Introduction: As autumn turns to winter, the weather grows colder. This is a time to pay special attention to your diet. From vegetables and fruits to meats, there are many ingredients suitable for dietary therapy during the autumn and winter seasons.
Top Tonic: Chinese Yam
Chinese yam is both a medicinal and edible food that aids the spleen and stomach in digestion and absorption, helps prevent cardiovascular diseases, and is believed to promote longevity.
Best Ways to Eat: It can be steamed, made into soup, or stir-fried. Steaming it results in the least loss of nutrients.
Best Pairing: It can be paired with goji berries to make a goji berry and Chinese yam congee, which enhances its nourishing effects.
Top Vegetable: Lotus Root
Lotus root can nourish yin, clear heat, moisturize dryness, quench thirst, and calm the mind. It is also rich in dietary fiber, which is beneficial for treating constipation.
Best Ways to Eat: The seven-hole lotus root has a higher starch content, less water, and a sticky but not crisp texture, making it suitable for soups. The nine-hole lotus root has a high water content and is crisp, tender, and juicy, making it best for cold salads or light stir-fries.
Best Pairing: Black and white fungus. Paired with white fungus (tremella), it nourishes the lung yin. Paired with black fungus, it nourishes the kidney yin.
Pork Rib and Lotus Root Soup
Top Nut: Peanut
Peanuts are neutral in nature and sweet in flavor. They can invigorate the spleen, harmonize the stomach, moisten the lungs, resolve phlegm, nourish and regulate qi, and soothe the throat and stop coughs.
Best Ways to Eat: Fresh peanuts are best boiled in the shell. This not only makes them easier to digest and absorb but also allows you to fully utilize the health benefits of the peanut shell and its inner red skin.
Best Pairing: Jujubes. When paired with jujubes, they are effective for spleen deficiency and blood deficiency, as well as anemia, and are particularly beneficial for women.
Top Beverage: Yellow Wine
Yellow wine is one of the oldest alcoholic beverages in the world and contains 18 amino acids. It also contains a high amount of functional oligosaccharides, which can boost immunity and disease resistance. Yellow wine is warming in nature and has a sweet, slightly bitter taste. It has therapeutic effects such as unblocking meridians, promoting blood circulation, warming the spleen and stomach, moisturizing the skin, and dispelling dampness.
Best Way to Drink: Yellow wine should be served warm to warm the stomach and dispel cold. The ideal temperature is between 35°C and 45°C.
Best Pairing: Dark plum. Autumn diet emphasizes "gathering" or "astringency." Pairing it with dark plums aligns with this concept and has the effects of nourishing yin, promoting fluid production, moistening the lungs, and protecting the liver.
Top Congee: Lily Congee
Lily is sweet with a slight bitterness, and neutral in nature. It has a certain therapeutic effect in inhibiting the proliferation of cancer cells. It can also moisten the lungs and stop coughs, and calm the mind.
Best Ways to Eat: Cooked into congee. Lily can be used in dishes, such as celery stir-fried with lily or lily stir-fried with beef. It can also be cooked into congee. When made into a lily congee with glutinous rice and rock sugar, it is not only delicious but also helps with sleep.
Best Pairing: Almonds. Almonds have the effects of moistening the lungs and stopping coughs, and calming the mind. A congee made with lily and almonds is suitable for those recovering from illness and patients with a dry cough.
Hawthorn, Lotus Seed, and Lily Congee
Top Meat: Cuttlefish
Cuttlefish is rich in B vitamins and trace elements such as calcium, phosphorus, and iron. It is a high-protein, low-fat nourishing food.
Best Ways to Eat: It can be braised, stir-fried, quick-fried, stewed, eaten cold in a salad, or made into soup. To prevent autumn dryness, cuttlefish soup is a good choice.
Best Pairing: Tofu, which is also a food that nourishes yin and promotes fluid production. Eating them together can also have a complementary protein effect.
Top Fruit: Pear
Pears are fresh, tender, and juicy, and nutritionally rich. Eating a pear daily can help relieve autumn dryness and promote fluid production to moisten the lungs.
Best Ways to Eat: Eating raw pears can significantly relieve symptoms such as a dry, itchy, or sore throat, constipation, and dark urine in patients with upper respiratory tract infections. Cooking or steaming pears, such as rock sugar steamed pears, can moisten yin and the lungs, and stop coughs and reduce phlegm. It also has preventive and therapeutic effects for gout, rheumatism, and arthritis.
Silver Ear and Snow Pear Soup