Festive desserts with almonds: 

Almond and date "polvorones"

I would like to share with you some  delicious festive desserts with almonds I found in the blog delicooks.com. The blog has all sorts of recipes and among them I found one I particularly like because besides being delicious, it has none of the "wrong"  ingredients that would ban it from a macrobiotic cookbook. Since the blog is in Spanish, I have translated  the recipe in English for non Spanish speakers.

Ingredients:

300 gr. raw almonds 
135 gr. dates

Directions:

1. Soak the almonds for 48 hours.
2. Drain and peel the almonds.
3. Place them in a baking tray and dehydrate until they are completely dry.
4. Place the almonds in a food processor and blend until you get a very thin  texture (not flour though) .
5. Remove the stones from the dates and add them to the almonds and blend.   
6. Shape the "polvorones" with the mixture.
7. If you want to keep them for some time, you can dehydrate them completely. 

"Polvorones" are typical Spanish Christmas sweets.

Autumn is here

Although the days are still quite hot in Cyprus, we have been able to feel the change of the season for some weeks now.  Our routines have also changed:  we are back to work or school.  We need to adapt to these changes and get ready for the autumn months. If we fail to do so and continue with the same rhythm of activity we had in the summer and go on eating daily raw salads and fruits, having cold drinks what will most probably happen is that, as soon as we have the first cold days of the season, we will catch a cold or even the flu.  So it is the time to strengthen our immune system and balance all the Yin excesses of the summer.   

 Some tips to go with the new energy around us:

• Increase salty condiments such as sea salt, miso, soyu, umeboshi.  I know the days are still quite hot in Cyprus, but we can start eating our miso soup in the evenings.

• Reduce  macerated, pressed and raw  preparations and introduce cooking techniques such as steaming, sauteing, stewing, pressure cooking, tempura.

 

• Favour the beans, grains and vegetables that have  autumn colors and a sweeter taste: millet,  chick peas, pumpkins, onions.

Enjoy the autumn!

Inspiration: healing success stories

Click on the link below to read 

some healing success stories

from people who adopted 

the Macrobiotic diet and lifestyle.

 

Healing success stories
 

Fruit in the summer

Summer offers a wide variety of delicious fruits with a high content of water  and  refreshing energy. However, a diet consisting only of fruit or with  an excess of it  will make us feel very tired after some weeks and with little energy. Some ways to compensate the intake of raw fruit:

• fruit salads with one or more kinds of fruit macerated for about half an hour with syrup and a pinch of salt.
•  mousses
• jellies with agar agar.  

Macerated peaches

Peel 4 peaches and cut them into pieces. Put them in a bowl and add a pich of salt, 2 table spoons of raisins, 1 table spoon of concentrated apple juice, 2 table spoons of rice syrup and  the juice of one orange. Mix and let macerate in the fridge for one hour.

Everything in one dish: whole quinoa salad

This salad contains carbohydrates, protein, minerals, vitamins and  is specially rich in iron, calcium and omega 3 and 6. It is an excellent option to take with us when we eat out.

Ingredients for two people:

·         1 cup of quinoa

·         A pinch of turmeric

·         Tofu cheese or smoked tofu cut into small cubes

·         4 broccoli sprouts

·         1 grated carrot

·         3 radishes

·         4 table spoons of roasted sesame sedes

·         1/2 avocado in small cubes and macerated in lemon juice

·         2 strips of dulse seaweed  

·         Sesame or olive oil

·         Umeboshi vinegar

·         Soja sauce

·         The juice of half a lemon

·         Sea salt

Directions:

1.    Cook the quinoa in a pan with 2 cups of water, a pinch of salt and  the turmeric for 15 minutes.

2.    Boil the broccoli for 1 minute. Chop it finely and season it with the vinegar and the oil. Blanch the radishes and macerate them with some vinegar.

3.    Place the quinoa in a strainer and rinse it under the tap with cold water . Season it with the lemon juice.

4.    Mix all the ingredients: quinoa, tofu, broccoli, avocado, radishes, grated carrot, sesame seeds and   seaweed.

5.    Season with some oil and soja sauce.

Salads

According to the recommendations of the World Health Organisation, from a 25% to a 35% of our diet should consist of vegetables. In the summer it is hot and there is a lot of energy in the environment around us, energy that nurtures our body and therefore we have a smaller appetite than in colder seasons. A refreshing salad is therefore an ideal dish now.  

In traditionally vegetarian countries such as China, Vietnam or Japan, the raw salad as such does not exist. Are raw salads bad for you? No , they are not.  But for sure they are not the best way to to benefit from the vitamins in the vegetables either. It is much better to cook the vegetables for a short time since, although we lose a small percentage of vitamins, we save a lot of digestive energy. When people eat too much raw food, their digestive energy usually diminishes a lot: their belly bloats, they suffer from reflux, flatulence, heavy digestions and tiredness. 

On the other hand,  cooking  the vegetables for a very short time preserves from 80% to 90% of their vitamins. This is  a sufficiently high percentage and specially so if we bear in mind that the digestive weakness that an excessive consumption of raw food can bring about would prevent our bodies from absorbing  correctly the  vitamins in the vegetables. In conclusion, as a general rule, when we eat vegetables, we will cook them slightly in order to increase their digestibility and we will spare  raw salads for occasions such as  after doing a lot of physical exercise, when we eat fish or sea food and in the hot days of the summer.

For our summer salads,  we will use light cooking methods such as  blanching, pressing, macerating,  boiling for a  very short time or sprouting. 

Find here a delicious recipe of a pressed salad.

Eating pulses in the summer

In the summer, a refreshing and appetizing way to eat pulses is in salads. Here you have the recipe of a delicious lentils salad with slightly boiled vegetables and alfalfa sprouts. 

One important thing to take into account is that sprouted foods (germinated grains, seeds and beans) should not be eaten raw because when raw, they have certain substances - substances which  are produced by the sprouts themselves as a way of protection again the infestation of microorganisms-  that prevent the body from absorbing a big amount of the vitamins and minerals they contain. Therefore, before eating sprouts, you have to saute or slightly boil them.  

Lentils salad with  thyme dressing 

Ingredients for two people:

200 grams of boiled lentils

A zucchini cut into matchsticks

1 carrot cut into small cubes

4 table spoons of boiled corn

2 radishes cut into small cubes

Sprouted alfalfa seeds (previously blanched)

Ingredients for  the dressing:

3 table spoons of sesame oil

1 table spoon of roasted sesame oil

3 table spoons of Umeboshi vinegar

A pinch of ground cumin

Dried thyme

Directions:

Mix well all the ingredients of the dressing with a bit of water. Mix the lentils with the dressing and let it macerate for at least three hours. Boil  the carrot and the zucchini for 1 minute and rinse with cold water. Mix all the ingredients and serve.

Summer energy and food

Needless to say, we do not eat in the same way throughout the year. In summer we feel more open  and lively. We become  more sociable and feel like doing activities outdoors. We need energy to cope with this more active rhythm and to be in tune with the energy around us. Our food should be light, colorful, with refreshing flavors and crunchy textures. We  should eat simple and appetizing dishes that, at the same time,   nurture our bodies.

What foods 
should we favor
in the summer?  

• Grains: long grain rice or Basmati rice, barley, quinoa, bulgur, cous-cous, polenta and whole grain pasta.
• Soups: Cold soups and  vegetable creams.
• Proteins: pulses in salads and patés and also fish.
• Vegetables: All kinds of seasonal vegetables.  
• Seasonings and flavors: try different seasonings to enhance your colorful salads. Use fresh herbs, umeboshi or rice vinegar, mustard, garlic, ginger, citrus, good quality olive oil, etc. 
• Seaweed: Dulse, Wakame, Nori.
• Fruit: seasonal fruits in fruit salads, jellies, sherbets and mousses. 

In the summer we need a light, active, refreshing energy that opens us up while nurturing us at the same time. We will reduce the cooking time, pressure and fire in our preparations as well as flours and baked foods.

Is macrobiotics all about food?

George Ohsawa

Macrobiotics is not only about food, what to eat and what to avoid, and a series of techniques to attain physical health. For George Ohsawa, the founder of Macrobiotic diet and `philosophy, the aim of macrobiotics was to improve our consciousness. All of us have the potential to be a better, more balanced and harmonious us and the purpose of macrobiotics is to have the physical and mental health that can take us to achieve our true potential.  The point is not food in itself, but how food influences and affects us in our process to achieve this greater consciousness.

The path towards it is a continuous task in which all our energetic bodies- physical, emotional and mental-  cooperate. Whatever affects the one, affects the others and therefore we should be able to understand the energetic needs of the three of them.  Nature is animated by energy in constant movement. In relation to that, macrobiotics could be defined as the study of the patterns of this energy movement.  If we understand how energy moves, we will not spend our lives going against it with a series of behaviors that sooner or later will bring about illness.

When I talk about alchemy in our kitchen and our lives, I am referring to the power we have to generate long term, surprising and powerful effects that bring quality, freedom and balance. We need to learn about the effects of different foods and their consequences. Once we are informed, we will be able to knowingly and freely choose what we want to create in our lives. And since we are all unique and constantly changing and moving with life, we will observe ourselves and our environment to be able to adjust to life’s changes.

So, going back to the question of the beginning, macrobiotics is for sure not a series of instructions about what to eat and what to avoid, but about learning how to use food to our advantage. Food is not the destination, it is only the way. If you want to know what you have to eat, you will have to determine first what you want to achieve. And here we have to make it clear that food is only part, although a big part, of the picture.  Food will help us enormously to attain the better us I was talking about before, but it will work in collaboration with other things.   

Last I would like to emphasize that macrobiotics cannot be any further from a rigid, static approach based on rules being as it is all about knowledge, freedom, flexibility and creativity.

Sugar- free Cookies

Almond and oats cookies with cranberry and blueberry jam

Ingredients: 

1 cup of ground almond. 

Half cup of fined milled oat flakes. 

Half cup of rice or oat milk. 

3 table spoons of rice syrup. 

Some drops of almond essence. 

A pinch of sea salt. 

Sugar free cranberry and blueberry jam.

Directions: 

1. Mix the almond, the oats, the milk, the salt and the rice syrup in a bowl. 

2. Add the almond essence and make. 

3. With your hands, shape the cookies  and make a hole in the center. 

4. Place the cookies  on a baking pan and fill the hole with the jam. 

5. Bake at 170º for 20 minutes. 

TRAINING IN MACROBIOTICS

TRAINING IN MACROBIOTICS

BASIC LEVEL

For people that want to be introduced to macrobiotics, a philosophy that recognizes the profound effects food, environment, activities and attitude all have in our body-mind-emotions. In the workshop of the basic level you will know what this philosophy is all about and put it into practice.  

CONTENTS:

·         What is macrobiotics and how to apply it to your everyday life.

·         Key recipes to start with.

·         Use of grains, vegetables, pulses and other basic foods in the macrobiotic diet.

·         Foods to avoid: sugar, dairy, animal protein, etc. and their effect in our organism.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

Workshop 1-

Kitchen: First steps with macrobiotics: A basic menu.

Theory: Basic ingredients in the diet: grains, pulses and vegetables.  Nutritional  and macrobiotic study of these foods.  Organization in the kitchen.

Workshop 2 –

Kitchen: First steps with macrobiotics: energetic breakfasts.

Theory:  The bitter side of sugar. The myth of the dairy products. 

Workshop 3 –

Kitchen: Cutting techniques. Standard macrobiotic menu for spring.

Theory: Basic ingredients in the diet: The energy of grains. Classification of vegetables.

Workshop  4 –

Kitchen: Standard macrobiotic menu for summer.

Theory: Protein of animal or vegetable origin? Vegetable  proteins.

COURSE STRUCTURE AND DURATION:

The duration of the course is 24 hours. You can choose one of the following programs:

-          During the week workshops: Wednesdays from 3 to 7 pm. Dates: 19^th March, 26^th March, 2^nd April, 9^th April, 16^th April, 30^th April.

-          Weekend workshops: Sundays from 10:00 a.m. to 16:00 p.m. Dates: 23^rd March, 13th April, 4^th May, 1^st June. There is also the possibility of doing the one- day workshops on Saturdays.

-          Intensive program:  23^rd- 26^th April 2014 from 10:00 a.m. to 16:00 p.m.

FEES:

·         During the week 4 hour workshops: 40 Euros/workshop.

·         Weekend 6 hour workshops: 60 Euros/ workshop.

·         Intensive program (Four 6 hour workshops in 4 consecutive days): 240 Euros.