Thursday, August 28, 2014

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
 


Thursday, August 14, 2014

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.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

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.




Saturday, August 2, 2014

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.