Winter Immunity Soup - food as medicine

I woke up with the lymph nodes in my neck swollen - a sure sign that my body was dealing with an overload of toxins and that I was about to get sick. I had some congestion and was coughing up stuff and my tonsils were also inflamed a little. I did not have any echinacea on hand, if I did I would have starting taking it every couple of hours. So for my "cure" I turned to chicken soup.

I read a study some years ago about how the home remedy of chicken soup had helped to reduce the length of time for a cold. My own experience with hot soup (not traditional chicken soup of which I am not a fan) occurred 5 or 6 years ago . We were in the city doing some shopping and I started getting that - I'm coming down with something feeling. My throat got scratchy, I felt like I was getting a fever and my head was achy. We had planned to have supper on the way out of town - I just wanted to go home and go to bed - but Dave really wanted to get something to eat - especially as he knew I would not be up to cooking when we got home. We stopped a a Thai restaurant. The only thing on the menu that looked good to me was the soup but it was a big portion that served two. Dave said he would eat some soup and also ordered a meal. When the soup came, it was hot and brothy with bits of onion, mushrooms, chinese cabbage, lemongrass, cilantro, ginger, chili peppers and baby corns and probably some other stuff in it. It was so hot and also very hot - both temperature and pungency. It was served in a tureen with a candle underneath so it stayed very warm through the meal and it was seasoned just a hair over as hot as I could stand it. If I was careful and did not cough, I was fine but if I coughed it started to burn and I kept coughing till I could cool down my throat. I ate most of the soup - sometimes there are foods that just feel like they are exact match for whatever ails me and this was one. We went home, I went to bed and as you probably guessed, the next morning I was perfectly fine. Now when I get that coming down with something feeling - I think hot Thai soup.

I started by cooking a chicken till it was very done and then took it out of the broth water. When I make this soup, I usually go vegetarian but since I had a chicken in the freezer, I decided to combine Thai soup and chicken noodle soup. I added lots of onion, celery, carrots, lots of shitake mushrooms (I buy them dried by the pound from Frontier that way I have them on hand for soup, stews, sauces and gravies), 4 astragalus sticks (also by the pound from Frontier), hot Thai chilies (from the garden), bay leaves and a can of chopped baby corns. I simmered this soup until all was soft and then added noodles, cooking until almost tender. Then a teaspoon or two of powdered ginger, a teaspoon of basil, and after tasting some more cayenne. I also added some miso and a little tamari for flavor and finished with the juice of half of a lemon. I made this soup using ingredients to make it taste good (no matter how healthy it is if it doesn't taste good, we won't eat enough of it) but also choosing ingredients specifically for their health benefit.

Ingredients and their reason for being in my soup:

• celery, carrots, corns for color, texture and flavor and they are good for you veggies
• astragalus is a major Chinese tonic herb, it is strengthening and warming, strengthens chi expecially surface chi, tonifies the blood and the lungs, it has a woody, sweet flavor and is a nice addition to healing soups (remove the sticks from the soup before serving)
• shitakes - besides adding wonderful flavor and nutrients, shitakes contain lentian an immune stimulant and they are anti-viral (to use dried mushrooms I rinse them to get rid of any adhering dirt than soak in hot water until soft enough to chop, I also add the soaking water to the soup except for any debris at the bottom of the bowl)
• onions - we love onions so we use a lot of them and they are said to provide a variety of health benefits but in this case they have long been used to treat colds and flu
• chilies - again with a lot of health benefits but in this case the anti-inflammatory, warming and congestion relieving benefits are the reason for using as many as you can stand
• ginger - warming, anti-oxidant, anti-microbial properties and acts as a diaphoretic - helping the body to sweat out toxins, and of course it is tasty
• basil - primarily for flavor but it also has anti-bacterial properties
• miso - add rich flavor but miso also contrains trace minerals (including zinc which helps prevent colds) and when I eat, I feel better
• lemon - primarily to get lemony flavor but lemons are also good for sore throats among other benefits

It can be a fun challenge to concoct soups with health benefits while striving to give them an appealing flavor and appearance. TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) uses a lot of tonic soups and researching it, one can find lots of ideas.

P.S. I added a can of lite coconut milk to the leftover soup to create another version of it and as I write this I am sipping the hot, spice but now a little creamy broth and I think I like the leftover version even better.