Spring back to life with this delicious soup
My friend Jody lives a very healthy lifestyle. She runs a yoga school in Atlanta and often attends healthy-living seminars to learn how to improve her health through both action and through the foods she eats.
Recently, she attended a seminar where she leared about ancient Chinese views on food as both nourishment and medicine.
Certain foods, she shared with me, are best eaten at certain times of year based on their reactions with both the internal and external environments of your body.
At the seminar, the leader shared vairous recipes, some of them raw and some cooked, that are best for our bodies as the winter chills are leaving and we begin anew in Spring.
This soup, in particular, caught my attentio because it it still warming enough to take the chill of lingering winter (even here in sunny central Florida), but it contains some of those ingredients we associate with Spring to help get us motivated for a rejuvination of our mind, body and spirit that comes when things are coming back to life after our long winter's "nap".
Spring Mushroom Barley Soup
5 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked 20 miutes in hot water, remove stems and slice
8-10 cups water
5 button mushrooms, wiped and sliced
Kosher or sea salt to taste
1/2 cup each of diced carrots, celery and onions
1/2 cup sliced leeks
1 cup barley (soaked 4-5 hours in 2 cups water)
Scallions for garnish
- Combine all the ingredients except for the leeks and the scallions in a pot.
- Bring the soup to a boil and simmer for an hour or two.
- When you are almost ready to serve (5 minutes or so), add the sliced leeks.
- Spoon the soup into bowls and garnish with the scallions.
