The Soup Queen

This is a super easy soup for days when I have no herbs in my fridge. All you need are 4 vegetables that you can easily buy from the market or supermarket - burdock, radish (with the green tops), corn and carrot. You don't need to use all of the burdock which also goes by the name of gobo. Burdock is a long, dark brown root and you can use one foot of the root. The rest can cut up and kept in a zip lock bag in the vegetables section of your fridge. Slice burdock into small chunks.  For the daikon, just peel off the skin and chop up everything including the green leafy tops into chunks.  Break the corn up into 3 sections. Peel the carrot and chop into small chunks.  Into a large pot, put in 1.5 liters of water. Bring to boil. Add in blanched pork bones or half a chicken, with bones. Add in all these chopped up vegetables and bring to a rolling boil again. Once the soup is boiling briskly, cover the pot. Lower the fire to the smallest flame...

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 ...