Does This Look Familiar?

This is actually breakfast and don't get me wrong, I like it but that's steamed kale with ground pumpkin seeds and, uh, brown rice. Remind you of last night's dinner? They weren't kidding when they said brown rice is a staple in macrobiotics.

Today was the first official day of the conference. We helped Michael Marcus of Bizen, a sushi and Japanese restaurant in Great Barrington, Mass. In class, he made deliciously inventive rolls like "Silence of the Yams", or as I like to call it, SotY (which was a favorite of my teammate, Alyssa), and the "BLT" (my favorite) because I love bacon...wait, there wasn't any bacon in there. Oh well, I still loved it.

The BLT was made with tempeh sauteed in sesame oil, blanched kale, slices of tomato and avocado, and a smidgeon of special sauce (housemade teriyaki sauce that didn't use any refined sugar). It was more of a vegan roll than a macrobiotic roll but I'm not exclusive to either ways of life (this is more of an exploration of food, eating, and ways of life for me--and I like meat, a lot) so I happily tasted the sample.

The SotY on the other hand was surprisingly sweet. Although, when you hear what's in it, it's not really a surprise: yams sauteed in sesame oil, shredded coconut, a cranberry/maple syrup reduction and I think slices of teriyaki lotus root. I'll be getting the recipes later so I will share if there's an interest. 

I do have to say that I'm getting really good at rolling sushi. It's really hard to spread the rice and I always see the chefs ball up the rice, put it on the nori (seaweed) and boom, it's evenly spread. With me, I'm always going back for a little bit more rice to patch up all the holes. If you've ever tried to roll before, you know what I'm talking about.

The other class was led by Melanie Waxman. She's a macrobiotic counselor and cook, and mother of seven (yikes). I only prepped for this class. She gave an interesting talk about how to cook macrobiotic and the simplcity of it...which is ironic since people consider it very strict and difficult. Anyway, I didn't take any notes but a lot of what she said rang familiar because of how I grew up with food. Macrobiotics principles are very Asian in their roots. It's about yin and yang or food energies. My mother always described foods as "cooling" or "heat producing". I always thought that was kookie especially when a hot soup could be cooling but apparently there are whole food communities devoted to it.

I am a strong supporter of fresh food and daily cooking. It's the way I grew up and I think it's the best for us. I don't think anyone would disagree with "fresher is better." It's just whether we have the time for it. That's where priorities come in. Yeah, opening up a bag of potato chips and snacking on that is way faster than washing up and cutting an apple...but by how much? And at what cost?

Anyway, more healthy food for thought as I leave you with dessert from tonight's dinner: Lemon Tart with Raspberry Swirl (and an Oat Almond Cookie). It was tart. I think E. would like it. I didn't like the cookie all that much, it was a little dense but I'll need to get the recipe for the "curd" part.