believe not only that this illness was sent as a blessing, but as Lewis said above, it's part of the larger dental appointment. I am overwhelmed with the love and support of all the friends I've met in the last two years, and I hope that God speaks to the hearts of the suffering to replace fear with joy. I am joyful for the pain and the fear, because God wanted to teach me what it means to be happy. I am thankful for my friends through Ginny and the macrobiotic community who are just now beginning the journey to health, because they are about to see how God is going to change their lives and make them new. I have no idea what I'll be doing next month, next year, and my four-year plan could fit on half a post-it note (it looks kind of like "get famous, write books"), but I had no idea that any of this would happen to me, so I have no idea what's going to happen next.

Today is the day the LORD has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

THE GLUTEN-FREE VEGAN PIZZA OF TRIUMPH

2010-12-05T17:20:00.000-08:00

I don't even know if I can write a blurb about how successful this was. I am currently burping up satisfaction, and picking contentment from my teeth. This is how it went down:

THE BEST GLUTEN-FREE VEGAN PIZZA EVER.

DON'T LISTEN TO ANYBODY ELSE. THIS IS THE BEST YOU'LL EVER HAVE.

Ingredients:

DOUGH:

1 bag of Bob's Red Mill GF Pizza Crust

2 eggs (we used organic, local, free-range eggs despite being in the midst of reading "Eating Animals." A Vegan alternative with flax seeds is provided on the mix bag.)

4 tbsp. olive oil

Yeast packet (enclosed)

Cornmeal

See package for instructions... It involves an oven, a ton of oil, and a soupçon of self-doubt.

tomato

oil cured olives

mushrooms

3 cloves of garlic

sweet vidalia onions

soy mozzarella cheese

Bove's marinara sauce

Begin caramelizing your onions. For them to taste best, you really need to cook them on medium heat for 30-45 minutes with a pinch of salt added 10 minutes in, and they really need to be sweet vidalia onions.

Chop garlic and deep fry, removing just as they begin to turn a light brown.

Have your trusty right-hand man cut your mushrooms and tomatoes, because she doesn't trust you with sharp objects, probably for good reason.

Here's your sauce. Never accept sauce out of the jar. It would be like paying full-price on a knock-off bag in New York's Chinatown. You have to haggle with the sauce. Give it a smack of oregano, a dusting of parsley, and some powdered garlic salt and onion powder. If you live dangerously, hit it with some red pepper flakes. I did. Here's a picture:

Here's a picture of my partner in pizza. My... oh hell, I can't pun tonight.

While we do the prep work, we are toasting the pizza shells for 10 minutes at 425.

And after smoothing the sauce on with a spoon, adding grated vegan cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, olives, and garlic in that order, you get...

Cook at 425 for 15-18 minutes, remove, and don't expect the tofu cheese to melt. It never will. Empires will rise and fall before soy cheese resembles anything close to real cheese.

And... ENJOY!!! (Then if you're gluttons like us, enjoy again an hour after dinner).

Nothin' Like Some 9 AM Cornbread

2010-11-16T06:31:00.000-08:00

This has been my favorite breakfast of late. I've been using a modified version of the Bob's Red Mill Cornbread recipe to make it dairy free, but you can swap the egg out to make it totally vegan.

NOTE: Some of you Northerners may want to put sugar or honey in your cornbread batter. This is incorrect. This is not cornbread. This is something else entirely. I went to a college that did this. This is the wrong way to make cornbread.

CORNBREAD

Nothing says autumn like cornbread on top of a cable-knit sweater. It practically bleeds friendship and negotiation. This couldn't look any more autumnal than if I had strapped a pilgrim under it and offered it to my neighbor in exchange for syphilis.

INGREDIENTS:

1 c. Medium-Ground cornmeal

1 c. Millet Flour (Note: Do not use Garbanzo Bean Flour. I just did this, and I haven't eaten it yet, but it smells crazy.)

1/2 tsp. salt

4 tsp. baking powder

If you put 1 tbsp of sugar in here, throw out the mix. Congratulations, you've just ruined your cornbread.

1 egg or egg substitute if you're rich and idealistic

1 c. soy milk (Note: I've done rice milk here and haven't noticed a huge difference, but soy just has a heartier texture, and cornbread is a Man's Food)

1/4 c. vegan margarine, slightly melted in the microwave.

Mix it all in a bowl. It really doesn't taste any different this way, and you save on dishes. Once it's been in the oven (preheated to 425) for about 20 minutes, take it out, and melt about 2 tbsp of butter on the top of the cornbread loaf. Let it cook another 5-10 minutes, until the butter forms a thick crispy crust. And by butter, of course I mean margarine.

Remove from oven. Butter again. Next time, try adding jalopenos and cheddar cheese!

CHEAP Dinner for Four! And Musings on Nausea.

2010-11-14T11:42:00.001-08:00

So I LOVE Trader Joe's. You can feed armies for practically nothing. This week, after working a lot of hours for not a lot of dollars, I wanted to come up with a cheap dinner that would pass for moderately tasty.

What I didn't expect was how TOTALLY delicious it would be. I also didn't expect how quick this dinner would be. Dinner was made, eaten and cleaned up within 30 minutes. This is PERFECT for me. This is exactly the kind of meal I've been looking for... no microwaving, no dairy, because I'm almost positive I'm lactose-intolerant after yacking up about a third of my tuna salad last night.

The great thing is that I'm pretty down with vomiting now. The fear is gone. When the worst thing that could possibly happen to you... has already happened, it makes everything else seem not quite as scary. I will feel better, this will pass, and there are things I can do to fix things. I don't want to say that there aren't worse things that'll happen... just that a lot of them already happened. I used to think food poisoning was the worst thing in the world. Hoooo no... Now when I get nauseated, I feel almost safe knowing that I'm just one toilet seat lift away from relief.

I'm on ondansetron now, which is a seratonin blocker and an anti-emetic designed to block the feeling of nausea. It's helping a lot, but I'm really tired today. So since I'm tired I'm sharing this recipe with you.......... and then ordering takeout :)

FEEDING FOUR FOR $15: GRILLED FISH TACOS!

Ingredients: (Sorry the above picture looks eaten off-of... It is.)

Mahi-Mahi Burgers: $4.99

Soy Cheese Slices: $3.29 (Or less... I think it's less)

Fresh Mild Salsa: $2.29

Gluten-Free Brown Rice Tortillas: $2.99

TOTAL COST: $13.56

Pre-heat oven to 325 and toast the brown rice tortillas for 5-8 minutes, until soft and malleable. Pan-fry the Mahi burgers in olive oil, 4-5 minutes on each side. Using a fork and butter knife, after the 10 minutes, break apart the burgers and fry them for 1-2 additional minutes so that the chunks themselves become a little crispier.

Place soy cheese slice on bottom of tortilla while warm so that the cheese will do something resembling melting. This is soy cheese- don't press your luck. It won't truly melt unless it's subjected to molten uranium or there's a particularly intense solar flare and the cheese happens to be on some sort of pitch roofing.

Sprinkle the salsa, the fish, wrap, and go! This is totally delicious, and will be totally finished in about 15 minutes.

Lemon Blueberry Muffins

2010-11-06T10:24:00.000-07:00

...And the Egg Dilemma.

So I've been a little more lax about my veganism following several major health crises that arose from the fact that:

a) I am poor, therefore
b) My diet has the nutritional depth and variety of sawdust.

I eat about 1 tbsp. of dairy/egg every couple of days now, so that if I'm caught out for dinner, I don't totally starve. Have I noticed an impact on my health? Absolutely. My sinuses have had a major cave-in, the likes of which I haven't had all year, including when I had the flu last year. The dairy makes me puffy, stuffy, and congested. I'm trying to keep it at/under the 1 tbsp mark every day. This is part of me working on "moderation," which I've been hearing good things about. I've decided that the anxiety of being broke and vegan is not worth the pain of poor health because I'm prevented from eating good food due to minute amounts of dairy.

So this week's recipes are not entirely vegan. They can, however, be made vegan by using vegan egg-substitute. I just find that the puffy egginess of them is totally delicious, and that at $5.29 a box, egg substitute is more expensive than some street drugs.

This week's recipe is a modification of the one on the back of the Arrowhead Mills bag. I've modified it to reduce the amount of sugar, and to alkalinize the batter a little bit using Kuzu Root.

LEMON BLUEBERRY MUFFINS

2 c Arrowhead Mills GF Baking Mix
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 c Agave (I cut mine with about 1/3 of the amount being honey, but that's pretty minute)
1/4 c COLD water
1 tsp. powdered kuzu root dissolved in 1-2 tsp. COLD water. This is important. Anything warmer than this, and the fragile powdered kuzu will cook and thicken prematurely.
1 tsp. vanilla
1 egg/ egg substitute
1 cup frozen blueberries
1 tbsp. zested lemon rind
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/4 c. avocado, grapeseed, or flaxseed oil

Cook at 350 for 20 minutes. The consistency of the batter should be dry and crumbly. Today I made the mistake of trying to loosen it up with more water, but the water stays trapped in the dough, making it doughy and falling-aparty. The frozen blueberries give more moisture as the thing bakes, so you want the dough to start out pretty dry.

GLAZE

1/4 c. Agave nectar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 tbsp. lemon juice
pinch of salt

Mix and pour generously over the muffin. The dough soaks it in, and it becomes lemony and delightful!

Korean Bean Sprouts!

2010-09-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

Those of you from the South are familiar with restaurants with names like:

SHANGHAI TOKYO: Chinese and Japanese Food Sushi Buffet!

The concept of the "Slashie" is not just for Fabio anymore. Most Asian restaurants of ill-repute feature dishes that are not from the country (or countries) that the restaurant claims to represent. An excellent example of this is the following totally killer bean sprout dish, which I used to enjoy at my favorite Nashville Slashie Japanese/Korean/Chinese Restaurant.

PICKLED BEAN SPROUTS

OF UNKNOWN PROVENANCE

(PROBABLY KOREA BUT WE'RE NOT SURE)

Bag of bean sprouts (I like Mung Sprouts)

4 tsp. wheat-free Tamari

5 tbsp. brown rice vinegar

2-3 tbsp. sesame oil

Sugar to taste (I usually do between 1-2 tsp.)

1 pinch sea salt

Boil the bean sprouts 2-3 minutes. Combine remaining ingredients in a bowl, and toss in bean sprouts. If your sprouts are overwhelming the little amount of sauce in the bowl, double the sauce recipe. Cover and let chill overnight for optimum flavor.