ROSANNA'S NEWS AND VIEWS©

MAY 1, 1998

Thank you for joining us from around the globe as we come together with the common interest of achieving health and peace through a balanced approach to nutrition. We are a little slow getting off to a start as we are working out some difficulties with our software and the web hosting service we are using.

We will get into full swing as we have the problems resolved and gain experience in the use of this new medium. We have decided to try distributing our newsletter by sending you browser references to each issue via Email and publishing to our web site. Most are familiar with this procedure, we think. We feel that since you found us on the web, you should be OK with receiving the letter that way and you may find it useful to use the search feature of our site to locate whatever you are seeking in the issues that are on the server at any one time.   We hope this format is intuitive to use and invite your suggestions if you feel we can improve.  As we learn more, we'll do more.

MISO FIRST

Thinking of food to open our discussion, Rosanna decided to begin with Miso soup. She views this mixture of fermented grain, salt, vegetables and seaweed as primordial and desirable for almost daily consumption. We begin most mornings with a healthy-sized bowl of miso soup made with Barley Miso. Barley Miso is the most medicinal of the many varieties and the one that is best for maintaining health and is suitable for consumption each day.

Seaweed is an important component of Miso soup because it supplies hard-to-find trace minerals as well as very high quality Potassium, Zinc, Calcium and Iron.

Everyone on the healing path should have Miso soup as the backbone of their daily diet, preferably in the morning. Miso soup is comprised of minerals, fats and protein and offers an ideal environment in the body for the culture of the flora that is required in our intestines for successful digestion and conversion of the foods we eat, into the energy we need.

Postwar studies in Japan have revealed that cancer as a result of radiation was significantly reduced in those who regularly ate Miso as a component of their diet. Miso is comprised of minerals and agents that assist with the digestion of your food.

There are several types of Miso, made with various grains and varying lengths of fermentation.  We are mentioning Barley Miso today, which should be aged for at least two years.  Over time we will invite your attention to different varieties, for example, Barley Miso that has been aged for various shorter periods, Soybean Miso, Rice Miso, Chick Pea Miso and others.  For today, and for this soup, let's emphasize  life-giving Barley Miso.

Barley Miso has a rich, dark color and delicious, slightly salty taste. It gets you going in the morning and is beneficial to the intestines. Here’s how you make enough for four or five servings in a few minutes:

Please note that using these recipes will usually yield enough for 4 or 5 servings, so adjust the recipe to suit your needs!

4 Escarole leaves, chopped

2-3 Tablespoons Mugi Miso (Mugi is Japanese for Barley)

3 Scallions, thinly sliced on the diagonal

PREPARATION:

Bring water, carrot, onion and parsnip to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Add Broccoli and Squash and return to a boil. Add escarole and Wakame and return to a boil. Then lower heat to as low as it will go and add Miso which has been diluted with some of the warm broth. (just put some of the hot liquid in a cup and stir the Miso with it)

Cook for two or three minutes, making sure it does not boil, so none of the live enzymes and nutrients are damaged. Serve with a spoonful of scallions to open your breakfast (or, of course, any meal) and enjoy it with our warm regards!

Rosanna and James

WISDOM

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, the great American mystic and poet said in his second series of Essays in NATURE:

Nature is loved by what is best in us. It is loved as the city of God, although, or rather because there is no citizen. The sunset is unlike anything that is underneath it: it wants men. And the beauty of nature must always seem unreal and mocking, until the landscape has human figures, that are as good as itself. If there were good men, there would never be this rapture in nature. If the king is in the palace, nobody looks at the walls. It is when he is gone, and the house is filled with grooms and gazers, that we turn from the people, to find relief in the majestic men that are suggested by the pictures and the architecture. The critics who complain of the sickly separation of the beauty of nature from the thing to be done, must consider that our hunting of the picturesque is inseparable from our protest against false society. Man is fallen; nature is erect, and serves as a differential thermometer, detecting the presence or absence of the divine sentiment in man. By fault of our dullness and selfishness, we are looking up to nature, but when we are convalescent, nature will look up to us. We see the foaming brook with compunction: if our own life flowed with the right energy, we should shame the brook. The stream of zeal sparkles with real fire, and not with reflex rays of sun and moon. Nature may be as selfishly studied as trade.