The Soup Queen

I bought some fresh cordyceps from the Lip Sin market just last Friday and asked the vegetable lady how to cook it. I remember clearly the last time I cooked this fresh cordyceps - I went to the Chinese herbalist and got a packet of prepacked herbs to add to the fresh cordyceps. It made a lovely soup. This time though I wanted to try something else. My vegetable lady told me that it's also good to boil fresh cordyceps with medlar seeds/wolfberry seeds and honey dates. And I, being the adventurous sort, never say no to a new soup recipe . Yum! Luckily I had some honey dates in my fridge as well as some leftover medlar seeds . (It's good to stock up on herbs - buy a little of everything and store in jars in the fridge. On any good day, I have dang gui, red dates, honey dates, tao ren, medlar seeds and dried longan which I can use to make anything from soup to sweet dessert! It's my stockpile of Chinese herbs... which is very important, well to me anyway!) I also...

Clockwise from top: dried longan, dried lotus seeds and American ginseng slices I was wondering what kind of soup to cook this week when I saw a box of American Ginseng in the fridge. It had been sitting there for almost 2 months now. Usually I will use pre-packed herbs for soups but this time around, none were to be found. So American Ginseng it is. American Ginseng, unlike its cousin, Korean Ginseng, is the best kind of ginseng to brew and drink as it is not cooling nor heaty. Korean Ginseng is very heaty - it is a tonic after all. My 90 year old Grandmother consumes Korean Ginseng to give her strength and warm up her limbs. At the same time, the Korean Ginseng is helping turn her grey hair black - I am not kidding. I saw her with partially black hair and wondered why. Did she dye her hair? My cousin then remarked that her health (and hair) started to improve eversince she started taking Korean ginseng. But if you are of the heaty type (which means you have a heated blood system), do...