Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Just another Wednesday

I decided after a thankfully non-eventful day to go to my macrobiotic support group. I noticed a few much younger people there than the usual pensioners. These were daughters of regular macro-goers. I put out my dish that I made at 6:00 am with the recipe so people could see the ingredients. It was a miso stew. What can be more macro than that! Then people saw it had garlic in it and I think that is taboo in strict diets. I heard shrieks of "This dish has GARLIC in it". Some didn't touch my dish, others dared to go garlicky. The host, a Frenchman called Pascale, said garlic makes one fire-y. I said we could all use a little bit of fire in our life. We discussed stuff for 1 1/2 hours - stuff like the head of the macrobiotic institute falling ill - seemed like people wanted to shove this kind of news under the carpet - people on this diet aren't supposed to get sick! But then they said he smoked cigarettes and drank (horrors) coffee!!! Not the barley/fake coffee kind either. They wanted to think of next week's agenda. Let's talk about death said one member. Death? That's not a very positive subject, is it. It can be, piped in another - a transition from one life to the other place. Sounds too spooky for me. I think I'll go to my Debtor's anonymous meeting next week instead. People brought in organic greens that are rare to find in this country. We don't have kale and collard greens here or watercress. You know those dark leafy greens that are supposed to carry all those minerals/vitamins. It's not easy to find them. In fact they're practically non-existent here. So people who live in rural areas are growing these greens on their land and selling them - purely organic. I bought a batch of daikon greens. I don't know what I'm going to do with them yet. They look so wonderful. Someone asked me about my blog. She was an older woman living in a senior citizen's residence. I explained that I write my journal on-line on the web, hoping she'd know what a web was.

"You can write about anything?"she asked
"Anything you want!"
"Can you use dirty words?" she asked with a giant smile on her face
"Of course you can. As much as you'd like. I use them sparingly - some "f" words and some "s" words. It gives spice to my writing."

I thought the woman would jump out of her seat and beg me to offer her some computer lessons so she could start blogging right away. I'd love to see her journal, this 80-something year old woman, peppering her daily blog with "f" words galore. It must be tough in that senior's residence. The place is probably fucked and the food absolutely shitty. She could always blog about that. Next week, the meeting is at her place.

2 comments:

timx said...

Every time I visit your site - which is every day - I get Bravenet popping up all over my screen. Any suggestions? (and don't say 'sign up'!)

Unknown said...

No suggestions sorry. I'm so low tech. I just close the Bravenet window. If it's really annoying, I'll just get rid of the link that says "get more traffic".

So- a macro diet is based on whole grains 70%, cooked vegetables 20% and legumes 10% - something like that. They use alot of seaweed in their dishes for the minerals. This diet is of Japanese origin. Fruits and vegetables need to be cooked and no citrus, etc. except during the summer months. That is in the US. You're supposed to eat seasonal fruits and in the wintertime, citrus here is in season so it can be eaten, but not much of it. People have felt better as a result. But I think these people were waaay too skinny. I think I need to find a happy medium - like no sugar, no chocolates (ha!).