Tired? Fatigued? Low libido? Low back pain? Weak knees? Wake up in the middle of the night? Recently weak after surgery?
These are just a few symptoms of weakened kidney function. In Chinese Medicine there are many more symptoms related to this and aging alone is one of the ways that kidneys weaken. There is alot to gain from supplementing your kidneys with a really good tonic including reversing the symptoms listed below.

Well, I have the secret here, and its going to look a bit different to most people. The ‘color’ of the kidney is black, so there is no wonder all the ingredients are basically black. I asure you not only is this recipe an excellent tonic, but is very delicious!

Presenting the Ultimate Kidney Tonic, Ultimate Antioxidant Black Chicken Soup!
Here is what you need:
1 Whole Black Chicken- called Silky Chicken or Silkie Chicken (found at Asian grocery stores for sure)
1.5-2cups Black Beans - Huge amount of protien, good for kidneys
Kombu Seaweed - minerals and alkaline
Rice noodles or Bean Threads - wheat free noodles, clears body heat
Tamari (premium soy sauce) - adds fermented food to diet
1 can Vegetable Stock - vegetables
1/8 cup olive oil
4 tbl minced garlic
Sea Salt
Pepper
Large Crockpot

Herbs:
30g He Shou Wu- Kidney and blood builder
30g Shu Di Huang - Rehmannia Prepared - Kidney and blood builder
20g Gou Qi Zi - Goji berries - antioxidant, blood builder
20g Huang Qi - Astragalus (this is not a normal ingredient, but since it is approaching fall time, I wanted to add this for Immunity boosting properties)
10g Shan Zha - Hawthorn Berry - helps the properties of the soup move through normally
10g Chen Pi - Citrus Peel - allows all the building properties not cause constipation.

I am going to show you the long way to make this. I prefer the taste of soups that sit and simmer in crockpots for the 4-6 hour time frame. I will list some short-cuts at the end.

First thing is first. You MUST soak your beans over night. Place the beans in the crockpot container and cover with water well over the height of the beans. Add about 1oz of kombu seaweed. This removes all of the bad things from the beans and allows them to soak up all the goodness from the seaweed. By the next day your beans are ready and the seaweed wont taste like seaweed anymore!

The next morning empty the water from the beans and briefly wash them and add them back to the pot and cover with water again (keep the seaweed too!). Put this on high and let that go for an hour, while you let the chicken sit out. This is the time to decide how daring you can be :).

About the chicken-

The Black (Silky Silkie) Chicken is a bird that is TOTALLY BLACK! although its feathers are bright white! This chicken is incredibly good for your kidneys and blood. The meat has a bit more darker look to it, but taste BETTER than chicken. The chicken will probably come from somewhere like New Zealand. This means you are not only getting a better chicken, but the chicken was raised naturally! No antibiotics and other crap from regular chicken!
Silky Black Chicken is very high in antioxidants and carnosine. This shows bio-medically that this chicken is not only better than regular chicken but supports strong muscles, rich blood, and anti-oxidants. Again this is not new to cultures like the Chinese or Japanese, but we can see now how the ‘black’ food group can really help us out!
The chicken is going to come with the head, neck and legs/feet attached. You need to figure out what you want to keep. If you don’t like any of it I would recommend that you cook the whole chicken and when we get to the part to cut the bird up remove them then. The head can definitely be tossed but the feet are really tasty and add more bone and ligament for the soup to absorb.

Now that its been an hour, turn the crockpot to low. Add the whole chicken in there and more water to almost cover. Let this now sit for 3hours.

Now, remove the chicken and put it on a cutting board. It will need to cool for a couple minutes (try not to loose any liquid from inside the bird).
Remove the seaweed from the pot and place it in a strainer.
Heat up a wok and place your olive oil in. Heat the oil and add all the garlic. Once you start to smell the strong aroma add the seaweed. Crisp the seaweed a little bit (5-7 min) and add the seaweed AND all of the oil and garlic to the crockpot.
Cut the chicken up into 2 thighs, 2 legs, 2 feet, 2 breasts, 2 wings, 1 neck. Remove what you feel like removing and add everything back to the crockpot.
Add all the herbs now. The Goji berries can be placed directly into the pot, but the other herbs should be added in a way that they can be removed at the end. The Goji Berries will stay in the soup!
Add the vegetable stock and recover to sit for another hour. The vegetable stock is used for flavoring as we aren’t using a vegetables.

After the hour has passed your an hour away from it being done! At this point add about 1/8 cup of Tamari, and some salt and pepper. Your going to have to keep tasting and play with the salt and pepper to your tasting. Now your going to add the noodles. I added 2 of the 3 bundles that came in the package. The noodles will pick up the color and flavor of the soup and in the end, they will tune black too :). Let that all marinate for an hour.

Now your all done! Remove the herbs and turn the crockpot off. The soup is going to be 1million degrees so leave the lid off and let cool. Dish up the soup making sure to get some chicken, plenty of broth, beans and noodles in your bowl! Be careful there are still bones in the soup!

If your impatient and don’t see appreciate the taste of a beautifully simmered soup here is what you can do. After you soak the beans make 1 large pot of boiling water and a smaller pot of boiling water. Boil the beans in the water for about 30-45 minutes until tender. Parboil the chicken for about 10 minutes. Cut the chicken and add both together using the bean water in a crockpot. Add everything else talked about and simmer for an hour. You should be ready to go.

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Let’s talk about home dieting. An easy and efficient way to help with weight loss and living healthy is to buy the right food. The good news here is that in many cases you can just modify the items you buy rather than buying something completely different. Some of this information may not be completely new to you, but I hope to get some awareness out there.

Fiber- This is the key to dieting and let me tell you why.
Fiber content is mostly indigestible fully in the body because we don’t contain the enzymes to do so. What Fiber does is compact our food and moisture and clear out our intestines on the way down. The regularity that Fiber gives to the bowel movement has many benefits. First, I would like to define regular- I mean have a bowel movement AT LEAST 1 time daily. What doctors consider normal is the national average, that’s why blood pressure normality seems to raise every couple years. So if you were told that going every 3 days is okay, its not. Regular bowel movements keep your intestinal muscles healthy, toxins out of your body; regulate proper water weight, and nutrition absorption (all of these can also help with your complexion).

Secondly Fiber just so happens to be in foods that are all good for you! Fiber is found in Whole Wheat, Brown Rice, Seeds, Whole Grains, etc… When you are eating ‘Whole’ foods you get the benefit of the Fiber and many B-Vitamins (energy), protein, and iron.

Fiber and ‘whole’ foods are denser. You just can’t simply eat as much as you would. This helps you on your goal of losing weight as one of the things you need to do is learn portion control. Fiber is a great snack before meals as well. A slice of whole wheat bread in your system some time before meals will greatly reduce your appetite. The whole wheat portion is a natural part of food. It is processed off of the grain when you it is purchased in a non-whole wheat fashion. When you take in the whole grain your body must use more energy (work off calories) to break off this ‘capsule’ of the wheat.

Lets recap-

Healthy intake

Less appetite

Bowel regulation

Here’s a secret of diet pills- help regulate appetite, regulate bowels, and make you lose water weight. Sound familiar?

Now I would like to talk about what I think as the greatest of all fiber foods- Flax Seed. Flax Seed, like many other seeds, are an excellent source of oils along with protein and iron and such. The oils of nuts and seeds are quite healthy and Flax Seed is not only no exception but the king of all oils. Flax Seed is high in Omega 3 fatty acids; an essential fatty acid that our body cannot produce on its own it must be outsourced. Flax Seed has a high content of fiber and it’s a ‘moist laxative’. Flax seed needs to be ground up prior to use for full effect, but I like to buy it pre ground from say Uncle Bob’s. What is the usage you say? It can be used at every meal if you wanted to, but specifically- Sprinkle on your cereal, cook in with hot cereal, goes great on peanut butter sandwiches, add to soups, add to crock pot meals, add to chili, wok it in to meals early when you are sautéing just to name a few. Flax Seed has a very subtle taste and usually won’t be tasted. Its taste is sorta nutty when you can taste it so it’s especially great with anything that would have peanut butter or where that taste would compliment the dish.

Here’s a little sample shopping list to give you some ideas:

Flax Seed

Multi Grain Hot Cereal

Whole Wheat Bread (Double fiber or Whole Grain)

Whole Grain Pastas

Whole Wheat crackers

Fiber One Cereal

Whole Wheat Waffles (Eggo’s Cinnamon Whole Grain Waffles are great!)

Brown Rice

Buy Wheat Flower and use instead of White

There are many whole wheat pasta sides available

Eat the fruit, not the fruit juice

Buy fresh vegetables

Have side salads at as many meals as possible (easy and light dressings!!)

When you’re out getting a salad load up on the green vegetables

Whole Wheat tortilla chips

And much more!

Keep an open mind about it and look for a whole wheat alternative to what you normally buy.

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Welcome to the first of my 3 part series on Dieting and Weight. This topic is on dieting in itself. The next part will include an actual diet along with grocery help. The last part will help you out with easy exercises that are targeted at losing fat. Enjoy!

There seems to be a phenomenon that dieting must be followed by some type of celebrity or ‘scientific breakthrough’. I’m here to tell you this simply isn’t true. The same fundamentals that existed for healthy weight is still true today. You need a healthy diet combined with daily activity that increases your heart rate (exercise). Diet pills that circulate around have a bottle full of promises, but they all say ‘combined with diet and exercise’. Why do we try to dance around this subject and not do anything properly? Even if you could start slimming down by simply popping a pill would it be worth it? This is highly doubted and let me tell you why. Weight gain is simply a by product of bad diet and/or overeating. You still have health risks of taking in unhealthy food. Secondly, about every ‘diet pill’ has either come under scrutiny, been sued, or killed a handful of people.

Thankfully many recent diet fads are at least ‘diet programs’ or ‘diet plans’. The diet simply consists of sending you healthy meals that just need to be heated up to eat. The thought here is that it’s so convenient you will eat the meals and combined with some exercise can lose weight. Pills are frankly mostly psychological in nature in that you feel like its going to help and hopefully you continue to diet. Diet pills have continually changed what they put in them, usually because it kills someone, but usually consists of ways to speed metabolism and help curb hunger. There are frankly too many diet pills to look at, but a good way to gauge a good diet pills is take a look at Dimmak LITE - weight loss pills from www.DimmakHerbs.com . This is an all natural herbal diet assistant that helps maintain and speed up your metabolism, curb appetite, and help you maintain a regular bowel movement. Lastly the pills help with body water maintenance.

Many people are familiar with water weight lose, whether they know it or not, as when people start a diet they lose 5-10 lbs in the first week. In subsequent weeks they can lose very little to nothing at all. This is when the diet crash comes in to play. People now believe they aren’t losing enough weight, the diet isn’t working, or they are doing something wrong. Water weight is an ever changing thing in your body in very small amounts. When you become active and eat good food, a 180 from previous, you end up shedding a lot of water the first week. It is now possible for you to have a slight over lose and your body brings water back in. You may now be exercising so your water intake and expel have increased.

‘Bottom line is a diet take some time. You can’t expect drastic changes in the first few weeks. You lose and gain water; you lose and gain pounds’

The best way to take error out of watching weight lose is to weigh yourself at the same time everyday, preferably in the morning first thing. Water weighs a lot! If you don’t believe me then weigh yourself before and after you pee. It can be ½ to an entire pound of weight!

When people begin to diet they also believe that they should be drinking some ridiculous amount of water. This is simply not true and is quite unhealthy for you. Men should be taking in about 10-12 cups of water and women 8-10. This includes food, drinks, and everything else with water in it! Make sure to gauge this out by how intense your exercising routine is. Overdrinking water will cause sodium and electrolyte balances in your body causing cramping and intense shooting of pain. This also over-works your kidneys which is the root of your energy.

On top of all of this I hate to be the bearer of bad news. Losing more than 2-4 lbs a week is quite unhealthy for you. You will not only be losing weight in an unhealthy way, but you will also be losing weight faster than normal skin adaptation. Bottom line if you aren’t losing weight properly you are going to have a handful of excess skin to deal with in the end.

For real diet success I would recommend contacting a nutritionist, person trainer, or dietician. I have helped many people lose weight and when it’s done right its semi-permanent. You can eat out when you want, grab some fast food here and there. This is because your diet staple has become healthy; a treat every now and then has little effect on you!

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I have gotten many emails about recipes for Congee and Kicharee. Although the generic recipes are posted here: http://blogofherbs.com/recepies/food-for-life-and-health-kicharee , http://blogofherbs.com/recepies/appetite-for-health-heres-a-recipe-congee .
Many people don’t want to figure out how to make recipes by adding in their own ingredients. Well, here is my favorite Congee recipe although I do make my Congee very similar to Kicharee. The difference to me is that I make congee with a little sweetness and dates/berries and Kicharee with vegetables and such.

Ok here is a list of what you need:
1/4 cup Adzuki Beans
1/4 cup Red Beans
1/4 cup Mung Beans
2.5 cups Brown Rice
1/2 cup Bob’s Red Mill 7grain hot cereal
1/2 cup Bob’s Red Mill Flax Seed
1/4 cup Bob’s Red Mill Wheat Germ
1 cup Organic Brown Sugar
40g Raisins
Pinch Kombuchu Sea Weed
1tsp Sea Salt
Herbs I-
20g Ginseng/ Ren Shen
20g Astragalus/ Huang Qi
10g Cassia Stick/ Rou Gui
10g Cascara Sagrada
Herbs II-
25g Goji Berries/ Lychii Berry/ Gou Qi Zi
30g Jujube Dates/ Da Zao
2g Dried Ginger/ Gan Jiang
20g Longan Berry/ Dragon Eyes/ Long Yan Rou
10g Cassia Stick/ Rou Gui
10g Rhubarb/ Da Huang

Ok, right now its night time so put all your beans in a large bowl with a large pinch of Kombuchu Seaweed. Cover with fresh water, cover and leave it alone until tomorrow.

Now that its tomorrow and approximately 6 hours you want this to be done and you are able to tend to the Congee in 4 hours, lets get started!
Strain our your beans and throw them in your super large Crockpot. Wash your rice under some water and put that in the Crockpot and cover with water. Fill it up to about 3/4 the way full and set to High for about 20-30 minutes and then set to Low Heat (this isn’t necessary). Let that cook for about 4 hours total stirring a few times to make sure the bottom isn’t cooking by itself.
Now, about the Herbs I and II. Herbs I need to be decocted so they are separated out. You can do this step anytime you like before its time to get back to the Congee after the 4 hours. Here is how you handle that:
Add 4 cups of water to a SS pot. Bring to boil and add herbs. Simmer for 30 minutes or until the water is reduced by half. Strain off herbs and save the liquid…
Back to the Congee, has it been 4 hours already? Great, lets first stir our pot and check the texture. Assuming everything is good lets move on.
Add decocted mixture of Herbs I in the pot, Add the HerbsII pile, raisins, and sugar. Now start stirring and slowly add your Bob’s powders in the pot to ensure no clumping.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss anything but everything should be in there by now. Top the crockpot off with water and cook this for another 2 hours or so stirring occasionally.

Now that everything is done pack up in Tupperware all your not going to eat now. The Congee shouldn’t be very sweet as is and it should be pretty good. You may sweeten it up a bit if you like. You may also add a little milk for breakfast eating.
This recipe is good for energy, energy regulation, bowel regulation, weight loss, weight management, immune system and brain/function through the day (alertness).

Enjoy Responsibly!

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