Hi John, mara jean, and janeyric,
In the
Macrobiotic Food and Cooking Series: Cooking for Health books
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/se...325535-4075939 by
Aveline Kushi and various authors, all contain a certain message about electric as opposed to gas cooking:
"A. Electricity dissipates the molecular structure and strength of your food by causing electrons to bounce out of the atomic field and leaving the atom very unstable.
B. It's very hard to fine tune your cooking with electricity. It isa conductive heat which first warms the coils and then the pot and its contents from the bottom up. You can't change the temperature quickly when turning to high or low because it takes some time to cool or heat the pot. It's difficult to cook uniformly and it's possible that the bottom can burn while the top needs more cooking. A gas flame heats the air around it instead. The food is cooked more evenly and the temperature can be adjusted immediately (a pot of water will instantly stop boiling the moment you turn off the flame, for example) meals are more well cooked.
C. Because of the drawbacks in electric cooking, a person may not feel satisfied with the meal and may crave strong salt or animal food (to counter the yin and weakening effects) which in turn causes a craving for excessive sweets and other yin foods. In other words, it becomes more of a struggle to eat in a balanced manner and stay on the macrobiotic diet".
If one has to use electric cooking for some reason, then a pressure cooker with an Ohsawa Pot inside is a gentler modification of the energy but if for some reason one can't move to a new location with gas cooking, then cooking on a portable (butane or propane) gas stove is perferable in that otherwise electric kitchen.
A good butane stove is the iwatani
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...ayphotohosting and though the gas cannisters in marine/hardware stores (which last between 1.5 [high flame] to 3+ [simmering] hours each) cost as much as 5 dollars (U.S.) through a judicious search, one can find them for less than 1 dollar each (like in a Chinese food supermarket).
Propane is cheaper but one must keep one's windows open sufficiently to allow keep the air you are breathing oxygen rich.
I have more information on these stoves and other cooking stategies but now I must go to work.
Thank you, very much.
Bruce Paine