the god of small things is the most powerful...

[Derek]

i think this is worth mentioning.

I just made dinner, and my brown rice came out so tasty, so perfect, so delicious, that its completely re-enforced everything i've ever felt about macrobiotics.

chewing it this second, sprinkled with gomasio, it is all at once nutty, chewy, light, deep, rich, smooth...

its as if i just realized that this is the way that brown rice is supposed to taste...like i'm tasting it for the first time.

and it only gets better with each peaceful, anticapatory chew.

THIS is why i love macrobiotics. this moment of harmony with my food.

the rice, my vegetable equivalent, has bonded with me more intimately than any other time i've tasted it.

its truly humbling, to be so nourished by such things.

thank you for your time. i'll get back to my chewing now.

love,
Derek

[Klara]

I'd wondered if the attraction of the computer is as strong for anyone else as it is for me - it's a kind of sharing that I love, and is very strong competition with the food - sometimes actually hard for me to restrain from getting on the computer so that I can eat in total concentration - my mind wanders and also I have thoughts I want to share and want to stop eating so I can write them down while they are fresh on my mind - but I do totally understand your love affair with the wonderful glorius delicious fresh rice. I have felt it also. But not only when the rice is perfect. I have had it come out when it's been too sticky, and yet I still love it very much.

What did you mean by "my vegetable equivalent"? Are you presently doing the rice diet??

Did you already have your trip to NY??

Klara

[Derek]

"Among cereal grains, brown rice is the most balanced. It's size, shape, color, texture, and proportion of carbohydrate, fat, protein, and minerals fall in the middle of the spectrum of the seven principle grains. Wheat, barley, oats, and other grains are divided in half by a slight indentation in their kernals. Rice has no such line and is biologically the most integrated grain - our evolutionary counterpart in the plant world." -aveline kushi

I agree with her...rice has evolved with us, and supplies us with the best nutritional balance when consumed. Us and Rice are a match made perfect by time.

no, i wasn't/am not on the rice diet. But i'm eating rice every day

As for new york, i just got back last night. I love manhattan, and should move there.
A lot of things took place there, but i'll stick with the 2 restaurants i ate at.

Souen - probably the best choice so far. I ate there 3 times in 2 days. They have a very cozy location near Union Square on 13th near University Place. Priced very well (lunch specials are $7.50) and proportions are correct (ratio of whole grains to veggies to protiens) and not gigantic. For lunch the first day I had Brown Rice, Miso Soup with wakame and tofu, and steamed squash, carrot, kale, daikon. They also have a divine carrot dressing that i tried on my rice! mmmm. It was really hot out, so i bought a carrot juice from the juice bar and resumed my walking.

Angelica Kitchen - This was the restaurant I was most looking forward to, and was thoroughly dissapointed with. In almost every aspect. The atmosphere was nice, the waitstaff were friendly, but the food was not satisfying at all. I ordered the 'wee dragon bowl' which can come with a cup of soup and bread for a little extra, which I decided to do. Miso soup with wakame and tofu (see a trend?) and 4 slices (!) of unyeasted sourdough bread with onion butter. The bread with spread wasnt bad, but four slices for one person? Thats a lot.
Anyway, the main course I ordered had Brown Rice, Beans (navy), Baked Tempeh, steamed veggies, sea vegetables. When the plate came the proportions were like so:

rice- 5%. FIVE.
protein- 50%
sea veggie - 5%
veggies - 40%
(They also gave me a brown rice 'gravy' made from rice flour and a bunch of different herbs and spices.)
it was like Macrobiotic atkins. I was shocked. Nevertheless, I ate it. To my surpise, the rice was very bland...like it was boiled in too much water. The beans were completely tasteless. The vegetables tasted like they were stolen from the olive garden (a bunch of zucchini and yellow squash chunks, a few slivers of carrots, and a mound of kale and collards) and were all oversteamed and had no taste. the hijiki and arame salad was unseasoned, so it tasted like nothing. The only thing that was mildly sweet, and surpisingly tasty, was the tempeh. I guess they wanted me to drown my plate in the brown rice gravy and the complementary Shoyu bottle at my table. With each bite, my smile from lunch was peeling off my face.

If they'd actually asked me 'how is everything?', I would have told them the truth. but they didnt, and i didnt.

The only remedy to this was to order dessert. Everything looked very complicated and elaborate, so I tried to stick to something simple...Kanten. They had a cranberry and apple kanten parfait with 'hazelnut cream'. I asked them what that meant, and it was pureed hazelnuts with oil, rice syrup and sea salt. Okay. I could go for that. Kanten is light, the cream sounded okay. And yet, somewhere they should have told me it would be sandwiched in granola, and the kanten to cream ratio was 50/50. so it was layers of granola, hazelnut, kanten, granola, hazelnut, kanten... you get the picture. Looking for something light, I might as well just ordered a piece of cake.

I left feeling angry, bloated, like i still needed to eat dinner. they had a cookbook. i was going to buy it before I ate dinner, but after...no way. I'm never going back. Nothing was sweet, nothing was nourishing. i'd want their recipie for the tempeh, but thats it.

Needless to say, day two I ate lunch and dinner both at Souen. Each one was better. I even tried this dish last night - Tempeh Croquettes! Mashed tempeh and veggies, fried, and served with a tofu dip. YUM. They even gave me a pleasant mound of daikon to balance it out with.

I hope my experience at Angelica was a rarity, but they certainly left a bad impression with me. I'm taking my business to souen unless someone convinces me otherwise.