Turning To Herbs

It's really hard to find books on Traditional Chinese Herbs. You need to get 1 that's bilingual or at least, contains the herbs' names in Chinese. That's becoz you can't possibly go to a TCM shop & ask for Solomonseal Rhizome or Panax Notoginseng (which, by the way are 2 common Chinese herbs) & expect the person to know what you want. Also, there're tons of herbs around so you'll just end up getting confused if it's a book meant for the physicians.

I recently bought a soup book from Popular & I really enjoy it. A pity that it's a bit too simple & covers only the most basic herbs & food items. I prepared a simple soup of burdock, corn & hairy gourd (without herbs) last weekend using my newly bought slow cooker. Everyone in the family got a bowl of the tasteless soup (coz I didn't add salt), including the dogs. The dogs got a few small pieces of the burdock & hairy gourd along with a small scoop of soup. Ton Ton drank the soup but left the rest. Every other dog finished up whatver was given to them.

I plan on making Panax Notoginseng (Tian Qi) soup over the weekend. Hehe. There're many other soups which I can't make. Either I can't find the ingredients or the ingredients are too ex. There're many TCM shops around & some herbs you can even get from NTUC (Fairprice brand). I got majority of mine from Eu Yang Seng. Jeff encouraged me to get from them although it's "branded" & significantly more ex. He always like to say, "The price will never lie.".

I hope I have time to pay a visit to the organic shop tomorrow. I lost my packet of organic wolfberry during the move & I'll like to top up on that, as well as shop around for other herbs that I can get. I can't seem to find my membership card & I'm going to look for it now. :(