My first macro cooking class

[damon]

I just got home from my first macrobiotic cooking class and it was a blast! It was held in Garden City, Michigan by Valerie Wilson (aka, Macro Val), author of Perceptions in Healthy Cooking.

We made quinoa miso soup, pressure cooked brown rice, pot boiled rice, aduki beans & daikon, daikon pickles, and boiled collard greens. It's a four week class focusing on cancer prevention.

I was a little hesitant at first about spending the money on a class like this when I've got such a huge (and growing) collection of macro books already. It was absolutely worth it though! So much positive energy and so many interesting little things you can't pick up from a book. It was also pretty cool to just hang out with some like minded people, in person

Now I wish I'd taken a class sooner!

Damon

[Klara]

Damon,

Good for you!!!! Enjoy every moment!!! Don't have regrets of what might have been, doesn't help anyway.

Only additional advice I may have - I'm assuming you're classes are weekly - is during the week, cook over and over again the foods you made in class - that's where the real learning comes in - and then you might have more questions for the teacher after doing so much experiencing it yourself.

Is she giving you handouts? - recipes and info on the foods? - keep all papers in organized notebooks - I still go back to my papers from classes I had 16 years ago -

I think learning in person is always more valuable than just books - so much more to observe, taste, ask and yes, wonderful being with like minded people.

After 16 years, I'm still not using books the way I think can be - sometimes the ingredients are not in season, or not locally found, sometimes the recipes are much more wide than what I want to be practicing now, and sometimes when I finally do try one, I'm just not sure if it came out as it's supposed to, no one to ask questions to. But I too have loads of wonderful mb books and do keep intending to use them more.

Want to share any of your recipes and your reactions to them. Interesting that she made rice both ways - she give you loads of info, why sometimes pot boiled, why sometimes pc?? does she delve in mb philosophy also??

Klara

[damon]

Klara,

That's very good advice. After going through my routine of regular foods yesterday, it dawned on me that I should probably be trying out all this new stuff I learned! I'm a very habit orientated person though so that's another reason I decided I should challenge myself with a class of this nature.

Yes, actually she provided an enormous amount of handouts! One booklet contained pages with detailed instructions on all the recipes we prepared that night. The other papers she handed out included: introductory info on macrobiotics, a list of suggested reading, grain/bean cooking time cheat-cheats, a list of recommended local stores, and various articles on a wide range of other mb related topics. It was an impressive collection of paper we took home!

She did delve in the philosophy as well. When the class first started, she talked for maybe an hour about how she got involved, some of the core principles behind mb, the nature of cancer, etc. She also talked philosophy when we started cooking, for example, why it's important to cut certain vegetables certain ways so that you're balancing the yin & yang energies, etc. There was a lot to take in and I'm sure I missed some things (especially while focusing on not dicing my fingers!), so I'm glad this is a 4-week course

About the brown rice - we only made the pressure cooked rice that night, but she did talk briefly about the differences between the two. Actually, I don't recall if she hit the philosophical differences (I'll have to look that up again), but she did talk about the cooking times. I think I may have been distracted because the pressure cooker was so cool! It was the first time I'd gotten to seen one in use.

Damon