A Grain A Day

I have been fortunate enough to never have had a real caffeine addiction. But I’ve heard that one of the most difficult parts about going macro can be weaning yourself off of coffee or caffeine-rich teas. Just ask Andrew Lee about it.

It might smell good while it’s brewing, but coffee is little disaster in a cup. Caffeine in a cup of coffee unnaturally increases blood sugar, body temperature, blood flow and heart rate, and acts as a diuretic. After being on a macrobiotic diet for the better part of a year, I have begun to occasionally introduce some green tea into my days. Namely, Genmaicha Green Tea.

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Since beginning a whole-healing, whole-grain way of life, and before, I’ve been very connected to the moon and its cycles. I can hardly describe the feeling of comfort and joy that a very dark night away from the city with a brisk Minnesota chill and a clear sky with the moon shining full in the sky brings to my heart, and to my core as a woman. Being macrobiotic and eliminating most sludge from my intake has allowed me to come into my intuition in a deeper way than I could have imagined, and it grows deeper each day. One of the most rewarding parts of deep intuition for me is coming into consciousness, so to speak, of my menstrual cycle. I have been reading “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom,” which is a great book by gynecologist Christiane Northrup. Dr. Northrup describes the power of natural remedies, cycles, and healing, but also acknowledges times that more conventional medicine may be the best remedy for a health problem. Alas, this is not a review of Dr. Northrup’s book (although I would recommend it highly, along with “The Female Brain” for women who seek to understand the cycle of hormones and its effect on your body and psyche). In one of the chapters Dr. Northrup writes about women’s menstrual cycles — and the effects that different hormone secretions throughout it have on a woman’s body and psyche.

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This morning as we were making our way in the city, a giant wild turkey passed right in front of our car! As if to say “Thanksgiving is coming! And I’m going to remind you about it right now - what are you going to eat!?” Jacob and I have discussed various options. We’ll be with family, but we’re thinking of making a nice wild rice salad dish to share and perhaps one of Jessica Porter’s Thanksgiving recipes… but, we’ll leave that for another post… it’s a ‘fun fact’ day here on A Grain A Day!

Did you know…

• According to the US Department of Agriculture, more than 45 million turkeys are cooked and eaten in the US at Thanksgiving - 1/6 of the total turkeys sold in the US each year!
• At one time, the turkey AND the bald eagle were each considered the national symbol of America - Ben Franklin really liked the idea of the turkey as our national bird…
• A turkey under sixteen weeks of age is called a fryer, and a young roaster is five to seven months old.
• Turkeys are the only breed of poultry native to the Western Hemisphere — so at least they are a little more “local” for Americans, at least !?
• Turkeys don’t have external ears! But they still have really good hearing, I guess.

Hmmmm… Anyone have any others? Or, better yet, turkey-alternative-suggestions!? :)

For many of us, macrobiotics is a form of remodeling our physical health. Whether you are attracted to macrobiotics for its healing properties, or for its balancing effect on mood, or simply as a challenging way to be socially responsible, you know that it is necessary to work with what you have, to be patient with your progress, but overall, to work toward the greater goal. This greater goal is rebuilding your body cell by cell. The fundamentals of your body are strong (:P). Long ago, the foundation was laid upon which to work, but most macrobiotic days, I feel like I’m gutting the place. I’m getting rid of everything that’s been in my cells before: toxins, chemicals, fats. I’m tearing down walls and ripping up carpet in order to make room for new, more colorful, more holistic energy.

Well–for the last week, my macrobiotic remodeling process had its contractor call to postpone. Had some more important job somewhere else, I guess. The sad little gutted house had no forward progress made. Rather, I feel like in the absence of the contractor, the workers came in and did something as drastic as installed all the doors upside-down.

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The first in a two-part, Saturday series exploring the hows and whys of iron intake, macrobiotically.

On a whim, I signed up to run a half marathon in February. As the race approaches and my runs stretch longer and longer, I feel my body changing ever so slightly. I’m a little bit leaner, a little bit yanger and a whole lot hungrier. I haven’t been able to find much information about macrobiotics and endurance running, but one thing I do know is that runners – especially female, pre-menopausal runners – need to stay on top of their daily iron intake.

Iron is essential to the production of hemoglobin. Hemoglobin lives in the red blood cells and binds to oxygen, transporting this all-important molecule from our lungs to every single cell in our body. And since we need a big supply of oxygen for basically all cellular functions, when we are running low on hemoglobin (and subsequently not getting enough oxygen) we start to feel fatigued.

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Maybe it is because I’m born, raised, and living in Minnesota - born and raised in rural Minnesota, at that - with meat and potatoes, gravy, creamed corn, tuna noodle hotdishes… Maybe it’s because the winter is so cold and the need to bundle is so present here…. or maybe it is just because I’m human - I think we’ve all got these deep cravings for comfort food - especially at the turn of the season from fall to winter, when the holiday lights start to appear on houses and trees, and wreathes in stores… something about this time of year makes me yearn for food that is going to nourish not only my body but also my soul - the way my mom’s beef stew did for me when I was a teenager, or her wild rice soup, or danish apple bars, belgian waffles with fresh strawberry puree… (Image is from www.101cookbooks.com, where chef Heidi Swanson has amazing food photography and great recipes - this is the Chickpea Hot Pot, linked to below.)

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Weekend Chef gives you great recipes a few days ahead of time so you can plan a delicious macrobiotic weekend meal.

A few days ago Andrew Lee sent me a link to a New York Times article about quinoa. He sends me a lot of links, but I decided to click on this one, as he had put extra emphasis on this particular link. I’m glad I followed it. Quinoa Pilaf with Pomegranate may be my new favorite light dish. I whipped this up tonight for Kerstin and myself and really enjoyed the rich depth of spices with the sweet infusion of pomegranate. It really does taste as good as it looks. Viola!

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Weekend Chef gives you great recipes a few days ahead of time so you can plan a delicious macrobiotic weekend meal.

Simple, sweet, and satisfying, you’ll be gobbling up these tasty little treats faster than you can say sweet brown rice!

Mochi is a glutinous rice cake made by pounding and pressing sweet brown rice into shape. Happily, when you cube it and put it on a baking sheet in the oven, the pieces puff up into delicious, light sweet treats.

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Halfro’s post on Sunday got me thinking about conversations with family, about judging my own food choices, about judging other people’s food choices, and about how macrobiotics fits into “life as usual” so to speak. I was going to write today’s post on the benefits of macrobiotics to the human immune system — but as I was looking around for information on that, i came across an interesting article about Casa de Luz in Austin, TX, and it’s culinary school, The Natural Epicurian Culinary School. The article talks about the lifestyle of macrobiotics - about how it is not just about food, and it’s not just about a strict set of guidelines that we follow just for fun.

Instead, macrobiotics is about choices that we make - and listening to our bodies to make those choices. Macrobiotics teaches us to tune in to our own intuitions to make choices about what is best and healthiest for our bodies at any given time. The article also points out that it’s not at all helpful to be judgmental of other people’s lifestyles or food choices. For some reason there is this tendancy to push our views onto others - much like meat-eaters often try to push their views onto us… Do you ever find yourself trying to persuade people to “go macro”?

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We’ve been curious about grain coffee for some time. Skeptical, and curious. After I started working in downtown with all kinds of coffee-drinking maniacs and coffee shops left and right, the craving really started to get to me. I broke down one day and had a soy hazelnut latte. The bad news is — it was with vanilla soy milk, which basically tastes like a big glass of sugar syrup, to me… Needless to say, the beverage was way too sweet. The second part of the bad news is the effect the beverage had on my body — WHOA! All of the sudden my heart was racing, the blood was pulsing through my veins, and my thoughts were racing. My body temperature shot up (well, I didn’t take my temperature but I sure felt hot), my face got a little red, and I started to experience shortness of breath. Now - it’s not like I’ve never had coffee before! A year ago I was downing two double lattes a day to keep me going, and getting headaches if I missed my morning cups. I really enjoy the flavor of coffee, and I used to enjoy - at some point before the addiction - the extra energy that it seemed to give me. But my coffee drinking experience of late was just sort of creepy - not at all comforting or enjoyable… I knew I needed an alternative.

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