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Hut Therapy<br />
Bed and (wholefood) breakfast<br />
‘Miso soup, for breakfast?’ I wonder, watching<br />
Gilly Webber stir the steamy, seaweedy<br />
broth that I’m used to seeing a bit later on<br />
in the day. Gilly is the host at Hut Therapy,<br />
a Bed and Whole Food Breakfast run from<br />
her home in East Chiltington. I’ve arrived<br />
on a brisk winter morning to sample her<br />
macrobiotic cooking.<br />
Macrobiotic, she explains, means ‘big life’<br />
and stems from oriental principles of the five<br />
types of energy: tree, fire, ground, metal and<br />
water. Tree energy comes from foods which<br />
grow upwards, so the leeks in the miso soup<br />
she’s making, or the barley which the miso<br />
is made from. Fire energy includes foods<br />
which grow outwards, like mushrooms, and<br />
ground energy comes from those which<br />
grow close to the ground, like pumpkin or<br />
squash. Metal energy covers foods which<br />
grow under the earth, like root vegetables.<br />
Water energy really speaks for itself.<br />
We sit down to our first course; the soup is<br />
accompanied by sauerkraut rolls with a tahini<br />
and white miso dip, and some steamed<br />
greens. I’ve quickly become an energy spotter<br />
and am keen to identify the types of energy<br />
found in every single ingredient in the<br />
meal. The carrots, of course, give us metal<br />
energy, while the kale, I think, is tree. But<br />
what about the seaweed? My first thought is<br />
tree energy because of the shape, but then it<br />
does grow under water, so perhaps it’s water<br />
energy? It turns out it’s both.<br />
Gilly goes along with my guessing game for<br />
a while, but really this isn’t what her cooking<br />
is about. “It’s about the balance,” she ex-<br />
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