Dr. Sebi Lights the Torch for Right Nourishment
“There are health food stores that have mushrooms, the Portobello. You also have the oyster mushrooms. You also have spelt bread. You could select, in the vegetable kingdom, all the greens. . . See, I make it easy.”
He parlayed his recommendations into a nutrition guide to set right nourishment in motion, part of his two-pronged process of healing—alkaline herbs the equal other half. Yet Dr. Sebi stops short of crossing the culinary threshold.
“Now you need to be educated as to how you’re going to prepare these things.
Ah-h, now you call for a whole big institute. I came to heal people of diseases. Now I find myself having to address a whole lot of other things. Well, I’m not qualified for that,” he says on page 95 of Sojourn to Honduras Sojourn to Healing: Why An Herbalist’s View Matters More Today Than Ever Before.
He leaves food preparation to bona fide cooks—vegetarian cooks—but to encourage eating that supports life, Dr. Sebi and his staff placed a wicker basket full of nonperishable alkaline food on the office counter, then drafted a cookbook that reached a few walk-in customers but never the hands of book publishers. It was full of recipes for some of the most taste-bud satisfying meals I had ever tasted.
One can assume that the unpublished work needed vetting, or time devoted to consulting with clients competed with the book’s completion. Could it have been sidestepped by Dr. Sebi’s autobiography?
The Torch Passed On, Cookbooks Published
In November 2013, the Christian Science Monitor reported that the top three book genres were self-help, kids’ literature and erotica. According to richest.com and Quora.com, the bestselling book genres are romance, crime/mystery, religious/inspiration, sci-fi and horror—in that order. Cookbooks are absent from the list even though libraries and major bricks and mortar bookstores stock shelves at least six feet high and just as long with every imaginable cookbook, including trailblazing newcomer “gluten-free.”
Where would Dr. Sebi’s cookbook fit in? Ingredients in his recipes differ slightly from the standard fare. No meat. No eggs. No milk. No garlic. No black pepper. Enter the Sebians, a rising population of authors (Ty’s Conscious Kitchen, Crush Foster’s Beyond Vegan) who draw from Dr. Sebi’s nutrition guide to publish cookbooks full of recipes Dr. Sebi would approve. Sojourn to Healthy Eating is one of those books. http://www.sojourntohealthyeating.com
While you’ll see vivid photos in Ty’s and Crush’s fine publications, Sojourn to Healthy Eating, for the most part, is filled with recipes and little-known food facts. It answers Dr. Sebi’s call to action, a call to change the nutritional landscape and complement his prescription for healing. As a matter of fact, Sojourn to Healthy Eating includes tested recipes from Dr. Sebi’s draft cookbook, including stuff bell peppers, hot veggie wrap, mushroom salad, avocado salad dressing, homestyle okra and vegetable stir-fry medley.
Sojourn to Healthy Eating is here to help Dr. Sebi’s patrons and fans have something in the kitchen to refer to when they cook and eat according to Dr. Sebi’s recommendations. Had I known about Ty’s Conscious Kitchen and Beyond Vegan before publishing Sojourn to Healthy Eating, I would have helped promote those books. Great alkaline recipes within those pages. But you know, that lady in Dr. Sebi’s office one Saturday afternoon racing to find paper to copy recipes from Dr. Sebi’s draft cookbook apparently hadn’t heard about Ty’s Conscious Kitchen or Beyond Vegan either. Thus, the reason for creating Sojourn to Healthy Eating. The greater the galvanized voices for Dr. Sebi’s message the better, wouldn’t you agree? In a way Sojourn’s presence is evidence of what Dr. Sebi has said to me more than once, “In the forest, what one gorilla knows, all gorillas know.”
