Healthy Japanese Ingredients

[mizducky]

Mizducky, I think that macrobiotics is an import to Japan, curiously enough! I think it started in Hawaii...

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Hmmm. That hadn't been my understanding; and the second article Torakris cited also states that it originated in Japan. Its major formulator and the person who brought the idea to Europe and America, George Osawa, was born in Japan.

Edited March 20, 2006 by mizducky (log)

[helenjp]

You are right - I'm a mine of misinformation, as usual. Sorry!

However, this is the first time that I've seen macrobiotics taken notice of here in Japan - it was unknown when I first came here in 1979, and the Muso brand so closely associated with it outside Japan is rarely seen here.

I think that macrobiotics may have finally attracted notice because of its similarity to a trend to "plain food" ('sou-shoku!) that did the rounds here in Japan a few years back.

[torakris]

Coenzyme Q10 has been the current fad of health/beauty supplements finding their way into food products. Is platinum going to be the new one?

Platinum yogurt

with 4 micrograms of platinum nanocolloid per 120g

[JasonZ]

Just don't tell people that platinum is present in the catalytic converters of their cars ... they'll think those are healthy also

I've never seen anything in the nutritional literature about the health value of platinum!

Regards,

JasonZ

[torakris]

The other day some friends and I had lunch at Ecru a macrobiotic/organic/natural restaurant near my house. It was my first time there and though it wasn't bad, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of selection.

We were there for lunch and we only had a choice of 4 options with prices from 1180 to 1380 yen.

They had a daily special plate, a brown rice quiche plate, a vegetable plate (seems to change daily) and a curry rice plate.

The daily special didn't look very filling as it was just a pilaf like dish with walnuts and umeboshi with a small green salad and an even smaller carrot salad.

The vegetable plate had the same two salads with the addition of one more yogurt based salad and a deep fried soy product.

I decided to go for the curry rice, it was nice and spicy and filled with lentils and kidney beans though they were pretty skimpy on the vegetables. It was served with brown rice.

While I enjoyed it, I didn't feel it was worth the 1280 yen I paid since I could have made the same thing at home and fed all 5 of us for less than that.

It did include a coffee as well, though they charged an extra 50 yen for iced coffee....

Sorry for the cell phone picture.

[K8memphis]

Eunice Farmilant had a macrobiotic cookbook a million years ago with the best pie crust recipe. I think it was called interestingly enough, Macrobiotic Cooking. It's the one you don't have to roll out. With sweet rice flour maybe or something like that. I know it had oats. Dynamite!

I've checked off & on it's not available on the web. But I just checked and the copyright is 1972.

I always associated the yin and yang, the eeen and ahhhn with macrobiotic balance for some reason.