Macrobiotic goodness
Cooking macrobiotic food is simple enough. You arm yourself with good, clean ingredients and proceed with little else: water, salt and miso. Its central philosophy is that there are no extreme flavors: A delicate balance of Yin and Yang cooking, if you will. I roll my eyes when Rusty tells me this. To me, it’s plain bland.
I am unused to limiting my palatte to such pared-down essentials. In every meal, there is always a miso- or vegetable-based soup. No beef, lamb, pork or poultry are allowed. Protein is wrought from beans, soy and white fish. Most food is cooked gently - steamed, boiled or quickly sauteed - if not served raw.
So far, some of my more successful attempts at macrobiotic cooking include: For breakfast, a bowl of steamed barley, cooled, then mixed with cut melon and raisins. For lunch, steamed butternut squash with edamame, 15-grain rice boiled in miso soup, and a broccoli-shitake mushroom stir-fry with sesame. Dinner is a steamed fillet of cod on a bed of scallions, topped with ginger, whole-grain brown rice, and a sweet onion soup with seaweed and tofu.
After three days of this diet, I can attest to one real (and important) benefit to taking in all that macrobiotic goodness. You shit really easy.