Macrobiotics Today, November/December 1994, Vol. 34, No. 6
"Over the Years" Gale Jack
I began the practice of macrobiotics in Irving, Texas, in February of 1979. About the only thing that's similar in my practice then and today is that I use essentially the same foods - whole grains, seaweed, vegetables, beans and bean products, nuts and seeds - as the basis of my diet. The variety of cooking styles has changed, the number of grains, beans, pickles, condiments, seaweed and vegetable dishes that I feel confident in making at home has increased, and the amount of salt, pickles, miso and condiments that I use daily has decreased. Also, I use fewer baked flour products - especially bread and cookies.
Like many other people, I began by learning a few basic recipes with one or two kinds of grain, three main kinds of beans, two or three recipes for miso soup, one or two recipes for pickles. I also learned one cookie recipe. I didn't eat noodles for years because I didn't know how to prepare them. I didn't know how to use tofu as there were no tofu dishes in any of my early macrobiotic cooking classes. I bought it several times but it was so tasteless that I'd throw it out. Also, I couldn't buy tempeh locally at that time and all my attempts at making it at home failed, probably because of the hot climate. I learned to make whole wheat bread using a fair amount of sea salt and ate it often. I made gomashio with a ratio of about eight parts sesame seeds to one part salt. It was some time before I began to associate the gomashio tasting I had done early in the morning with the cravings for oil, protein and sweets that I had later in the day. Often after making and tasting the gomashio, I would charge out of the house and drive across town, too yang to stay home and relax.
It's A Wonder I Survived
At the same time, because of a rather narrow view of what correct macrobiotic practice was, I seldom ate raw salads, found pressed salads too salty, refused to eat any animal food including white meat fish for fear it would make me less feminine and I ate mostly pressure-cooked short grain rice because I understood that it was the most balanced, even though I lived in a hot, dry climate and a busy city with lots of noise, traffic, and concrete. I didn't drink beer because it wasn't on the standard diet list. It's remarkable that I survived long enough to be writing about my experience. My condition was quite yin when I started macrobiotics as I came to it from a diet of raw fruits, juices, and vegetables. So for a while this yang way of eating helped make balance. But once the temperature reached the nineties, I craved oily, baked cookies and large amounts of fruit - cooked and raw. So while I didn't die, I never got strong. I needed further study to improve my health and to guide others.
In 1984, I scrimped and saved and managed to come to the Kushi Institute's summer conference in New England as a work-study student. One of the Waxman's from Philadelphia supervised the kitchen that year and the food was so varied and delicious; it broadened my understanding of what eating macrobiotically could be like. He used less pressure-cooked rice, included nice soups and salads and desserts at almost every meal. And I was always the first in line for them! I washed and cut vegetables for hours - as my energy permitted. One of the women who washed along with me - a newcomer to macrobiotics - offered her diagnosis that I was "heavy dairy." I found that amusing since I hadn't had any cheese, milk, yogurt or butter in about six years. It was good to know that I wasn't the only one there who needed further study. Other friends were more knowledgeable and helpful and most everyone was kind. There was magic in the food, magic in the people there, and magic in the setting. It was a rustic setting with unheated cabins lit by candles and outdoor showers with running water somewhere between frigid and icy. In an early cool spell, the temperature dropped into the forties that week. One night I piled all of the clothes from my suitcase on top of the covers to stay warm and when I woke the next morning was shocked to see women dressing in shorts to go outdoors! Those yang New England women!
I saw Herman and Cornellia Aihara while I was there and complained to Herman about my general weakness. He said I was eating too much fruit. I said, "But it's hot in Texas!" He replied that even in a hot climate, too much fruit is not good. Still I thought, "What does he know? He's never tried to live there." My past eating had made me so stubborn that I almost had to destroy myself before I could hear his advice or change my direction. A number of years and a number of serious health problems later I came to realize the wisdom of limiting the amount of fruit I eat.
Off To Boston
In the spring of 1985, I moved to Boston where I planned to stay indefinitely while I studied at the Kushi Institute. That plan lasted until November when an early ice storm draped the trees and chilled my spirit. I scurried back to Dallas and the familiar comfort of noise, concrete, skyscrapers, heat, and rejecting family members. But one thing was different this time. I began receiving letters, books, and care packages of mochi, tempeh and other favorite foods from a macrobiotic author I'd met (yes, and cooked for) while in the Northeast - a man named Alex Jack.
My marriage to Alex in 1986 and wish to support his dream and to develop myself brought us back to the Kushi Institute in Becket, Massachusetts in 1988, where my understanding of food developed.
While in Texas, breakfast had been a very simple affair. I took some leftover grain from the night before, rolled it in a piece of nori, added a spoonful of natto, a few sesame seeds and that was it. Occasionally I might steam the grain and add gomashio or barley malt or have a cup of miso soup with it, but there was very little variety.
In Becket I learned a porridge style of preparation. Now, if I cook the grain fresh in the morning, it's with four cups of water to one cup of grain. If I use leftover grain from the previous evening, then I add about two cups of water per cup of cooked grain and simmer for ten to fifteen minutes. That makes the grain softer, more expanded and easier to digest and, therefore is more relaxing to persons eating it.
Also, I use more variety in the preparation of morning porridge such as adding dried fruit, vegetables (such as rice or millet with squash, millet with cauliflower, whole barley with diced cabbage and corn, or whole oats with leeks and carrots), chestnuts, brown rice syrup or barley malt as well as different garnishes such as scallion, chives, sea vegetable powders, roasted seeds or amasake. I seldom use gomashio or miso soup in the morning because I find it too contracting for my condition.
My family enjoys rolled oats often and although I like the taste, I have a conceptual block against eating processed grains though I will eat them on occasion as well as corn grits which I learned to enjoyed in my pre-macrobiotic days in Texas. I'm using more unhulled barley now because of its upward energy as well as more medium grain rice. And on the occasional Sunday, I will prepare mochi waffles with a barley-malt/lemon syrup, blueberry pancakes from a combination of unbleached white flour and whole wheat flour or steamed sourdough bread with fruit-sweetened preserves or apple butter spread. Now and again I might make whole wheat biscuits or apple turnovers - something like that. And on a rare occasion I will join our daughter, Masha, in a breakfast of crispy brown rice cereal with apple juice. But 75 to 80 percent of the time, I use whole cereal grains for breakfast.
I avoid buckwheat gruel because it makes me want to shovel snow until I freeze or am too tired to do anything the rest of the day. And I avoid quinoa, amaranth and teff for the most part as I prefer to choose from the many other delicious grains available.
Lighter Cooking Styles
I've joined other teachers and cooks at the Kushi Institute in developing a lighter cooking style including nabe vegetable dishes, lightly pressed salads, short-term pickles, boiled rice and millet dishes, and the use of medium and long grain rice almost as frequently as short grain. I eat miso soup two or three times a week at most because it makes me so contracted and I use umeboshi plums only as medicine - never as a condiment with meals. I've also stopped the regular use of gomashio and when I do use it, the proportion is about 18 parts seeds to l part sea salt. I occasionally make homemade tempura, tofu, and tempeh stews, vegetable soups as well as noodle, grain and vegetable or bean soups and other rich but tasty dishes. I avoid chips, crackers, pretzels, and other dry snacks with the exception of the occasional rice cake and enjoy steamed sour dough bread only a few times per week.
Value of Women
With all of this experience, you would think that my condition would be clean and clear and my health and future secured. But I seem to have entered yet another turn in the spiral of yin and yang. With five New England winters behind me, I've become much more yang and more mentally, physically and socially active. So in addition to cooking, cleaning and child care which are all highly labor-intensive and demanding jobs, I drive long distances to shop for groceries and other family needs, copyedit all books published by One Peaceful World, take care of the banking and finances at home and assist with bookkeeping, memberships, correspondence and mailing for the One Peaceful World organization. I've begun to think a woman's time has become an artificially undervalued resource. In the same way that we use up too much clean air and water because it has no price, the family tends to make extra demands on the housewife's time because it has no price. If women were paid a market-value wage for the hours they worked in the home, much less would be required of them.
The Best Choice We Can
I'm no longer able to make cooking for my family my highest priority. It has to be worked in between many other tasks. I awake with so much to do that I have difficulty deciding where to begin. Since Alex doesn't enjoy cooking, when I need to be spelled in the kitchen, he usually suggests going to a restaurant. So we've eaten out much more in the last few years than I did in my early years of macrobiotic practice. We make the best choices we can, but most all restaurant food is higher in fat and salt than home-cooked food. We also travel more - both individually and as a family - and that makes careful eating difficult.
Then living close to a macrobiotic education center has a big front and back. It's a wonderful place to study. Through taking Michio Kushi's spiritual seminars, I finally became free of the fear of heaven, hell, and death that I'd had since I was seven or eight years old. And I've developed an unshakable faith in the Order of the Universe and come to appreciate the specialness of all people. And I've shared many wonderful holiday and special-occasion meals with people from all over the world. But the Kushi Institute is an educational center; there is little community here. There are several families scattered throughout the county but the distances are too great to make getting together for dinner an easy option. So, quite often the spouse (in most cases, the husband) is actively involved with people all day, but as the one in charge of home and family, the wife is quite isolated and seldom has anyone to cook or share meals with other than her children and her husband when he's not in a meeting. I do have a few friends and we try to have family get-togethers around our husbands' travel and teaching schedules, but it's very difficult because the men have been around people all day or all week and want to rest when they come home while the women have been at home alone for the same period of time and would like more stimulation. And an environment which is not conducive to travel for many months of the year doesn't help the problem. Several couples have divorced since I've been at Becket - all of them had children and had been together a number of years before moving here - largely because the women no longer felt a part of the man's dream. Becoming too yang can also be a problem as then neither partner can appreciate the other's point of view.
Self-reflection
Definitely, I need to self-reflect and find a way to change my direction and my priorities before I become so yang that I lose all I have gained over the past fifteen years and charge off to the tropics to make balance by sautéing bananas rather than burdock. We all need to self reflect if we're to continue and grow. We need to develop creative options where two or more families live together and share in food preparation and household tasks or develop communities where labor is socialized and gardening, household tasks, child care, errands, cooking and other projects are shared. We could return to smaller houses with only the things actually necessary for our life or we could build private sleeping quarters for individuals and/or families with a shared area for cooking. At the very least, we can support the one who is responsible for the daily cooking (male or female) and see that she/he has adequate help and time for socializing and relaxing.
The Broader Family
In some cultures even today there may be six or seven generations represented at mealtime, but because of the relatively few people practicing macrobiotics, most of our families are nuclear with only parents and their children present. Everyone loses in this scenario - the young miss the gentle spirit, attention and experience of their elders and the elders miss the excitement, energy, and optimism of the young. Those in the middle miss the interaction of the broader family and the stimulation of shared ideas.
We can't remedy the situation completely. Who among us has members of even four or five generations alive today? Some parents, brothers, and sisters are no longer interested in eating with their macrobiotic son, daughter, or sibling. We can't remedy the situation all at once but we can begin to develop more ways to provide love, support and community for each other.
End of Article
Author bio-statement: Gale Jack is the co-author of Promenade Home: Macrobiotics and Women's Health and Amber Waves of Grain: American Macrobiotic Cooking (Japan Publications). She lives with her family in Hinsdale, Massachusetts.
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