Macrobiotic Cooking Class for Thanksgiving Shopping List
It’s so easy following a macrobiotic diet near Holiday time, because we can shop our holiday meal list early before the crowds hit the markets! That’s right! Hardly any of our food is really perishable, so collect most of what you will use even a week out or more, and that week just pick up your fresh organic veggies, firm tofu, and you are back home, relaxing on your lounge chair with your favorite book!
Here is the list for our Thanksgiving Class Menu, featuring:
Tofurkey with Herbed Stuffing and Southern Pecan Mushroom Gravy
Easy Squash Pie
Cranberry Sauce
Pumpkin Pie
Warm Cider
We’ll start with the Tofurkey
Equipment:
Colander depending on the size of your dinner party, medium to large
11 x 5 – serve 20-25 6-7 pkg of 14 oz. tofu, extra firm
8 x 4 – serve 8-10 5 pkg of 14 oz. tofu, extra firm
7 x 4 – serve 4-6 3 pkg of 14 oz. tofu, extra firm
Please have extra tofu handy just in case you need it to fill the colander.
Cheesecloth
Baking Sheet
Pastry Brush
Baking Paper – we prefer this to aluminum paper
Heavy Object (1 gallon apple juice jar works like a charm)
2 Metal Spatulas
Knife, wooden spoons
Tofurkey Ingredients:
Extra Firm Tofu, Nasoya, Whole Foods, Wildwood are brands we use
Shoyu: Sakurazawa or Johsen Mitoku, Natural Import Catalogue is special!
Toasted Sesame Oil: Mitoku Hiraide, Natural Import Catalogue, very gourmet!
Herbed Stuffing Ingredients:
organic olive oil
1 organic yellow or white onion
celery – as white as you can find in color is sweetest!
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup raisins
14 teaspoon Si Salt sea salt – Kushi Institute Store
1/3 cup pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup shoyu
4 1/2 cup sourdough bread cubes, Whole Foods Bakery – non-yeast bread
3 Tablespoon fresh sage, or 1 Tablespoon dried
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1 Tablespoon fresh thyme, chopped
1/2 teaspoon black pepper, optional
Southern Pecan Mushroom Gravy Ingredients – Serves large group!
1 large onion
2 cups mushrooms
5 Tablespoon Kuzu, – Natural Import Co.
3 Tablespoon Shoyu – Sakurazawa or Johsen Mitoku Natural Import Co.
2 Tablespoon Sesame Oil – Hiraide, Natural Import Co.
3/4 Cup organic pecan
chopped parsley
Cranberry Sauce
2-3 boxes organic cranberries
Suzanne’s brown rice syrup to taste
2 – oranges for juice and zest
lemon zest
Easy Squash Pie
kabocha squash 1 per 8 people
potato masher, wood or metal
Si Salt sea salt
Pumpkin Pie
Crust
3/4 cup organic whole wheat pastry flour, Arrowhead Mills
3/4 cup organic unbleached flour, Arrowhead Mills
1/4 cup corn oil or organic safflower oil
pinch Si Salt sea salt, Kushi Institute Store
1/2 cup ice water
Filling
2 cups winter squash, kabocha or buttercup
1/3 cup Suzanne’s barley malt, Natural Import Co.
2 Tablespoon corn oil
1/2 cup organic pecans
Pinch Si Salt sea salt
2/3 cup Suzanne’s brown rice syrup
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup vanilla amasake, Rhapsody Foods, Montpelier, Vermont! Delish!
4 Tablespoon kanten flakes
3 Tablespoon kuzu
Warm Apple Cider
In Atlanta we enjoy Whole Foods 365 Apple Juice, not Gravenstein
In Northern California, try Nana Mae’s Apple Juice! Worth the trip to Calistoga!
Enjoy with or without cinammon sticks! A warm welcoming aroma for your guests!
You still have time to order ingredients from these wonderful macrobiotic food resources:
Natural Import Company www.info@naturalimport.com 800 . 533 . 3919
Kushi Institute Store www.kushistore.com 800 . 645 . 8744
Rhapsody Healthy Foods www.rhapsodynaturalfoods.org 802 . 229 . 6112
So, get out your fun Thanksgiving decor, shop early, relax and enjoy your guests! Enjoy knowing the freshness your guests will savor, from these beautifully prepared dishes. So different from preparing dishes in advance, freezing them and pulling them out to defrost Thanksgiving morning! Not us!
Everything is freshly prepared, organic with the finest ingredients, soon to become your favorite holiday memory foods! Our whole family can hardly wait to savor these now familiar dishes! And the turkey will love you too!
where can i find Daikon should i get it from the supermarket or the farmers market? Also do u know of any macrobiotic classes that are taught in New Jersey?
Hi Alexis,
Daikon directly from the farmer’s market is a gem! Also, usually Whole Foods has organic daikon with tops, and you can ask your produce
manager there to please keep the tops on for you! Often they are removed to fit the daikon into the small section allowed, and alas, some
of the most nutritious part is tossed. Warren Kramer teaches awesome cooking classes in New Jersey. Please check out his website for the
New Jersey/New York calendar or email warrenkramer@verizon.net. or phone is 617 . 803 . 6597.
Wishing you all the very best in your macrobiotic journey towards health! And if you are in Atlanta, please let us know! marsha and fred rueff
My husband has had blood clots recently for which coumadin was prescribed he also had an A Fib 13 years ago and then again after the second time he went in for blood clots and was re prescribed the coumadin. The first time the blood clots occured was about 2 years before and he was on coumadin and then he was taken off after about 6 months. There are no aparent reasons for either other then maybe genetics. Would he be better off on a macrobiotic diet? If so, how does one go about doing this right. I am so afraid to do the wrong thing.
Hi Ali,
i’m so sorry to be this late getting back to you. Macrobiotics would be so helpful to your husband, and I would love to talk to you personally about beginning a Macrobiotic Diet, and getting the proper consultation and guidance for your husband. It’s very exciting to have the results with Macrobiotic Diet and lifestyle changes, just all wonderful common sense type suggestions you will enjoy, and find sustaining. Please call me at 770 . 396 . 9413. A wonderful book for you is The Macrobiotic Path to Total Health, and I would love to guide you to first steps.
Warren Kramer is coming to Atlanta November 4-9 if you wish to be here during any of that time for consultations and lectures. Please note his schedule on my website! Wishing you all the best.
Marsha
Hi Julie,
so sorry I didn’t get back to you before Warren’s weekend. Somehow this didn’t appear til today – I’ll have to improve something! Warren is returning March 3-9, and if it’s okay i’ve added you to my email list, so you will get the information in
plenty of time. You can email me to marsharueff@mac.com as well. I’m teaching a macro Thanksgiving Holiday Dinner class
November 22, 1-4 pm. It will be amazing tastes with healthy ingredients! please consider coming! You can also call me at 770-396-9413!
Wishing you all the best,
marsha
Years ago I followed a macrobiotic diet. Back then you could walk into any health food store and buy Amasake. It seems impossible to find these days. Do you know why, or where I can find some?
Thanks
Yes Joanna, we order from http://www.Rhapsodynaturalfoods.org. from Montpelier, Vermont. They are a small restaurant and you’ll be delighted knowing they ship on Mondays, just place your order by Friday, and you can email.Or call 802-229-6112. We also order their Tempeh, which still has Vitamin B-12 in it because of the manner processing within a small environment. We order the larger 2 pound size which costs 40 % less than the small size, and it is delish-ious! We resisted ordering for the longest time, and finally our macrobiotic counselor Warren Kramer kept after us, til we tried it, and after that we were hooked. Even bought a second refrigerator/freezer so we could bring in all we need for the year by the end of March, and take advantage of the colder weather shipping to Atlanta! They recently told us their local business is not substantial enough to keep their amasake orders going, but their national orders are, so we are delighted to help support their great efforts for quality by ordering their two products! Enjoy, and thank you so much for writing!
I am looking at that recipe, it looks delicious…..
Oh, it is! Use the Mayer lemons – that’s the trick, and you might find them at Whole Foods in your area! Otherwise, use
less lemon, and sweet to taste, or it might be a bit sour. Course that is the taste for this time of year, nurturing our livers,
lovin’ that sour taste!
If you are ever in Atlanta, come on over and take our macrobiotic cooking classes! we are almost neighbors! good luck in this
wonderful journey towards health!
Let me start by saying excellent site. Im not sure if it has been addressed, however when using Firefox I can never get the whole site to load without refreshing alot of times. Could just be my computer. Thanks
Thanks so much for taking time to reply to our site. I am using a mac computer, so Safari is the button i enter website world, and
godaddy is my website host. If that helps, surely hope it is all compatible with Firefox. My nephew loves Firefox, but he’s in Uganda
helping bring solar lightbulbs there, and i’ll see if he can give me some answers about this, or the Apple store. Will try to make this
easier for you!
Are you related the the Nygaard family in Atlanta? We would love for you to contact us for our cooking classes here, and hope to
help in any way we can in your journey towards health!
Highly impressed, discovered your post on Ask.Happy I finally tested it out. Not sure if its my Opera browser,but sometimes when I visit your site, the fonts are really small? Anyway, love your blog and will check back.See Ya
Thank you so much! Hope to hear from you often. Where are you? If you are ever in Atlanta, please let me know.
Please take one our our cooking classes! Will check out the font thing. I think i’m in 12 or 14, comic sans.
Wishing you all the best in all your interests, and especially this journey towards health!
Intriguing blog. My family and I were just discussing this the other night. Also your site looks nice on my old blackberry. And thats rare. Keep it up.
Thanks so much!!! Please keep your interest in Macrobiotics. There are so many benefits. If you are ever in Atlanta,
come take some cooking classes, and try out our food! Where are you???
Wishing you all the best, and great journey towards health!
It is good that you took your time to write this post; it’s encouraging to see another’s opinion. I appreciate your work on this site, and I’ll come back for more info.
Thank you so much for your sweet comment! We are very strong on Kids with macrobiotics, and have seen such great achievements
and happiest kids eating this way! Wish we can reach more families of youngun’s! If you are in Atlanta, let us know, would love to
have you join our cooking classes, and experience our wonderful macro cuisine!
Wishing you all the very best!
marsha