Gomasio – The Open Sesame Secret of Great Health

OPEN SESAME…I love this…and like magic doors open.

Keep licking this sesame salt wonder and you’ll be amazed at how wonderful you feel.

Here’s an article by Harold Kulungian that explains more in depth the value of this treasured japanese condiment. Included at the end will be a more indepth recipe that uses a higher salt to sesame ratio than I use. Experiment and find what you like.

GOMASIO A Macrobiotic Secret of Natural Healing by Harold Kulungian

Gomasio is the principal table condiment in the Macrobiotic way of natural foods diet. Use it in lieu of salt to season your food at table, giving hearty delicious taste. Gomasio also functions as a medicine in itself, due to its powerful ant-acid biochemical effect–a thousand times more effective than AlkaSeltzer, which is Yin, fizzy. You can take 1/2 to l teaspoonful directly on the palm of your hand, and suck on it well, before swallowing: strengthens digestion and improves energy immediately. You can sober up a drunk person, and cause his sanpaku eyes, with the whites showing beneath the iris, to come back into focus quickly from 1 or 2 teaspoonsful. Together with a simple bland diet of slow-cooked whole grains and legumes in iron pot, gomasio will accelerate the de-acidification of the digestive tract and improve the assimilation of the food, to heal anemia, hypoglycemia, multiple sclerosis, and especially all the inflammatory disorders and diseases that are ultimately due to an excessively acidic diet. For example, the original designation, “multiple neuritus,” by which MS was formerly known, indicates acid-inflammation of the nerves from excessively acidic diet. Gomasio is also wonderfully healing for all other blood-related diseases–which means virtually all diseases, including diabetes and cancer. So beginning with the daily use of gomasio in one’s diet, one obtains a key secret to rapid effortless natural healing of virtually any health problem, since gomasio changes the quality of the blood very quickly. Just one example I’ve witnessed: A nursing mother eats or drinks something acidic and 5 minutes later the baby starts to cry because her milk has become acidic and is giving the baby painful belly-ache, known as colic. So the mother takes gomasio and de-acidifies her blood quickly, and her milk also. The baby suckles the gomasiod milk and immediately stops crying because the milk has been returned to an easily digestible alkaline quality. Western Medicine knows nothing about de-acidification as the basis of natural healing. The doctors have never tasted and experienced the healing effects of gomasio. So it is a huge challenge to offer this gift in such a way that their pride won’t prevent them from tasting it, accepting it, and discovering the natural healing experiment in their own bodies. Believe me, this is a real problem, as I can testify from sad experience. A few years ago, after reading Dr. Bernard Lown’s THE LOST ART OF HEALING (Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, 1996), I telephoned the renowned Harvard cardiologist, and invited him: “Dr. Lown, how would you like to discover the lost art of healing?” “Oh, I’d be very interested in that, indeed!” he assured me. So I sent him three Macrobiotic books, including a cookbook, some of my recent writings, a quantity of my fresh home-made gomasio, plus a 32 oz. bag of pure sun dried LIMA SEASALT. For a month I wrote him each week a substantial letter, responding to the problems in the case histories he included in his book of patients who had died of heart disease despite the good doctor’s prescriptions. No response as promised, so I telephoned him again: “Dr. Lown, have you received the books and letters and gifts, the gomasio and sea salt I sent you, to relieve your lower back-pain from iodized salt?” “Look, I receive things in the mail all the time! I can’t reply to all these things!” “But, Dr. Lown, you assured me you are interested in discovering the lost art of healing, didn’t you?” “Thank you very much, but at my age I’m too old to discover Macrobiotics.” Whereupon he hung up–another dramatic example of what Toynbee calls “The Great Refusal.” From his STUDY OF HISTORY, volumes 5 and 6 on “The Disintegrations of Civilizations,” Arnold Toynbee concluded that the ruling class of a collapsing civilization will never be receptive to creative solutions coming from outside their ranks. Macrobiotic holistic medicine is from the Orient, from Japan. The late Lima Ohsawa (1899-1999), First Lady of Macrobiotics, in her cookbook, THE ART OF JUST COOKING (Autumn Press, 1974, 1981), had this to say about the importance of home-made gomasio: “It is in the preparation of simple foods like rice and gomasio that a cook’s real skill is tried. It is far easier to assemble a rich gourmet feast than to produce consistently delicious, well-balanced sesame-salt. Mastery of this simple condiment means mastery of the center of your life.” A powerful statement, certainly, and one that can only be tested by experience, especially long experience, as I have tested it. I always come back to gomasio with new relish for life due to its tonifying effect, giving new strength and energy. Lima’s recipe recommends a proportion of 15 parts sesame seeds to one part salt. I make it just a little stronger, about 12 to 1. But since a quantity of salt always remains imbedded in the grooves of the suribachi, for you to dig out with your fingers and lick it (very delicious!), after you have finished grinding it, it’s wise to use just a little extra salt. Here are the directions for use with a 9 inch standard suribachi, a Japanese mortar, with grooves in it, that comes with a wooden pestle, and can be ordered through a natural foods store. Without a suribachi, you cannot make gomasio; so don’t think of making it via the shortcut of an electric blender. It won’t be gomasio, but something else? First roast 3 tablespoons of sea salt in an iron skillet until it turns grey, well cooked. The best salt for making gomasio is LIMA SUNDRIED SEASALT, because it is fairly fine to begin with, high in minerals, and much easier to grind into a fine powder than a courser salt. Let the salt cool before handling it, to avoid getting burnt. Then pour it into the suribachi and grind it briskly into a fine powder, the finer the better. Next roast 2 cups of un-hulled whole brown sesame seeds in the same large iron skillet, on low heat, stirring constantly to avoid burning. Be sure to turn the heat down to low after roasting the sea salt, or the sesame seeds will start popping right out of the skillet, and you’ll have to quickly clap a lid on them. The seeds must be roasted or toasted until they are crisp and will make a clicking sound when pressed between your thumbnail and forefinger. Now comes the lovely ritual of grinding the seeds on top of the roasted and ground salt. Use only enough pressure to crack the seeds, so that their oil will coat each grain of salt. You do not want to make a mush, a paste. By using just the right amount of pressure, the gomasio will come out light and sandy. Grind in a spiralic movement from the bottom and then up the sides of the suribachi, for left handers in a clockwise direction, for righthanders in a counter-clockwise direction. It is a beautiful exercise, so enjoy it, though it may take almost a half hour to grind the 2 cups of seeds until they are 95% crushed. Store the gomasio in a crockery bowl with lid, or wooden container, or a tightly closed glass jar, and keep in a cool, dry place. DO NOT REFRIGERATE, since a moist place would cause it to spoil quickly. I have many times kept gomasio for 6 months without it spoiling and still tasting fine. How long it keeps depends on how it was made and stored.