Confession

Lately I have strayed; I've been too busy to cook and family gatherings have had me eating bagels and lox. It's amazing how quickly the old cravings come back once I start eating the fun carbs again.

Yesterday I did make the hijiki recipe to be found in Jessica Porter's book and a veggie stirfry, only to fall off the wagon with half a carton of Celestial Seasoning's Chocolate Caramel Chai, which is made with Rice Dream but still.....

Spices

Even I--and I'm Nordic and we tend to regard salt as a dangerous spice--find most macrobiotic recipes to be a bit bland; I've been adding curry, tumeric, coriander, cumin, etc. to my veggie/seitan stirfrys.

Of course, I've been too lazy and/or busy to cook anything but stirfrys, as a result of which I've strayed a bit from the macro straight and narrow.

Umeboshi balls

Actually, they're rice balls with umeboshi plum inside but I like calling them umeboshi balls 'cause it sounds like a Japanese sex toy....

My variation on them requires rolling them in the freshly roasted sesame seeds while still in the pan so that the seeds stick. I'm too lazy to crush the seeds first, also too lazy to use nori.

Flava!

As a recovering sugar junkie--dare to say almost recovered--it's been a delight to learn to appreciate savory, salty and mildly spicy food. I don't crave sweets the way I used to. Fourteen days without sugar....

Mana

646 Amsterdam Avenue (91st-92nd St.)

I gave them a second chance and am glad I did. I indulged in crispy and and just greasy enough sweet potato dumplings. My SO was impressed by his yakisoba and my tortilla plate was extremely satisfying. I was not in the mood to be ascetic tonight.

Chocolate tofu pie

Posting about Ozu made me want to go, so we had dinner there tonight. I had an excellent Ozu roll, which is really more like a burrito with kobucha (pumpkin), eggplant (I was wrong--they do serve nightshades), beans, and tofu in a whole wheat tortilla. My husband and I split a piece of chocolate tofu pie; it was very dense but not too heavy. At first I thought it wasn't sweet enough but now I'm craving another piece....

Macro Restaurants in Manhattan

My favorite on the UWS is Ozu (566 Amsterdam between 87th & 88th Streets); I rely on them when I get cooking fatigue. They make a really delicious portabello spring roll (you can get it steamed rather than fried if you're avoiding fried foods); I also love the way they cook salmon. They're certified Kosher, having stopped serving crustaceans a while back.

I wish we had a branch of Souen up here, or Angelica's Kitchen (not strictly macro but vegan and you can avoid the deadly nightshades on the menu) for that matter. I haven't tried Mana recently; I ate there a while back and was underwhelmed but I should probably give them another chance.

Arame madness

Lesson du jour: Seaweed Expands. I was sort of vaguely aware of that, but didn't realize just how much cooked seaweed 2 1/2 oz. arame produces. I made a tempeh arame dish that would be cloying even in small portions--neither tempeh nor arame are for the faint of palate--and now have enough of the stuff to feed an entire ashram.