The soup saga + 花生根

I am currently living a massive contradiction, and I need to vent my frustrations.

Sinseh says lil’ one’s body constitution lacks water. Water that comes from normal water intake is not sufficient, her diet needs more soup, porridge. Hearing this, lil’ one cannot become any more ah-ma than this! 😂

So, being the good mother, I made an attempt to boil more soup for dinner. The verdict? It is absolutely exhausting. I also face the reality of my tiny kitchen situation. 

Beginning with THE FRIDGE CRISIS :  My fridge and freezer are way too small. I can't just buy a mountain of pork bones to stock up. Sheng Siong is just right across us, but they only import Australian pork 🤨. Which means I need to make a weekly trip to NTUC after my Fight-Do to get the Malaysian pork. And once I do my grocery there, it also means I can’t visit mom with frozen things in the car. 

Next THE DISAPPEARING ACT : Every time I start with about 1.6 litres of water, it boils down to just enough for this ah-ma and ah-pek (hubby)

*😈thoughts* Then this good mama can be a bad evil mama too. Can I just dunk her into the baby pool outside our PES and make her drink that? It's just pool-chlorinated water mixed with a little urine, right? Perfect hydration! 🤣

In all seriousness, the entire process is just a massive hassle. It's a whole pi-ling-pa-lang drama in the kitchen-soaking the ingredients, cutting other ingredients, stir-frying other dishes, monitoring the pot (and if I'm unlucky, dealing with a dirty, boiled-over stove when I had my back turned) and then the inevitable aftermath.

The worst part? When dinner ends, the rest of the family just disappears to the living room or their bedrooms to relax. Meanwhile, I am left alone in the kitchen to clean up the war zone. No maid, no helper, just me. It is incredibly tiring to cook a whole meal, only to realize all that soup effort was gone in exactly ONE MEAL!

Debating if freezing soup will ease my job?

I considered making single-portioned soup cubes ahead of time coz sinseh advised daily nourishing soups especially on days leading up to her exams. But cooking a tiny daily portion—like a quarter of dried squid and 2 lotus root slices with 6 peanuts and 1 piece of pork bone—every single day is exhausting. Having ready cubes makes it easy to keep her hydrated on takeout days without burning me out.

My other concern about freezing soup

1) Oh, please don't tell my 妈妈 but she will nag at me nonstop about how eating frozen food causes 生风. Then she'll start comparing us: 'If I can do it by cooking fresh food for family daily, why can't you work harder for your child? Poor lil’ one is already so skinny don’t make her fall sick.” 

She needs to understand that not all hours in the kitchen are created equal. If you have ever spent 2hrs sweating over a hot stove feeding a family of fussy eaters, you know exactly what I mean. It is hard to put a proper meal on the table for four. When she cooked for us in 2hrs, we ate everything. The math just doesn't add up. That’s why I always felt cooking for my family is not out of love but an exhausting chore.

2) I’m sure TCM discourages bulk cooking and freezing food. I should ask our sinseh when we see him. I just hope he doesn't scold me! 😬

Something to read 

Problems I will face if I freeze soup

Let's be honest: we've all fallen down the Instagram bulk cooking & block-freeze rabbit hole. You know the videos I'm talking about. A serene creator effortlessly tucks stacks of silicone mold into a freezer that looks entirely empty. It looks so organized but where is their actual stuff? Coz it’s a battlefield when I open my fridge/freezer 😂. The freezer icepack that is meant for First Aid might be the cause of my injury 🤭. I mean, they’re Instagrammers for a reason, if I ever show myself walking in my small kitchen in one step to my fridge open it to put something inside …. Instantly my followers and ratings will drop 🤣. Well, just to freeze the plate of carrots, I had to move things around to ensure that it doesn’t topple when someone opens the door.

Oh, and can we talk about their HUGE fridge-freezer situation? Coz they have a 4 door model, they can easily segregate and organize everything into dedicated freezer drawers. Meanwhile, I'm here with my 2-door fridge, playing a game of Tetris (or should I say Jenga) trying to shove everything into one basic rectangular box freezer. I can play Where’s Wally with my freezer too! 

See! It’s the Instagrammable freezer. This is one side of a 4-door fridge. And anyway who stacks their cubes this way? It’s just for the photo op. Even if I had vacumn sealed my soup, I still don’t have that much space! 

You sure that’s the freezer? Or the fridge? You mean that’s all they have in their fridge? I need to put my ketchup, chilli sauce, oyster sauce, jams, butter, drinks, vegetables. They’re all missing in this fridge 😂

If that’s really their freezer then how big is their fridge? Whatever it is, this section here is even bigger than my fridge. Or maybe that’s their second refrigerator. I have some friends who have two at home. 

Years ago I was so inspired and wanted to organize my fridge and freezer this way. But reality doesn’t work out this way. 

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One day, I decided to test it out. I bought a single pack of peanut roots for lil’ one to try. I wanted to see if I could freeze the soup since she is the only one drinking it, and to see if she likes this better than the fresh peanut root soup 田七花生根 I used to brew for her.". 

12th Aug - using pork bones 

Total failure when I tried to freeze using this mold. My mistake actually, I should put a plate below to make the transfer to freezer easier. While this mold is easy to use, the ‘not so tightly secured’ thin cover makes me regret using this for liquidy stuff. It was alright using this for thicker pasta sauce and soups.  

 only that little soup was left - after the evaporation lost from cooking + spillage when trying to transfer mold to freezer.  Two bags of the soup left!🤭. I poured into ziploc bags and clipped it to the ice box, praying hard no one will knock it off when they open the freezer. Once it’s frozen, I will try to squeeze as much air out and wrap it tightly

Cooked the last pack on 18th. Can’t remember when I took the first one for her. FYI I don’t like to microwave food, always prefer to heat over the stove. 

Her comments on the soup. “Taste just like lotus root soup.” When I checked on the ingredients used for the lotus root prepack and peanuts root prepack there’s only a slight difference. She prefers the one I brew for her.

vs the peanuts root I brew for her. 

There’s difference between a soup and a medicinal brew

I need to bring out this point on dried peanut roots. What makes the “growth” works is the nodules and I hardly see them on the ones that came in the pack. I’ve purchased before from Shoppee dried peanut roots to try and didn’t like it. Firstly, I’m not sure how clean the sellers clean the peanut roots. Secondly, picture shows with peanuts 🥜 shells and all but it came looking like twigs

this is the fresh peanut roots I buy, I scrubbed every teeny corner with small brush until backache neck pain. Usually take me a very long time, 2-3hrs to clean. Have to wait for them to dry before I can vacumn seal. Usually I need to free up at least 6hrs doing this, that’s why I do in bulk. 

Time to be a good mama and try to find the fresh peanuts roots for her.