ColdCrystal,
Congratulations on transitioning to macrobiotics!
Because you describe no reason for becoming macrobiotic, it's difficult to suggest how you should approach macrobiotics.
It's interesting that you have a strong attraction to Indian food.
You can continue eating
Gram flour, and everything you like but if you want to transition to a more macrobiotic way, then you will need to discover how to do that using macrobiotic principles, yin and yang and the seasons.
Get your hands on a copy of
The Self-Healing Cookbook: A Macrobiotic Primer for Healing Body, Mind and Moods With Whole Natural Foods by Kristina Turner to start off with.
There is a section on cooking the hearty beans: aduki/adzuki, chickpeas, lentils, and black beans, so a soy sensitive family member can get the proten he needs and wants.
Is that soy problem tofu, or also, tempeh, miso, and shoyu or tamari, too?
The following has a whole chapter on beans and 23 exotic, tasty recipes:
Cooking the Whole Foods Way: Your Complete, Everyday Guide to Healthy, Delicious Eating With 500 Recipes, Menus, Techniques, Meal Planning, Buying Tips, Wit & Wisdom by Christina Pirello
My guess is the Indian restaurants serve white rice, or at best long grain brown rice.
If it's white rice, then I would start transitioning from 90% white and 10%
organic brown basmati tomorrow, then 80% white and 20% organic brown basmati the next day, until in 10 days you are all eating 100% organic brown basmati and then for variety, I would have a small fraction (like a 1/4 cup to every 2 1/4 cups of rice) of other grains and cereals like
kamut,
spelt,
rye, wild rice,
hato mugi (jobs tears) barley,
hulled barley,
pearled barley, lotus seeds, etc.
If you live in a temperate region (where temperatures drop below freezing in the winter then you will want to transition to
organic medium grain brown rice and finally
organic short grain brown rice often by mid-winter.
Of course you will want to include other grains and cereals like
buckwheat. oats (
whole oat groats,
steel cut oats, and
rolled oats), barley,
millet, and corn as well as
bulghur teff,
amaranth,
quinoa, and
couscous in your diet.
Always eating the same thing is yang, whereas variety is more yin.
The oriental approach to macrobiotics is more yang, an Indian approach would be more yin.
Depending on where you live, your activity, your lifestyle, your condition/constitution, and your dream, all contribute to what your diet is and where you want to go with it.
It's all one big adventure.
Please enjoy it!
Thank you, very much.
_||_
Bruce Paine