A Yummy Dinner!

This meal contains some ingredients that are not in the healing diet, such as tahini and ginger. If you are healing, then just leave them out. Here is my current favorite menu. These are recipes that I have learned from here and there and eventually just cook them however I remember them since I sometimes really hate following recipes. They are pretty simple recipes. Enjoy!

1. Brown Rice, Chickpeas and Arame Salad
2. Steamed Cabbage and Onions with Ume Plum Vinegar
3. Lemon, Shoyu, Ginger White Fish (in this case, flounder)

Brown Rice, Chickpea and Arame Salad

Make 3 cups of Medium or Short Grain Brown Rice (depending on your condition)
1 chopped onion
1 handful of arame rinsed
1 cup of cooked chickpeas (soak overnight and then cook until soft)

2 T. Ume Plum Vinegar
2 T. Chopped Parsley
2 T. Tahini (this may not be good for someone who is healing)

Heat saucepan until hot and then add onion. Mix well while cooking so onion does not stick to bottom of pot. Add a Tablespoon of Toasted Sesame Oil if conditions allows. Cook onions until soft. Add Arame on top of onions. Add just a little water. Cover and steam.

To make dressing, mix ume vinegar, parsley and tahini until creamy.

In a bowl, add rice, chickpeas, onions and arame (when cooled) and dressing. Fold ingredients until mixed.

Cabbage and Onions

1 cup thinnly sliced cabbage
1 medium onion
1 Tablespoon Ume Plum Vinegar

Slice 1 onion into crescent moon shapes. Heat pan until hot. Add onions and cook until soft stirring often. Add water to cover bottom of pan and then add cabbage which is sliced into thin stripes. Cover and steam. After about 5 minutes, uncover and add Ume Vinegar

Ginger Shoyu Lemon Fish

White Fish such as Flounder or Halibut
A few shakes of Lemon juice
A few shakes of Shoyu
1 t. ginger

Mix lemon juice, shoyu and ginger. Pour over fish. Cook 350 for 20 minutes or so. Enjoy!

Ginger may be too stimulating for someone who is healing and is not recommended.

My favorite breakfast, Mmmmm!

Lately I have been very into tofu scramble, mochi waffle and amaranth for breakfast. Amaranth is an ancient grain that was ignored and grew like a weed for thousands of years until recently when it was rediscovered as a delicious grain high in protein. I cook that in my Oshawa pot inside of my pressure cooker (1 cup of amaranth to 2 cups of water and a pinch of salt) for about 45 minutes. The mochi waffle is grated like cheese and put directly on the waffle iron. At our local farmer's market, I buy pear peach butter...but lately I have been making my own, which is as simple as putting 6 pears and 3 peaches in a heavy pot with little or no water, cooking it down until very soft and then putting the whole thing in a blender or Cuisinart, then returning it to the heavy pot to cook it until it becomes "butter". No sugar, no preservatives!!! I have been putting this on my waffle instead of syrup. It strikes me as odd now when friends come over for breakfast and ask, "Where is the syrup?" The tofu scramble is a mix between Jessica Porter's recipe and stuff that I like. I use a mandolin to julienne carrots and burdock root and I occasionally add some type of greens. I LOVE adding shittake mushrooms and I always start with a red onion. I caramelize the onion first and I do not use any oil. A VERY hot pan will caramelize an onion without the onion sticking to the pan. Add Ume vinegar to keep the color of the onion. I then add the carrot, burdock and mushrooms. Last, I add the greens and tofu. Then I sprinkle Shoyu on top and cook covered until vegetables are soft. Add condiments of green onion or cilantro to the top of the tofu scramble for a delicious treat!! You'll never want bacon again (ok...I still dream of bacon...it is my weakness along with chocolate!!) Bon Appetite!!

Lasagna

OMG!!!!!! How come it took me so long before I actually got around to making this special treat!! Chad has been having a VERY hard time not eating his old comfort foods, so I decided it would be better to sway slightly from the restrictive healing diet and throw in a few goodies now and again to keep him afloat and not eating pizza!! Some suggestions I got on the CyberMacro discussion group was to make him pizza or lasagna with the macro tomatoless tomato sauce. This is simply made with carrots, onions and a beet to mimic the color of real tomato sauce. It was DIVINE!!!!! Then we used tofu with ume vinegar instead of ricotta cheese and grated mochi in place of mozzerella cheese. The only stuff in this that is not on the "healing" macro diet is tofu, the beet (as a beet is a nightshade vegetable...more on that some other time) and the whole wheat lasagna noodles. All of these things are ok in a normal macro diet. Nightshade vegetables are on the once in a while list. If you have any interest in watching a video of the late and great Luchi Baranda cooking this recipe, here it is:

http://www.kushipublishing.com/luchi/

Hopefully I am not breaking any laws by publishing that!! This video was filmed in the very place that Chad and I first learned the macro diet and Luchi was our teacher. Enjoy!!!!!!!

Some things that are helpful when cooking macrobiotically :)

This is my very sexy Le Creuset pot!! It is heavy so stuff doesn't burn to the bottom. I like to make squash and adzuki beans in it and carrot butter!! It is great for making stews and soups! I am glad I FINALLY investing in one of these :)








And the Ohsawa pot makes grains fluffier and tastier! I never burn my grains when using this pot and they always come out perfect. You can see my good vegetable knife somewhat in this photo...as very, very nice thing to have!

How it all got started

Way back in November of 2006, my fiancee was diagnosed with astrocytoma, a malignant brain tumor. In August 2007 he received an email from a friend who had completely cured his brain tumor with macrobiotics...NO CHEMO!! After reading it, Chad asked me what I thought. I said it sounded interesting and I was open minded. He said he was interested in giving it a go. So we signed up for the "Way to Life" program at the Kushi Institute in Becket, Mass. :

www.kushiinstitute.org

We went to the program the last week of September 2007. When we came home we started to focus in this new lifestyle and diet. Some people can go cold turkey in their previous eating habits, but we took a little time to warm up to some of the new things we were eating. Also, getting coffee and sugar out of the system was not an easy task. Within 2 months, Chad's tumor was gone. He went back to work as a Wildland Firefighter for the summer season of 2008 and starting eating the typical firefighter fare...lots of coffee, microwavable meals and messhall slop. By August of 2008 there were signs that his tumor was returning. In November 2008, it was confirmed. Back to chemo, but not back to macro yet. We still focused on some basics, but we were eating meat and sugar. We thought maybe we could live our old life and beat this. We were wrong. In February 2009, things were looking good even without Macrobiotics, but in April the cells that had mutated and the tumor was growing...and faster this time!! All of a sudden, macrobiotics seemed to make perfect sense. We started taking classes again and focused on his plan that was made by a macrobiotic counselor. Lots of short grained brown rice, kale, collard greens, miso soup, shittake mushrooms, lotus root and sea vegetables.

I have since reorganized my kitchen and purchase many essential items to make this journey easier. The big hint is to buy alot of these expensive items on EBAY and Craigslsit. I got a $200 Le Creuset Dutch Oven on EBAY for $34 and a pressure cooker on Craigslist for $20. I saved about about $250 by purchasing these items used.

We are 2 solid months into our practice and Chad's last MRI was looking good. We have another MRI coming up that should hopefully surprise even his doctors...who are always weary of this alternative treatment. Our doctor is pretty supportive luckily :) Some yummy healing meals to follow....please feel free to ask any questions about the preperation of these meals! It can be overwhelming at first, but it is well worth it :)