The last few weeks my mom’s been making me drink her Chinese bone broth soup. Consuming bone marrow and collagen is supposedly beneficial because it helps boost your immune system and bla bla bla ancient Chinese medicinal reasons. Mom’s soup had Chinese dates dates, goji berries, and carrots along with the beef bones which I used a straw to suck up the marrow. The soup that she made with those ingredients were conflicting because you had a salty broth with slightly oily marrow and sweet flavors coming from the carrots, goji berries, and dried dates.
Of course she says, if you can do it better then you try.
Exactly the words I wanted to hear.
I looked up a Japanese ramen broth recipe from Serious Eats and adjusted it for the beef bones that mom brought: https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/02/rich-and-creamy-tonkotsu-ramen-broth-from-scratch-recipe.html
For aromatics I had 2 yellow onions, 1 leek, head of garlic, ginger, white mushrooms, and 12 white parts of the green onion. After prepping, I sauteed the onions, garlic, and ginger until they were brown and slightly charred to get some caramelized flavor into the soup.
Mom bought like 3 lbs of beef bones and I found 1/4 of a chicken’s worth of bones in the freezer which I threw into cold water into a 7.5qt stock pot (my 20qt is at my house unfortunately) and brought to a boil to remove all the impurities. I dumped all the bones into a colander in the sink and hand washed each bone to remove additional impurities.
Bones went back into the pot with the veggies and topped with cold water. Stock was brought to a small simmer at med low heat.
I was really surprised that with this 30ish min worth of prep work I was exhausted and needed to take a break on the couch for a while. Normally, I can cook for hours with no problem.
The resulting soup after 8 hours of simmering was thick and creamy with all the rich protein and collagen from the bones. I was going to remove the veggies and stuff but my dad told me to just keep them in there. I finished it off with some soy sauce and sesame oil. I wish I could get ground sesame seeds, fresh ramen noodles, or that my immune system would allow me to add raw green onion tops as garnish. Still though, it was a good soup because yours truly made it 😀
Because of all the health benefits, bone marrow soup is going to be part of my regular diet for the foreseeable future so I’m going to have to get creative on how to make this going forward. Any ideas?
Currently I have a few projects that I’m slowly working through to eat up my very abundant free time. I have 5 travel blogs that I need to transfer over to this site. I’m almost done with my first Japan trip in 2015. I also went to San Fran last year to interview my grandma about her life and what it was like to immigrate to the US, get kicked out, then re-immigrate again. I’m about 75% done editing that video. And then I have a book I need to finish.
Since I’m on “life hiatus” until at least the end of the year if I’m lucky, I wanted to be able to look back and see something that I was able to accomplish. After I’m all better, I’d really like to go back to Japan and spend a few weeks there bumming around before going back to work. I figured, I’m pretty good at 4 languages, why not add a 5th?
My aunt was really nice in offering to buy me some intro to Japanese books which just arrived in the mail yesterday. I’m hoping I can finish my projects in the next 2 weeks and dedicate my time towards teaching myself Japanese.
A few weeks ago my friend Bob asked me when I’d be home to receive a delivery. Ok not suspicious at all right? It turns out that he and his girlfriend Xu gathered a group of 15 of our friends together to pitch in for a new bed for me. Because of my tumor, I can’t sleep flat on a bed as it presses up on my lungs and I can’t breathe. Bob did some research and found a remote controlled adjustable bed frame for me along with a memory foam mattress. I’m sleeping in my sister’s old bed and I kind of missed the hospital beds. Our friends were all happy to pitch in and even got me a mattress cover and bed sheets too.
This was such a generous gesture and I’m so grateful to everyone thinking of me in this way. My quality of sleep has definitely improved. I looked at my fitbit data for sleep last night and I slept an extra hour than normal with less tossing and turning too.
I also wanted to show off my growing card wall. Thank you to everyone that’s reached out and sent me a card. I really enjoy looking at these every day. There’s no question that I am loved by so many people.
