Here's a macrobiotic juice I made this morning (inspired by The Juicing Bible) from carrots (see The Dirty Carrot), apples, and to give them this beautiful crimson color, beets! I also juiced the beet greens to give this leviathan even more depth. I call it the Squid Ink Blotter. Macrobiotically, these foods would be more on the yang side before juicing since carrots, beets and apples are hard, dense, compact, but once you juice them, you've pretty much squeezed the yang out of them. A bad joke, I know, but it's true! Fruit and vegetable juice is more yin as it is free and floaty, in liquid form, able to fill into any container regardless the shape. Before being juiced, good luck fitting a carrot or a beet into a shot glass.We bought all of the fruits and veggies at the Fagan's Farms truck at Churchill Square, and this is what makes this incredible drink macrobiotic: all of the ingredients are grown here locally, with little to no chemicals or pesticides.
This is one of the key criteria in the standard macrobiotic diet (SMD), that the majority of the food we eat should naturally grow in our climate and region. Our bodies don't do well when we eat too much food that ain't from around here. And there's a lot of that! For us here on the rock right now, that means lots of root vegetables, hard tree fruits, pumpkins, squash, etc. Basically, any of the fruits and veggies you see at the truck. But think twice before you grab for those potatoes!
Potatoes are unfortunately from the Nightshade Family, and though it'd be downright impossible to avoid them entirely, you might want to reconsider how much of these you're eating, especially if you're eating them in the form of french fries. Some people are sensitive to the alkaloids in nightshades which can cause arthritis and joint problems, and the SMD generally warns against them. Though I'm not going to stop eating them altogether, I do plan on being more careful from now on. I do actually suffer from some kind of tendonitis that isn't tendonitis (they're calling it overuse-syndrome, whatever that means)--but it's the main reason I started on the road to better health. And in order to do this, I first had to really change my perspective about food. I had to truly make the connection that the food we eat directly affects our health in a major way. Many people have actually reversed disease once they began to eat macrobiotically. I can easily see why.
Macrobiotics is not just a diet, but a lifestyle that allows you to live and eat in harmony with your local surroundings. It is hard for us to do this when we import most of our food across various oceans, boxed and packaged with God-knows-what additives and preservatives to do just that--add and preserve. When you eat foods that are local and close to the earth, there is no factory middle-man. Just true honest, good food that we were designed to eat. Nothing more, nothing less. It's the perfect balance, good for the planet, and good for us.
Love fish? In the SMD, eating fish is the only animal food that is considered AFE (acceptable for eating.) All other animal foods are extremely yang and can get you out of whack pretty fast. I imagine Newfoundlanders will be happy with such news. Just be careful you're food isn't so white all the time as has been my experience once I eat outside of St. John's.
Eat B(right),
Veggie Daddy
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