The Soup Queen

When I've been working too hard and sitting through too many Zoom meetings and having too many online webinars, my brain gets tired and my body feels heated up! I find that screen radiation affects me a lot so I try to limit my screen time and most times, to no avail! (It doesn't help that I am in the digital space and that I need to work on stuff on my Mac all the time - from my podcast to my live streams and to my main business ).  I felt really exhausted this week as I was also rushing to complete some important content for a client. She was in the running for a major award and needed help to brush up on her submission profile. The thing with submission profiles is that there's always a pressing deadline! And limited words is another. Most people think it's easy to write 250 words than 1000 words but trust me, it is much harder to be concise than to be long-winded.  So work being work, and life being life, a lot of things can stress up the body.  When I sit too lon...

Wood ear fungus and cucumber salad Sometimes I have cravings and of late I have craved mushrooms of all types! Hence my post on making snow fungus dessert and now this wood ear fungus salad.  This is a super easy salad that can be made in 5 minutes and goes well with rice or even as an appetiser.  Wood Ear Fungus Salad  A handful of dried wood ear fungus, soaked until soft - drain well  Half a cucumber washed and roughly chopped into chunks A tablespoon of sesame seeds, toasted  1 tablespoon of rice vinegar  1 tablespoon of soya sauce 1 teaspoon of sugar  1 pinch of salt  1 bird's eye chili, chopped  In a bowl, combine all the above. Mix well and let it rest in the fridge for 10 minutes. Serve chilled.  Benefits of Wood Ear Fungus Auricularia polytricha - that's their scientific name - is usually sold dried and you must reconstitute them by soaking in water before you use them. It has a crunchy texture and helps  people with high bl...

Just last week I made this dessert because I was rummaging in my kitchen and found some snow fungus. This is a classic dessert that any Cantonese would know. I was just surprised at myself that I haven't made this dessert in a long time. Maybe because I didn't have the key ingredient - snow fungus - at hand! What is Snow Fungus?  It is technically a fungus that grows on dead bark or tree stumps just like wood ear fungus.  Snow fungus or silver ear, snow ear or white wood ear is known as Tremella fuciformis and yes, it is an edible fungus. The pleasanter term is mushroom if that makes you feel better. As most mushrooms go, they contain vitamin D, zinc, calcium, and folate.  Benefits of Snow Fungus Snow fungus is said to have anti-ageing effects due to the presence of superoxide dismutase , an enzyme that acts as a potent antioxidant throughout the body, particularly in the skin. It is best known in TCM for nourishing the lungs and we know how important this fact is right n...

  I made American ginseng soup with pork ribs over the weekend since I had recently bought some herbs from my favourite herbalist in town, Veng Tatt Soon.  Over the past few months, we have been making watercress soup with pork ribs and I was getting rather tired of that soup! However watercress soup is great for the lungs (especially if you are coughing, or a smoker or feeling heaty) and now what with the pandemic, it is simply one of the better ways to boost one's immunity. And unlike lotus root soup , you can freeze watercress soup without any change to the watercress texture.  I usually make about 8 servings of soup in my stock pot. This means I can freeze the other portions for other days. So making soup on the weekend means I get to drink soup over the next 3 days at least.  This packet of herbs consisted of:  American ginseng (3.8gm),  Bei Zi (12gm),  Dang Shen (12gm),  Solomon Seal or Yok Chok (19gm),  Goji (12gm),  Red Dates (38...

I've been growing my own mulberry trees and after a few times of pruning the branches and learning a secret gardener's tip, the tree or bush has been proliferating well.  In fact, the regular rain (it is quite rainy these days in Penang) and the humid, hot sun have helped the tree flourish well. I also use a lot of compost (from my own compost pots) on the tree, placing scoops of compost around the root and the base of the tree from time to time (or when I am feeling like a hardworking gardener).  As I write this, we're in our third lockdown phase in Malaysia (until 7 June or is it 10 June? I can't recall). So lots more pottering about at home and gardening I guess! Even Singapore (where my sis is) is also going back to a lockdown phase as virus variants are emerging. It seems you can't read any news without mention of the virus and how things are faring across the region. As someone who works in digital and mostly online , I am kept occupied with clients' proje...