A Guide for Self-Healing Newsletter December 2005

Focusing on simple things: Chicken soup

Welcome to the December 2005 edition of the Guide for Self-Healing newsletter. I’m moving to a more attractive format next time, but for now I hope the plain text format will do!

I’d like to give you some kernels of practical info in these newsletters, so let’s get started..

This month with the weather turning chilly for many of us, I thought it would be good to remind people about warming
foods that have been used in many dietary traditions to help people adjust to colder weather and stay healthy throughout the winter.

There are so many nutritional and supplement approaches to staying healthy through the winter, but if you can make just one or two small changes in your routine this winter, and follow through, that could have a greater impact than if you scattered your attention over many things.. you know, those things that you keep trying to remember to do
:-).

So, instead of scattering and dwindling our energies, we simplify and focus. That’s my approach to a lot of things in life!

Nutrition is a matter of what Dr. Samuel Hahnemann (the founder of Homeopathic Medicine) called “Regimen,” which
operates on the Law of Opposites. The Law of Opposites is a law of nature that involves balancing things; for example,
when you have a deficiency of a certain nutrient, you take that nutrient to supply what’s missing, so the system comes
into balance.

Regimen involves not only diet, but also drinking water, exercise, even herbal remedies that are given to correct some imbalance.

Regimen is really just one aspect of cultivating or recovering health. But it’s always an important foundation, so I thought I’d start the series of newsletters there.
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So much misleading information is being disseminated by the herb and nutritional supplement industries, and I’d like to
start sorting through some of that..

One example, for now, is the commonly held view that it’s good to take lots of garlic and use very hot herbs like cayenne for protection against colds and flu. While those very heating (yang) herbs can be useful when used for specific conditions at specific times, using them on a regular basis can actually weaken the vital energy for many people.

On the other hand, there are foods and herbs that are gently tonifying and help to build the vital energy and resistance to disease.

Rather than get into so much detail about nutrition and individualizing the diet, let’s cut through all the detail and look at ONE food that most people can use as a staple throughout the winter to cover a lot of nutritional bases — chicken soup!

I’ll show you how making chicken soup from scratch can be done simply and easily, once you get into the routine. Make
it on one of those raw, chilly Sundays, to give you many good meals for the next few weeks. Besides building “chi” and blood, according to Chinese medicine, the soup provides superb nutrition from the bones as well as the natural gelatin.

Chicken soup also contains the special ingredient called “hydrophillic colloids,” which attract digestive enzymes. That means that even though chicken soup is well cooked, you get the benefit of raw foods in terms of digestibility. Pretty clever of those chickens.

These are things that various cultural dietary traditions knew how to make use of even when they didn’t have the means to understand the biochemistry.

We know that even just leaning over a bowl of warm soup seems to help break up nasal congestion. But also there’s a
good reason for its effectiveness. The amino acid cysteine, which is abundant in chicken soup, has proven especially
helpful for respiratory and flu-like conditions.

Here’s a little story to illustrate another aspect of the healing power of chicken soup. A while back, my mother had
an intestinal problem, which the doctor said was a viral infection and had no real useful advice to offer. The problem seemed chronic, and my mother had to eliminate a lot of her usual foods that were too irritating, but then she realized that she didn’t have enough foods in her diet that could help soothe the intestines while building digestive strength at the same time.

Because of the digestive upset, she couldn’t eat beans and whole grains anymore, and then we started figuring out her
protein needs and it was more than twice what she was getting. After eating some plain rice congee (Chinese rice
porridge), drinking more water, and eating very little for a few days as a sort of fast to rest the digestive system,
she started eating some salmon and then a little chicken soup, which all agreed with her well, to her surprise.

That experience opened up a whole new world to her. Her herbalist, who she trusted, told her that she was very Spleen/Stomach deficient (in Chinese medicine terminology), which was at the root of the intestinal problem, and to
treat that she needed a lot of warming, nourishing foods.

Adding a little meat and chicken soup back into her diet gave her what she was missing, and she’s doing a lot better
now. The higher protein is also part of the lower-carb diet, and her blood pressure and glaucoma are both much
improved as well.

There are many other things that help with these conditions, but the dietary changes went a long way, and were enjoyable too! Focusing on a few key changes there proved more helpful (and inexpensive!) than spending a fortune on dozens of special supplements.
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BASIC CHICKEN SOUP RECIPE

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken — grass-fed or at least
hormone/antibiotic-free (see notes below)
or chicken parts, 2-4 lbs, preferably with skin

carrots — 2 large or 3 small
onion — 1
celery — 1 stalk including leaves
vinegar — 3 tbsp raw apple cider vinegar
bay leaf

Directions:

If using frozen chicken, defrost in fridge overnight.

If you forget, you can throw the frozen parts into the pot and it will still work okay.

When ready to make soup, fill soup pot halfway with water
(I use a 6 qt pot)

Add chicken. Amount of water will be adjusted later.

Heat until boiling, then reduce to a very gentle simmer

Add 1 bay leaf

Add 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar (optional, but it pulls good minerals out of the bones)

With a large serving spoon, skim off any foamy stuff that comes to the surface, as much as possible

Add veggies cut in large chunks

Simmer for 1 hour

Remove chicken onto a plate and cut off most but not all of the meat (This is to reserve for later, otherwise the meat
will be overcooked)

Put the bones with a little meat left on them back into the pot

Continue simmering another few hours, so about 3 hours or more total.

Can be eaten after 2 hours, but will be more nutritious the longer it cooks. I usually do about 3 hrs total.

The water will boil down; add more, and taste to see if it’s too concentrated or too watery.

(After you’re used to doing this, you’ll be able to eyeball the amount of water you need.)

If you end up with soup that’s too watery, you can boil off some water when you reheat it.

If you have soup that’s too concentrated, just add water when you reheat it.

In other words, you can’t go wrong!

When done, ladle out the broth into a bowl, or into several jars, and discard the veggies and bones.

(Those veggies don’t taste good anymore; they’ve given all their nutrients to the broth)

Take the meat you reserved and cut pieces up to put back into the broth.

Separately cook up some veggies to add to the soup if desired. (carrots, onion, potatoes, zucchini, peas, any
combination you like).

I keep cooked veggies leftover for a few days, so when I want soup I heat up the broth with meat and just add some
of the veggies to my bowl.

Add any herb seasonings as desired.. I usually like just the bay leaf, and some unrefined (Celtic) salt at the
table. The chicken has so much flavor it doesn’t need anything else.

I fill up jars of broth and keep some in the fridge and some in the freezer.

The soup can be made in a crock pot overnight, too. It’s not necessary to cut the meat off after an hour, but the
meat will be a little tough to eat if it cooks the whole time.

If you have a whole chicken, it’s done the same way.

Or if you roasted a chicken, you can use the carcass from that.
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Broth for other uses:

If you have a jar of broth in the fridge, you can add it to lots of other things –

Use it for cooking veggies instead of water

Cook potatoes in it for chicken-flavored mashed potatoes.

Use it as a stock for any other kind of soup you feel like having– carrot soup, squash soup, potato-leek soup, etc.

For other soups I don’t use recipes either. Carrot or sweet potato or squash soup is basically just cooking the carrots
or squash, blending it, and adding seasonings. Tastes much better with a soup stock base like chicken or beef. So much
better than using prepared bouillon.

If you have beef bones, the recipe is basically the same as for the chicken. Use meaty bones for more flavor for the
broth, and you can add some stew meat or any other cut of meat you have.

Tastes even better if you roast the bones first. I do it in a pan on top of the stove, easier. Then you add some water
and wine to “degrease” the pan. Yum.

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CLEANUP TIP: Wipe the soup pot out with a paper towel before washing it! That gets rid of most of the grease and
makes it much easier to wash!

NOTES:

To find grass-fed meats in your area, see:
http://www.eatwild.com
Also some grass-fed meats can be ordered from Dr. Mercola:
http://www.mercola.com

In upstate NY, a good mail order source is:
http://www.meadowraisedmeats.com

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Therapeutic regimen can be simple and enjoyable, rather than overly complicated and serious. A relaxed yet focused
approach to healing works best, in my experience.

I hope you enjoyed the newsletter, and I wish you warmth and nourishment of body and spirit.

“See” you next month,

-Karen
http://www.guideforselfhealing.com