Changing Seasons Macrobiotic Cookbook: Cooking in Harmony with Nature - Softcover

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Aveline Kushi was one of the world’s foremost experts on macrobiotic cooking. She began her study of macrobiotics in 1950, under the guidance of George Ohsawa, the founder of modern macrobiotics. She married Michio Kushi in 1952, and for the next ten years taught macrobiotic and natural cooking in New York.
 
Michio and Aveline moved to Boston in 1965, and jointly established a variety of successful macrobiotic enterprises and educational ventures. Aveline’s cooking classes in the Boston area attracted thousands of students, and she and Michio lectured extensively throughout the world.
 
Wendy Esko is this country’s leading author of macrobiotic cookbooks. She began practicing macrobiotics in 1971. Together with her husband Edward, and Michio and Aveline Kushi, she helped develop the East West Foundation, a non-profit educational organization. She began teaching macrobiotic cooking in 1976, and her studies of macrobiotics have taken her around the world.
Wendy teaches regularly at the Kushi Institute as well as throughout New England. She is the author of Introducing Macrobiotic Cooking, and Macrobiotic Cooking for Everyone.

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ONE

The Art of Cooking with the Seasons

THE STANDARD MACROBIOTIC DIET

The recipes in this cookbook are based on standard macrobiotic dietary recommendations that can be applied to your own kitchen. Certainly there is no one diet that is suited to every need. Modifications are always necessary, depending on where you are living, the type of climate there, the particular season, and your sex, age, job, personal condition, and level of activity. In the temperate, four-season climate that characterizes most of the United States, an optimum daily diet consists of the following general proportions of foods.

General Proportions, Optimum Daily Diet

The general proportions in the standard macrobiotic diet are based on the traditional dietary patterns that protected our ancestors from many of the degenerative disorders that we suffer from today. The diet also enables us to achieve harmony with changing environmental conditions. Until recent times, for example, cooked whole cereal grains were eaten as staple foods throughout the world: rice in the Orient; wheat, barley, rye, and oats in Europe and America; buckwheat or kasha in Russia and Central Europe; corn in the Americas; the millet, wheat, and other whole grains in Africa and the Middle East.

Plus Beverages, Occasional Supplementary Foods, Seasonings, and Condiments

In Western countries, bread was the traditional “staff of life,” eaten in its whole, natural form until this century. The central place accorded to whole cereal grains in Europe and America is recorded in the prayer with which generations of people have begun each day: “Give us this day our daily bread”—meaning food in general. In Japanese, the term used for a meal is gohan, which means rice, indicating the significance of whole cereal grains in the traditional Japanese diet.

Throughout the world, traditional diets have included fresh local vegetables and beans and their products along with whole grains. In many parts of the world, sea vegetables and other products from the oceans, together with a wide range of fermented foods such as naturally aged sauerkraut, pickled vegetables, miso, shoyu, and tempeh, were also traditional. In general, animal proteins, including meat, eggs, and dairy products, were used much less frequently than at present, while people in temperate climates rarely ate fruits and other products imported from the tropics.

Using whole grains, local vegetables, beans, and sea vegetables as our primary foods complements the structure and function of the human digestive system. Our thirty-two adult teeth are better suited for crushing and grinding plant fibers than they are for tearing animal flesh. We have twenty-eight incisors, premolars, and molars, which are best suited for grains, beans, and vegetables, but only four canine teeth, which can be used for tearing animal foods. According to the structure of our teeth, the ideal ratio between vegetable and animal foods is seven to one.

The length of the human digestive tract also favors the consumption of more plant than animal foods. Carnivores generally have relatively short intestines, to prevent the buildup of the harmful bacteria and toxins that accompany the decomposition of animal flesh. Because the human digestive tract is long and convoluted, it is not well suited to the consumption of a large volume of animal protein. The overintake of animal foods often leads to the buildup of harmful bacteria and toxins in the digestive tract and bloodstream, contributing to a variety of disorders.

MODIFYING THE DIET

In addition to eating according to our physical structure and traditional dietary practices, it is important for us to eat in a way that brings our condition into harmony with the environment around us. This can be done by relying primarily on foods that are grown in a climate similar to the one in which we live and by adjusting our selection of foods and cooking methods to accommodate the changing of the seasons.

In general, those who live in cold polar climates may consume a greater volume of animal food, while those in a hot, semitropical or tropical region can rely almost entirely on vegetable quality products. People living in an in-between, or four-season, climate may follow the traditional macrobiotic order in their diets, with cereal grains as the main foods; soup, vegetables, beans, and sea vegetables as secondary foods; fruits, nuts, and seeds as their third food group; and animal foods such as fish and seafood, which are biologically distant from the human species, as the fourth supplement.

If we move to another climatic region, we need to change the types of food that we select and our style of cooking to adapt to the new environment. Similarly, our diet can also be changed to suit fluctuations in temperature, humidity, and other conditions that come about as a result of the changing of the seasons. For example, we can harmonize our diet with the environment as follows:

Geographic Range

Sometimes it is best to select foods from the immediate locality, and sometimes you may choose foods brought in from greater distances. The table on the following page provides some guidelines you may use for determining the ideal geographic range for foods imported to your area.

It is better not to import foods across the equator because atmospheric, oceanic, and electromagnetic conditions in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres are opposite to one another. These differences also appear in the food products of each region and result in subtle, but opposite, effects on body and mind.

As mentioned previously, each person needs to eat according to his or her individual condition based on factors such as age, previous dietary history and tradition, activity, racial or cultural background, and physical constitution and condition. These modifications may appear in the types of grains, vegetables, and supplementary foods used, along with the way of cooking and combining food. Thousands of varieties of dishes are possible within the general principles presented above, and just a few of the many varieties of dishes used in macrobiotic cooking are included in this book.

Whole-Cereal Grains

Ideally, at least 50 percent of every macrobiotic meal will consist of cooked whole-cereal grain, prepared in a variety of ways. Whole organic cereal grains that are best for regular daily use include brown rice (short- and medium-grain brown rice), millet, barley (pearl and pearled) corn, whole oats, wheat berries, rye, and buckwheat. Other grains and grain products suitable for occasional use (once or twice a week) include sweet and long-grain brown rice, whole-wheat noodles (udon and somen), buckwheat noodles (soba), unleavened whole-wheat, whole-rye, or other whole-grain breads, rice cakes, cracked wheat, bulghur, steel-cut oats, rolled oats, cornmeal or grits, rye flakes, couscous, seitan, and fu. As you can see, whole grains are preferable to flour products. Flour products tend to be more difficult to digest.

Soups

You may consume approximately 5 percent (one or two cups) of your daily food in the form of miso or shoyu broth. The soup should not taste overly salty. Include a wide range of vegetables, especially wakame sea vegetable, every day. Grain and bean soups may also occasionally be eaten.