Soups for warming the tummies

My kids absolutely LOVE soups, especially the ones I cooked (I believe!).

I am a very soupy person too. I used to have my soup covering my rice bowl, and savoring both together. Guess this habit is picked up by my 2 younger ones too and they just beg me to cook soup everyday. I read that it's not probably good for digestion, but I can't stop myself and can't stop them! We love it this way too much!

Their favorite soup should be the ABC soup, without the pepper. (Cannot pepper spray in it ah)

Hubs' favorite should be the watercress.

Mine is almost any or all of them!

Korkor's not too particular in soup. He doesn't like to have the soup in his ricebowl so he takes it in after he finishes his meal.

The usual ones I make are

1. ABC soup with potatoes, carrots, big onions, tomatoes with meat.
2. watercress soup with dried squid, red dates and meat
3. herbal soup with meat
4. corn soup with big onions, red dates and meat
5. old wintermelon with dried squid, red dates and meat
6. radish with red dates, dried oysters with roasted pork bones
7. lotus roots with peanuts, dried squid with meat
8. "fan-kot" with dried squid, red dates and meat
9. dried radish leaves with mushroom, dried squid and meat.
10. spinach with egg, mushroom, ginger and ikan bilis.

As you can probably notice, a lot of the ingredients used are dried squid and red dates. It does the trick to give the deep flavour to the soup.

A tips I learnt from my mom is to boil the water first and run the hot boiling water over the meat before mixing the meat in. Discard the used water. Then the soup won't turn too oily.

I also love the soup mug I discovered in a groceries outlet a few years back where the spout doesn't allow pouring from the top part of the mug but the bottom of it The strategy is to let the soup sink in first and allow the oil to float upwards and we only consume the bottom part of the soup. When it was poured out, it's definitely a big difference! To wash it might seemed to be a tricky part but a long thin brush like for washing milk bottles would do the job perfectly! Then again, my mom still prefers to use her method of scooping the oil from the surface with a special kind of utensil for that purpose. To each their own.

I wonder if their memories of childhood later includes lots of warm stomachs by mommy's soups?