[garymill]

Well first off you would not go wrong in having a good macrobiotic cookbook. The Self Healing Cookbook is a classic. I also really like the new The Hip Chick's Guide To Macrobiotics by Jessica Porter, review is right here,

Are you able to shop at a natural foods market like whole foods, or Wild Harvest. Even if you could not get one of the above books, almost any macrobiotic cookbook would be very helpful. You would get many recipes to start with and a good sense of what dishes to cook together as a meal. Also you would get a good sense of which vegetables are considered the best to use, while which ones you may want to avoid like nightshades.

Having a beginners guide to get started is something that we hope to have up in the future.

For now, can you tell me if you currently use whole grains at all like brown rice, or millet. Grains if you already did not know make up a large portion of what one will eat. Do you currently have good quality sea salt? Another important seasoning that you will use often is shoyu, which is naturally brewed and aged for 18 months or more unlike what is often called soy sauce which is often made in a much quicker chemical process and is not considered healthy. Both these items are important, and you may have to eventually get them from another source, we do sell them online here, just to let you know, but as much as possible I am gearing this so you can get as much locally. You may already have good quality oil, high quality sesame oil, and also olive oil are good to start with, hopefully you already have a good knife to use too.

Tofu and Temph are other items that you would want these are bean products, and many stores which one would not consider health food stores carry them today. Other things that you would want to pick would be kukicha twig tea, some basic sea vegetables like nori, kombu, and wakame, eventually you may want other ones like arame and hijiki too. Miso is something you may be able to get locally too, Miso Master Miso, by Great Eastern Sun. Also various beans to get started like lentils, aduki, are good to have too. It would be good too if you can find a thickening agent used often in macrobiotics called kuzu. Some vinegars used often are umeboshi, then to a lesser degree brown rice vinegar.

Once again it would be a great idea to have a cookbook as these are just the raw ingredients one would use in cooking, but the cookbooks would provide the recipes. We do have some recipes online, but they are not put together to make up a meal. Most of the ingredients I have listed, I could find at a Whole Foods Market, except for the sea salt or shoyu. Then once again consider mail order and online sources for ingredients such as us as you can often obtain a higher quality product through them. Hopefully I have given you most of the most common ingredients. Some of the more common vegetables you would want to get would be leafy greens, like kale, collards, napa, bok choy. Then things like cabbage, winter squash which should be plentiful soon, carrots, cabbage, celery, onions, broccoli, scallions, string beans, Brussel sprouts, parsnips, and turnips. Obviously you may not want to get all these at once, but I am just giving some sense of the vegetables to typically buy.

Other sources of recipes I see online are here http://www.macrobioticmeals.com/macrobiotic_recipes.html and a great source of them at the Kushi Institute web site, http://www.kushiinstitute.org/community/recipes.html

I am sure that you can find more looking, but mind you once again that you will find that a good cookbook is your best source.

Hope this helps,

Gary