Fall: crisp dry cold days and damp nights equals a hot bowl of homemade ramen. The benefits of this easy ramen soup are numerous.  15 minutes prep time is all it takes. The Benefits: Yin nourishing, moistens the lungs, cleanses the liver, natural probiotic, helps the thyroid, vegetarian and gluten-free. 

I am not someone who is known for measuring anything.  It's always a little bit of this, a bunch of that, and a pinch of this... so here it goes..

Ingredients

A bunch or handful of dandelion leaves

Organic/unpasturized/GMO free Red Miso Paste ( 3+ tablespoons or as desired to your taste)

1 cup shitake or mushrooms of your choice

2 stalks of scallion chopped

Rice noodles (as desired)

Sesame seed oil

Dried seaweed (2-3 sheets or desired seaweed)

Instructions

-Sautee mushrooms in sesame seed oil on high heat. Keep the mushrooms half raw so not a whole lot of sauteeing time.

-Add dandelion and stirfry lightly with mushrooms. 

-Cook the noodles until al-dente, and drain. Leave to the side.

- Add 2 1/2 cups of fresh filtered water back up to boil.  When boiled, turn off the flame.  

-Wisk in the miso paste into the boiled filtered water.  No flame on in order not to destroy the naturally occuring probiotics in the miso.  

-Once wisked through, pour over your noodles in a bowl, add sauteed mushrooms, dandelion, chopped scallion and dried seawead.  

A simple cup of rice makes a healing soup called "congee."  Congee is a nutritional rice soup served warm and can be eaten at any time of the day.  It is easy to digest and is perfect when you are experiencing any discomfort digestively or recovering from the flu, surgery, childbirth or food poisoning.  

I tell my patients to use 1 cup of rice to 8 cups of bone broth or vegetable broth.  Cook in a covered saucepan on low heat and simmer for about 2-3 hours until the rice is completely broken down and is a creamy consistency.  Stir occasionally to prevent sticking.  Adding vegetables and herbs about an hour into cooking is the way to make this a healing soup.

Choose the following to be added depending on the purpose of the healing:

• Ginger: to treat cold and deficiency, diarrhea and indigestion
• Aduki beans: to treat edema and increase urination
• Carrots: to ease gas symptoms
• Fennel: treat cold and deficiency
• Butternut squash: my favorite to help increase the qi and add a sweet flavor
• Onion or leek: to warm the digestive system and treat chronic diarrhea
• Red dates: overall strengthening of the energy
• Liver: to treat blood deficiency (I like to use organic chicken livers)
• Cod fish or Dried mini-shrimp: deficiency and fatigue and brain fog

As an acupuncturist I often give my patients depending on their symptoms, the following herbs to add an hour into cooking:

• Cordonopsis (Dang Shen) for tired limbs, fatigue and prolapse of any kind
• Astragalus Root (Huang Qi) for post-partum fever due to blood and qi deficiency, also an amazing her used in any recovery stage.
• Licorice root (Gan Cao) for painful spasms of the abdomen or legs
• Goji Berries for blood deficiency and calming effect

Preparation:

Cook the rice and beans with the water and simmer as I mentioned above.  In a separate pot (I prefer cast iron for the iron benefits, saute the ginger, onion, or leeks and add the animal protein if you prefer.  Add to your rice an hour into cooking and garnish the rice with scallions, sesame oil and a dash of gluten-free tamari sauce to taste.