Soup of the Day

I enjoy cooking. But I do not enjoying planning the menu. As a mommy of two kids, I make sure the family have home cooked food daily for dinner. Thinking of what to cook is an headache and thinking of what ingredients to buy is also an headache. It has now come to a point where I always buy the same thing every time I am at the market.

• 2 Kampong Chicken
• 1 kg pork ribs
• 300g Mince pork
• Chicken breasts ( My hubby only likes breasts. Oops…)
• 1 kg Prawns 
• Squid ( once every 2 - 3 weeks)
• 2 Fishes  
• Vegetables; Kailan, french beans, broccoli, Garlic root and see what is available on that day.

I have no idea what to cook but I will buy and keep first till I know how I want to whip them up.

I have considerably a big family staying together, the fact that we seldom get to hear a family of eight plus a maid staying under one roof do sounds big, at least to me.  Me, Hubby, my mommy, my brother, my sister in law and two kids. Big uh? I kind of like it as the house gets merrier and dinner is always noisy with Jewel keeps talking non stop, Ian whining at one corner and the adults gossiping catching up with the everyday life.

It is always 3 dishes with a soup. The combinations are as follows;

1. Meat,fish,vegetable,soup
2. Meat,prawns,vegetable,soup
3. Meat,eggs,vegetable,soup
4. Meat, seafood (squid, clams, mussels, crayfish), vegetable, soup

But how to cook them??? I can't be repeating the same kind of dishes every 2 days. They not bored I cooked also bored. So what do I normally do? My mommy said Google is our Best Friend because we always google for recipes!

As you can see from the above combinations, the constant k is soup. Unless Jewel is not having dinner, which is very unlikely, there will be soup served daily. At her age, Jewel is still not very good at eating poultry and vegetables, so normally we feed her rice with soup. Therefore, the soup that we boil has to be very rich in nutrients. Thankfully, we have cultivated a habit in her to drink soup at every dinner.

Today's soup is a new recipe that my mommy had invented herself. It is some kind of herbal soup which the main benefit is to nourish the lungs and for good complexion! Gotta have more of it!


Herbal Chicken Soup

Ingredients;

1/2 Kampong Chicken
8 red dates
1 tbs wolfberries
1 tbs Southern Almond/ Nan Xing
1 tbs Northen Almond / Bei Xing
2 whole white fungus
100g dried lily bulb
8 dried scallops
1 handful of  soloman's seal / yu zhu

2.5 liters of water.
3 dried abalone slice
Pepper
Salt

Steps;

• Wash and soak scallop and abalone slice for 1 hour using warm water.
• In a separate bowl, soak the white fungus for 1 hour too.
• Remove chicken skin and fats.
• Pre boil chicken for about 3 mins.
• Using another pot, boil 2.5 liters of water plus the water used for soaking the scallop and abalone slice.
• Once the water is boiled, add in all the ingredients including the chicken.
• Cook for 5 mins using high heat.
• After that, turn to low heat and simmer for 4 hours.
• Lastly, add pepper and salt to desirable flavour. ( I didn't add any as it is tasteful enough.)