Winter Melon Noodle Soup For Your Health

I got this spiral veggie slicer/peeler that I love to use.  My love for this device comes close to how much I love our awesome Vitamix blender.  It not only churns my carrots, daikons and zucchinis into noodles, but it can also spin my winter melons into noodles too. Winter melons are known for being a great detoxifier. It is great for someone watching their diet or wanting to lose weight.  It also aids in clearing heat from the body.  So, I make this soup when someone has a cold in the house and gets jaded of the good old chicken noodle soup.  This is also a great comfort soup for me as well because my mother used to make this for me when I was growing up. 

Ingredients:
one large or two medium size winter melon sliced into noodles
8 quart pot filled with 3/4 water for boiling
1 can of chicken broth
1 lb of pork of beef bones depending what you like (pre-boil the bones, drain and set aside)
1/2 lb of thinly sliced pork meat
1/2 lb of thinly sliced chicken breast meat
1-2 tsp of salt
1 package of tofu sliced into small cubes
1 small handful of goji/wolfberries (pictures and use on older post)
small cup of chop spring onion
2 small slices of fresh ginger

Preparation:
When water boils, add the prepared bones, goji, pork, chicken, chicken broth and ginger into the pot and boil for ten minutes or so.  Then add winter melon, and tofu; and let it boil for another ten minutes. Flavor with green onion and salt till you are satisfied with the taste.

Chrysanthemum Soup/Soft Drink Recipe

This chrysanthemum soup or soft drink is great when you are feeling a bit under the weather. When you are having a nasty feeling in your throat or that you are having a cough, this helps you feel better and recover quicker. This drink has the ability to help clear your throat, enhance your skin elasticity, has vitamin C, and most importantly for my kids it tastes good. I make this drink sometimes not because I feel under the weather but just because it taste good too.


Ingredients:
1/4 cup of dried chrysanthemum
1 tbsp of honey
1/4 cup of rock sugar (more or less depending on your taste)
8 cups of water

Preparation:

Boil 8 cups of water in a pot.  Add all ingredients into the boiling water and let it boil for 15 minutes turn down the stove and let it cook for another half an hour on low.  Then serve cold or hot.

Ginger, Sweet Vinegar and Pig Feet Soup

This is one of my favorite soup.  I don't know why hated it when I was little.  Probably the same reason why my kids hate it now.  I have grown a taste for this soup and to know that it's very good for me it's a good thing.  It is also a good thing the kids don't like this soup, as this soup is not really that good for kids to drink.  The ginger and the sweet vinegar might be too much for the kids to handle.  Ginger also has a bit of a strong smell and taste where kids and some adults don't like.  This soup is traditional made for post natal (after preganancy) for the mothers to eat and drink to help them get their strength back and to help circulate the blood. 


Ingredients:
Ginger (8 big ones)
Sweet Vinegar ( One huge jug)
One whole pig foot
Black Rice Vinegar (optional)
Salt
Hard boiled eggs (optional)
Preparation:
Wash, cut and stir fry ginger in a big pan.  Put pig feet in a huge pot of boiling water.  After ten minutes take pig feet out and wash and clean.  Place ginger, pig feet and enough sweet vinegar to cover the pig foot and ginger add a pinch of salt then cover the ceramic pot and let it cook on high till it boils then turn down heat to low or medium and let it cook for serveral hours.  I usually let it cook for about 8 to ten hours.  Then, add some hard boil eggs into it if you like.  ***Note here don't use any other kind of pot to cook the last step but a ceramic pot.  I found the slow cooker to be the best option for me. 

Snow Ear, Red Dates and Apple Dessert

I love eating apples.  They do say that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. I don't just like eating apples plan but I also like to cook with them.  Apples are known to be very good for you.  It may reduce the risk of certain cancer, help with digestion, has vitamin C, rich in antioxidant, help lose weight, and many other benefits.  Red dates  and snow ear you can read the benefits from the older posts on here.  This dessert with the three combo can help you keep fit (controlling weight), help with fatigue, balancing your complexion, and help nourish your skin.  This dessert is good for everyone in your family to eat.


Ingredients:
  1 to 2 apples sliced
small handful of red dates
one big snow ear
1/2 cup of rock sugar (more or less depending how sweet you like your dessert)

Preparation:
Boil 8 cups of water, place all ingredients into the boiling water.  Let it boil for ten minutes then turn down the heat and let it cook for an hour then turn off heat. Serve hot or place it into the fridge and serve as a cold drink.

Dried Seabed Coconut (Hoy Dai Yeh)

Dried seabed coconut (hoy dai yeh) is sweet and very good for you.  It can benefit you when you have a cough by moistening your lungs, removing heat and toxins from your body.  It can also help you naturally nourish your skin to give you that youthful glow like complexion.

I have used this herb to make my sweet herbal soup.  The ingredients calls for lean pork, apples and some other yummy herbs.  Have to say that this is one of my kids favorite soup.

Job's Tears-yì mí

Job's Tears (Coix lacryma-jobi), Coixseed, Tear Grass, adlay, or adlai, is a tall grain-bearing tropical plant of the family Poaceae (grass family) native to Southeast Asia but elsewhere cultivated in gardens as an annual. It has been naturalized in the southern United States and the New World tropics. In its native environment it is grown in higher areas where rice and corn do not grow well. Vyjanti beads is also commonly, but misleadingly, sold as Chinese pearl barley in Asian supermarkets, despite the fact that C. lacryma-jobi are not of the same genus as barley (Hordeum vulgare).

There are two main varieties of the species. (1)Wild type Coix lacryma-jobi var. stenocarpa and var. monilifer has hard shelled pseudocarps which are very hard, pearly white, oval structures used as beads for making rosaries, necklaces, and other objects. (2)Cultivated type Coix lacryma-jobi var. ma-yuen is harvested as a cereal crop, has soft shell, and is used medicinally in parts of Asia.

Uses

Besides the use for ornamental purposes, Job's tears grains are useful as source of food (cereals) and folk medicine.

Throughout East Asia, Vyjanti beads are available in dried form and cooked as a grain. The grains are generally spherical, with a groove on one end, and polished white in color, though in Japan unpolished yuuki hatomugi, which is unpolished and brown in color, is also available.

In Korea, a thick drink called yulmu cha (율무차, literally "Job's tears tea") is made from powdered Job's tears. A similar drink, called yì mí shǔi (薏米水), also appears in Chinese cuisine, and is made by simmering whole polished Job's Tears in water and sweetening the resulting thin, cloudy liquid with sugar. The grains are usually strained from the liquid but may also be consumed separately or together.

In both Korea and China, distilled liquors are also made from the grain. One such example is the South Korean liquor called okroju (옥로주; hanja: 玉露酒), which is made from rice and Job's tears. In Japan, an aged vinegar is made from the grain.

In southern Vietnam, a sweet, cold soup called sâm bổ lượng has Job's Tears as one of its ingredients. This dish derives from the southern Chinese tong sui called qīng bǔ liáng (清補涼; Cantonese: ching1 bou2 leung4).

In Thailand, it is often consumed in teas and other drinks, such as soy milk.

It is also used alongside other herbs in traditional Chinese medicine.
(source from wiki)

Author's Input:
 My mom uses this to make herbal soup, congee, and sweet dessert.  I love making the dessert kind.  Like most of my family members, I too have a sweet tooth.  Usually, I boil this with rock sugar or cane sugar, foo chuk, lotus seed, and dried longans.
 

Kumquat

Cumquats or kumquats are a group of small fruit-bearing trees in the flowering plant family Rutaceae, either forming the genus Fortunella, or placed within Citrus sensu lato. The edible fruit closely resembles that of the orange (Citrus sinensis), but it is much smaller and ovular, being approximately the size and shape of an olive.
Uses
Koum Quat liqueurs from Corfu, Greece

Kumquats are often eaten raw. As the rind is sweet and the juicy centre is sour, the raw fruit is usually consumed either whole—to savour the contrast—or only the rind is eaten. The fruit is considered ripe when it reaches a yellowish-orange stage and has just shed the last tint of green.

Culinary uses include candying and kumquat preserves, marmalade, and jelly. Kumquats can also be sliced and added to salads. In recent years kumquats have gained popularity as a garnish for cocktail beverages, including the martini as a replacement for the more familiar olive. A kumquat liqueur mixes the fruit with vodka or other clear spirit. Kumquats are also being used by chefs to create a niche for their desserts and are common in European countries.
Potted kumquat trees at a kumquat liqueur distillery in Corfu.

The Cantonese often preserve kumquats in salt or sugar. A batch of the fruit is buried in dry salt inside a glass jar. Over time, all the juice from the fruit is diffused into the salt. The fruit in the jar becomes shrunken, wrinkled, and dark brown in colour, and the salt combines with the juice to become a dark brown brine. A few salted kumquats with a few teaspoons of the brine/juice may be mixed with hot water to make a remedy for sore throats.[citation needed] A jar of such preserved kumquats can last several years and still keep its taste.[citation needed]

In the Philippines and Taiwan, kumquats are a popular addition to green tea and black tea, either hot or iced.

In Vietnam, kumquat bonsai trees (round kumquat plant) are used as a decoration for the Tết (Lunar New Year) holiday. Kumquat fruits are also boiled or dried to make a candied snack called mứt quất.

Variants of the kumquat are grown specially in India. (source from wiki)

Author's Input:
My mom has five of these fruit trees planted in her back yard and it's a treat to see the tree when it's covered with little tiny bright orange fruits.  You can eat these fresh off the tree.  When we have a cough, this little fruit was our friend.  My mom usually drieds some of the fruits and stores it for future use in teas or just eaten like prunes.  Personally, I don't like the prune way of eating it but I do like making a soft drink with it.  I would add about two of these salted kumquats in a cup of boiling water with rock sugar.