Crude Salt Dude!

I was re-reading An Invitation to Health And Happiness and I noticed that Ohsawa reccomends Crude Salt or Sea Salt mixed with sea vegetable powder. By Crude salt, does he mean solar dried salt from land salt mines? And is it neccessary to include sea veg. powder with Sea Salt. I also came across something he reccommended that I had not eaten before. I t was scallion miso. Could someone explain to me what that is? If anyone has a recipe and they could include it in a post I'd be more than grateful.

P.S. If anyone saw the movie Himalaya, about the tibetan tribe living in the himalayas, that crossed the snow packed mountains to trade salt for grain and other food, you could admire the condition of those hard working people. You can see it in their faces. I think this movie's a must for any Shokuyodo People.

Julian

[Roy Collins]

Hi Julian. I have a copy of Invitation to Health and Happiness. Please tell which pages give this information fo I can see what context Ohsawa is using it in: soup, spread, condiment, etc...

In peace, Roy

Hi Roy,

Ohsawa reccomends "Crude salt" under condiments, and he writes about Sea Salt there aswell. There's a list on page 15 of condiments to use. And the scallion Miso is on page 56.

P.S. Did you happen to see Himalaya? If you did and you'd like to comment on the movie, I'd love to hear what you thought, my feedback on the film was very limited because not a lot of people I know saw the movie.

Best Regards,
julian

[Bruce Paine]

Julian,

I believe that what is written on page 15 is a mistake, because the natural sea salt is unrefined salt, so my guess is he is talking about using sea vegetables to supplement refined or table salt.

Crude salt is also sea salt unless it was mined inland, like rock salt.

I don't know about scallion miso but maybe you could try Dandelion-Leek Miso:
( http://www.southrivermiso.com/ourproducts/special.html )

Is this the movie you are talking about?:

Himalaya - l'enfance d'un chef (1999)
( http://us.imdb.com/Title?0210727 )

Thank you, very much.

With warm regards, love, and peace,

Bruce Paine

[Roy Collins]

Hi Julian. My copy of Invitation does not say crude salt but rather, "unrefined" salt. I agree with Bruce that this probably a typo and that the word "sea" was left out after the word unrefined. Both sea and land salt are processed in different ways. They can be refined to make them whiter and finer grained, or they can be left as crude grade. Some companies put in preservatives and additives.

If Ohsawa was taking about refined sea salt however, he probably wanted the user of this product to add the powdered sea veggies to add back some of the trace elements that were removed. Dried Bladderwrack contains iodine for instance.

The scallion miso mentioned by Ohsawa is not a soup but in this case appears to be a spread, or perhaps a sauce for the treatment of anemia during pregnancy. In this case I would recommend that the scallion be first chopped and steamed in a small amount of water until softened, then added to a small amount of miso and mixed into a vegetable or grain dish. I would NOT use too many salt products while pregnant. The washed shiso leaf from umeboshi plum is good for anemia as well as fresh steamed nettles.

Ohsawa qute often is not too clear in communicating his ideas and quite often shoots from the hip. Then there is the problem of translations and editors' idiosyncricies. Always read Ohsawa with a grain of crude sea salt!

I have not see the move but will once it gets to my local video store. It does sound interesting.... Thanks for your post. By the way we have a new camp site selected already for next summer. It will be held on the south shore at Horse Neck Beach in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. I'll post more on this later. Hope you can make it this year...

In peace, Roy