This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 7:14 pm and is filed under Video recipe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

More macro fooling around with a camera… it’s about seven minutes total, so watch it when you can sit back and dance along…

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 3:53 am and is filed under Recipes, Video recipe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I just taught my first online cooking class and it was SO MUCH FUN. I have had a vision for a while now (what’s called a “dream” in macrobiotics) to help people create MB communities throughout the country, world, universe–whatever. What I saw was potluck dinners happening all over the place–so that people had community in this adventure. Macrobiotics can be hard to practice in isolation. I saw people getting together and my providing these DVDs of lectures covering all sorts of macro topics–seasonal cooking, cooking for couples, home remedies etc. The DVD would be played at the dinner and I would be worshipped and feted like a Dr. Evil type, a la Mike Myers. Running the world and all that. Great dream. Totally do-able.

Anyhoo, I think I’m getting there. My point is that practicing MB is sooooooo much easier when it’s done in connection with others, and the internet really provides that opportunity. And now that the video technology is decent, we can be with one another in real time. The classes aren’t exactly pot lucks, but I love that I can show a food (like daikon, burdock, umeboshi plum) that might never get eaten without a gentle, visual introduction. I was intimidated by all this weird stuff in the beginning too! I love that people can ask questions and get immediate answers. NOW ALL OUR PROBLEMS ARE SOLVED AND THE WORLD WILL BE MINE. Wow. Big stuff for a little Wednesday in January! I had a lot of fun tonight, and the viewers, from Orlando, Joliet, Topeka, Toronto, The Berkshires, and Boston (to name just a few of the cities from which people logged on) seemed to have fun too. And hopefully we all feel inspired to keep cooking, letting nature have her wonderful way with us.

If you want to join us next week, go here
God, I love life sometimes.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 12:34 am and is filed under Living Your Dream. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I know.  I haven’t blogged lately.  BECAUSE I’VE BEEN COOKING!!! Like, almost every day, dude!  I’ve also been gearing up for the online cooking classes starting next week by looking through recipes and re-reading Michio Kushi’s The Book of Macrobiotics, just to make sure I know what the heck I’m talking about.

But back to the cooking.  When I saw my mother over Christmas, and how she just cooks like a machine, I made a commitment to cook for 90 minutes a day, 5 days a week.  You might have assumed that I already cooked that much, being the obnoxious macro guru I purport to be, BUT YOU WOULD BE WRONG.  Cooking regularly is one of the biggest issues in my life.  And I’ve actually prayed about it on a number of occasions, saying “Hey Goddess, I know all this cool stuff about food… I even LIKE health food… You’ve even blessed me with this annoying hypochondria so that every time I eat crummy food I retreat into an ‘I’m gonna get cancer’ paralysis… and I know that by cooking every day my life would be so much better…. please help me!”  And yet, I would have this strange resistance–like an anorexia that springs up in the face of my desire.  But watching my mother cook from such surrender busted through all that.  She just did it.  No questions asked.

And I have been feeling terrific!!!  So much energy.  Clarity.  Feelings.  A wonderful sense of forward momentum.  And relief from that horrible hypochondria.

I also went back to acting class.  Ugh.  I’m realizing that I actually have to change (Scream).  And grow (teeth chattering).  Be vulnerable (excuse me while I jump off this cliff!).  And trust my teacher.  Yeah, right.

Truth be told, after I’ve had my hissy fit, I love it when life surprises me–when I get sucked down a vortex I didn’t know was there.  And I had totally forgotten that acting was an unending education, like macrobiotics.  I became arrogant and fixed, rigidly protective of my “self”.  And George Ohsawa said that arrogance is the worst form of illness   Of course, life holds a million vortices waiting to consume us, but the ego does everything to lock into its patterns and habits, repeating them until it feels that lovely illusion of security. BYE BYE EGO.  At least in acting class.

Speaking of class, please join me online so we can cook together.  I’m so excited to send this information out over the web to people all over the place.  I realize that the time zone won’t work for some of you, but as soon as these classes run smoothly, I will create a new time that will work for more hip chicks ’round the planet.

Yeehaw.  JUST KEEP COOKING.

Have a great weekend,

Jessica

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Living Your Dream, My Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I was on the Canadian Shopping Channel this week. THE. SHOPPING. CHANNEL. I might as well have been transported to Neptune in terms of the planet-hopping involved. Think whizzing, whirring TV studio that basically never stops, from 6 a.m. to midnight–every day. Lights, camera, ACTION! Think jewellery and colon cleanses and those little trampolines called rebounders. Oh, and don’t forget the knives, the graters, the juicer and the scale! All for $39.99!! Think the salespeople and the models–and me–hanging out in the green room between our “shows”, during which we are interviewed by the “host”, who grills us about our “products” for ten minutes, live, 3 times that day. Think the number of units sold ticking away down in the left hand corner of the screen. Think people with VISA cards out there–VISA cards just itching to be exercised–and the potential of reaching millions of people. Think: I HAD SUCH A GOOD TIME.

It’s easy to be a snob as a macrobiotic–in fact, MB practice sort of creates it. You start to feel good–really good–and one of the first things the mind say is “I feel so GOOD!” And then it rationalizes (because it must rationalize, and place itself within duality): “Anyone who doesn’t eat like me is an IDIOT!” It’s easy to get arrogant, sanctimonious, and frankly, boring. Thank God the real principles of macrobiotics–the laws of yin and yang–have nothing to do with judging anyone.

It would have been easy to be a macro snob this week, thinking that these two worlds shouldn’t rub together. But had I held onto those attitudes, I might have missed the whole experience. Instead, I looked at it all in the spirit of PLAY–George Ohsawa’s bottom line (read my book if you don’t know who George is). To George, life was play.

Now, play doesn’t mean having fun every single second of every day.  The real meaning of play comes when you study yin and yang, seeing the larger picture of attraction and repulsion, with everything eventually becoming its opposite!  When you begin to perceive that, you can detach from the conventional wisdom and “play”.  Eating macrobiotically also allows you to have a natural flexibility in all situations, which makes life more playful.   “Play” is an apt term too because, when you eat whole grains, abstaining from crappy, processed food, your body cooks up your natural happy chemicals, and you feel a simple, God-given high-on-life euphoria that kids often have.   The MB ride is soft, and deep, and exciting and fun.  It doesn’t mean there isn’t pain, and loss, and that you never have problems–and that they don’t sometimes really suck– but they are all eventually perceived as part of a bigger puzzle of yin and yang.

So, it was great to “play” on the Shopping Channel this week. Great to be part of the health food industry’s great expansion over the last 30 years, as this whole thing becomes more and more mainstream. George also said that yin attracts yang and yang attracts yin; so maybe it’s not so strange when the macrobiotic diet–the ultimate labor-intensive, hardcore health food nutcase diet goes on a date with its whirling, cubic zirconia–strewn, sugar-laced, get-one-now, “only thirty seconds left” energy OPPOSITE.  Yin and yang, baby.  It’s the only game in town.

Truth is, I didn’t sell a huge number of books–but I think I might have planted some interesting seeds. And for the people out there who did order the book off the Shopping Channel, THANK YOU and I would love to hear from you as you begin your macro adventures.

Life is play. Chew well,

Jessica

P.S. Now I can get an “As seen on the Shopping Channel” tattoo on my ass!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 10:46 am and is filed under Living Your Dream, My Life, Spiritual Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

When Howard and I were private chefs, we would always be on the lookout for our clients experiencing “the macro feeling”. It’s difficult to explain if you’ve never felt it, but I remember one guy saying “I’m used to going to work and pounding the desk” as he made the aggressive gesture on an imaginary desk, “but today” he said, with a mixture of surprise and disappointment “I just didn’t feel like it”. Howard and I looked at each other–there it was…it took about a week… the macro feeling!

“how is it that I am on this plane with all these other people who are so clearly stressed out, and I’m floating on this internal macro cloud–is that fair?”

Consistent macrobiotic practice makes you feel… soft. No–cancel that. It makes life seem soft. No–that’s not it. It makes me feel like I have cotton batten inside myself, insulating me from the rough edges of life. Yeah, that’s it. It makes the ride of life… soft. Which doesn’t mean I feel weak or ineffective–if anything, it’s the opposite. I feel clear, and precise and very in-the-moment.

It’s weird. The modern, Western world seems to thrum along at a certain rhythm–one which now invisibly incorporates the internet, the pressures of work, screaming kids and the war on Terror–just to name a few stressors. Turn on the cable news and watch the A.D.D. dance of the anchorperson, the moving graphic to the right of his head, the ticker tape news running below him and the ticker tape news below that ticker tape news. That’s the speed I’m talking about, and the world–as it gets more yang (faster, more pressurized, more crowded) is basically squeezing us to match its speed. But, the MB diet S L O W S I T A L L D O W N …to the pace of a seventeenth-century sheep farm somewhere in Romania.

I almost feel guilty when I’m in the slow, cushiony nervous system of whole foods. I feel like “how is it that I am on this plane with all these other people who are so clearly stressed out, and I’m floating on this internal macro cloud–is that fair?” And I don’t mean fair in the political sense, but in the sense of “how the hell can these two realities be happening next to each other, both waiting for the ‘occupied’ sign to turn to ‘vacant’?” We’re sharing the same external reality of the plane, but on the inside, I am swaying to Enya while my neighbor is thrashing to Megadeth. Seems weird.

That’s why I always say that macrobiotics is about consciousness. It’s about your inner peace and perspective on life. When I go over to my mother’s house in England, we always eat really well. Not perfectly, like the healing diet, but my mother really cranks out three macro meals every day and they are really good. After feeling yucky for a few days, I start to get the macro feeling and I remember just how powerful all this stuff is. I go home absolutely resolute in my determination to practice better. Not to be noble, but just because the macro ride is so nice.

But, and here’s the weird thing: I actually have to get over some fear in order to do that–fear and limiting thoughts. In order to accept that 17th-century Romanian sheep farm feeling in 21st century urban North America, I need to bust through the belief systems and unconscious thoughts that are holding me back from taking such a smooth ride. I need to ask myself: what is preventing me from feeling as good as possible? What resentments and fears is my shadow producing to hold me back? What are my upper limits? How much joy can I stand? I’m sure we all have different answers to these questions, but they are universal questions, nonetheless. Very few people take off like rocket ships without any resistance from their subconscious minds. Growth can bring up anger and fear, precipitating sabotage. I write out my resentments and fears each night in order to get really clear with what my shadow is up to, and it’s very helpful. I follow it up with a gratitude list and I feel deeply prepared to live the following day.

Anyway, just wanted to check in. It’s the new year. It feels great. If you have the macro feeling, enjoy it. And if you don’t, know that the works required to get it is worth it. What I learned at my mother’s house is that the macro kitchen/food life has to function like a machine to get momentum; I can get all caught up in the minutiae of life (”does my intuition say I should do this? Is now the perfect moment? Do I REALLY want this leek?”) while my mother just barrels through and the energy, the force, the love that gets put into the food from that consistent action creates beautiful results. Less thinking, more doing. So, just for today, I’m siding with Nike in saying “just do it”–meaning cooking. Just keep cooking. It’s the real Secret.

I hope I take my own advice…

Jessica

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 1:03 pm and is filed under My Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.