The Soup Queen

I've been missing for some time because my mum was hospitalised in July and I went home to be with her.  However her lung complication got the better of her and after exactly one month in the ICU ward, she passed away on 1 August.  Yes, you read right. My mum passed away.  You know how you often grow up always believing that your parents will be there like forever?  Death seemed so far away because my mum was only 67 years old . She wasn't really old.  I have friends whose mothers are like in their 90s and play games on the iPads.  I have friends whose 80 year old mums go to the beach in swimsuits and get a tan.  I have friends in their 70s who go scuba diving and scale mountains and do all sorts of exciting outdoor sports.  So you see, it was hard to accept that one day my mum was alive (albeit breathing with a ventilator) and 30 days later, she was dead. She lost consciousness 2 days before she died and neve...

Here's a new remedy for hair loss. (I am like a dog with a bone. I am not letting up on the hair loss remedies or hair loss cures haha though I am happy that my hair is looking much healthier now. I wonder if it's the natural shampoo I'm using or the daily dang gui capsule that I'm taking? Or the fact that I am keeping my scalp cool and oil-free by washing my hair each time I feel my scalp heating up!) This humble root called burdock has been made into burdock oil to prevent hair loss and encourage hair growth. I stumbled upon this root when I was reading a post about the famous Five Element Soup . I've seen burdock in Jusco and Tesco (funnily, never saw it in my Lip Sin wet market though!). It's a long root, about 2 feet, and usually marketed as gobo (in Japanese). In Chinese, it's called Niu Pang. If you go to a Chinese herbalist or Chinese medical hall, its seeds are sold as Niu Pang Zi (Zi referring to the seeds). I bought one gobo/burdock ...

Remember I was complaining how my hair was falling like crazy some months ago? My hair salon lady told me it could be the rice intake. So I started eating more rice and also ate a host of other stuff (black sesame and white sesame seeds) and realized that my hair issue did improve. Organic Herbal Shampoo Powder from Vanamoolika India The back shows you the ingredients used in this powder shampoo.  I also observed that my hair fall increased when the weather was hot and my scalp was sweaty and itchy. I usually wash my hair every two days but sometimes when my scalp became too itchy, I had to wash my hair daily. I realized it also helped prevent hair loss. I deduced that when my scalp is itchy, the hair follicles may be "open" and this made my hair drop. While I feared daily hair washing could increase the number of hair dropping, the reverse was true. When I washed my hair daily and my scalp was cool, hair fall became less and less. I was so relieved! ...

I bought a bunch of fresh pegaga leaves from the market last week. They were selling for RM3. Initially I didn't know if I should make ulam with it or blend it into a juice. To make ulam, I had to have sambal belacan which I didn't! I have some ulam raja growing in my garden now and that would have made a great ulam platter together with pegaga. In the end, I decided to juice the pegaga leaves. What I did was simply throw them into my blender with some water, blended them thoroughly and then sieved the juice out. I also mixed in some honey. I end up with quite a bit of pegage juice so I bottle them up using glass bottles and refrigerate them.  Pegaga can still be found in most markets and even if you're too lazy to juice your own pegaga, you can still get it cheaply at drink stalls like the famous Penang Road Teochew cendol.  Pegaga juice is a refreshing and cooling drink for hot and humid days. Penang is undergoing its hot spell now and each day I seem to ...

After like a few weeks of not going to the market, I decided to go today. I have a love-hate relationship with market days. On one hand I know I am stocking up on fresh food and vegetables. On the other I know I need to clean out the fridge when I get back coz I need to make space for the new stuff that I bought. Anyway.  Today I bought pork bones to make a soup called Ming Mu Tang or literal translation, Bright Eye Soup. We Chinese aren't so subtle. If the soup makes our eyes bright/sparkling/clear, then name it such. No point beating around the bush. Pragmatic us indeed. As always, I start with blanching the pork bones in boiling water over the stove. This gets rid of the scummy stuff that floats up on your soup.  Next, I soak the herbs - they're pre-packed dried herbs from my herbalist in town. Dried herbs from China are getting more expensive these days. Damn the ringgit and damn the GST. I usually use a colander and a plastic basin...

Remember how I was wailing about my hair falling like mad each time I washed my hair? Well, I told a friend, Then, who runs a hair salon and whom I go to each month for my henna hair colouring treatment (yes, these pesky white hairs keep popping up so when I get tired of plucking them by the roots, I go and henna them all). She's Indian so she asked me if my diet changed. I was eating less rice at that time because I didn't want to get too flabby around my waist. She told me that she personally experienced hair loss too when she reduced her rice intake. She advised me to get back to my normal rice intake and see if it helped. I decided to also get a bottle of hair loss shampoo from her. It was more to satisfy my own desire to do all I could to help my hair loss from getting worse. The girl who worked for Then did tell me that her boss did eat a lot of fruits and yogurt. Yogurt is cooling for the body. That was in January. I started reading more online because I did...

Sorry folks! I have been terribly missing from my blog. My sisters, niece and I at Fo Guang Shan Dong Zen temple in Jenjarom (near Banting) on the first day of CNY. In between working on 2 books (yes!), working on planning our web design business, planning this year's marketing master class . taking care of my women entrepreneur association as president, engaged in meetings and interviews, and taking care of my family (their holidays included), I have been neglecting this blog a whole lot. I haven't been making soups as much as I want to BUT I did buy a slow cooker or crockpot (that's how Americans call it) and that helped a lot. In the past, I used to boil my soups on the stove but the downside of this is that I have to be at home and watch the stove. With a slow cooker, I don't have to worry. I can put all my soup ingredients (herbs and chicken or meat) into the cooker with enough water and I can put it on Auto to simmer the whole day (6 hours or so) and...