The Soup Queen

  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 (38gm) and  Licorice or Gan Cao (2gm).  I looked

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