Welcome to the second week of this medicinal cooking collective challenge! I'm very happy that so many of you have joined us for this challenge, there are so many amazing cooks out there, wow! If you missed the first week, we are cooking dishes based on the Five Elements' Theory of Chinese Cooking. In Chinese medicine and cooking, it’s believed that if you are weak or ill in certain parts of your body or organs, you should consume certain colours/elements of food to help you feel better and improve your health.

This week we are cooking with the Wood Element, which is good for the liver and the gallbladder. The colour associated with the liver and gallbladder is Green and the taste associated with it is Sour. It is also associated with the emotion of Rage. The dishes we make will be good for the liver and gallbladder and will reflect the attributes of the Wood Element.

The liver is such an important organ to look after and is often under a lot of stress due to toxins, alcohol, fatty foods, sugar etc. When the liver is not healthy it can lead to many symptoms including chronic fatigue, abdominal pain and swelling, skin and eyes that appear yellowish, nausea or vomiting and joint pain. Many people do detox programs to help the liver, and there are many herbs and remedies that can be used to help improve liver function. The gall bladder is mainly helping to produce bile which helps to digest fats. A low fat meal can help the gall bladder and liver to recover.

Our food, as always, is our best preventative medicine, and there are many foods we can eat daily to help assist the liver. The key taste of this element is Sour, and most sour fruits and foods are very good for it. In particular grapefruit, lemons, limes, oranges, pineapple and any other sour fruits. Many other foods are also very beneficial to the liver and gallbladder including vinegar, kimchi, pickles, wasabi, sauerkraut, sour-dough bread, olives, whole-wheat, bok choy, lettuce, peas, celery, green beans, chard, rabe and spinach, asparagus, broccoli, etc.

It is up to you if you focus on the colour Green, the Sour Taste, or the Medicinal Herbs and Spices that you know of that can assist the liver and gallbladder. The ideal dish would incorporate all of these, for example a nice sour fruit juice could accompany the meal. It is also up to you if you make one dish or a two or even three course meal. Obviously an amazing salad is going to be one of the most popular options, but lets see what else we come up with this week! I cant wait to see!!!

Posting Guidelines

This first challenge will focus on the Wood Element or the Liver & Gallbladder. This meal should contain ingredients that are known to help the liver or encourage detox. It might include an amazing fruit salad, or a green salad, or something fun with broccoli. Your imagination as always is the limit!

1. The predominant colour of the meal should be green and there should be a sour element to it. You can also use any ingredients that support the healthy functioning of the liver and gallbladder.

2. Please post using the tag #medicinal-cooking so that it is easy to find your post.

3. Please try out the recipes yourself and include photos of your dish(es) and how you made it.

4. Please explain in your post how this meal is beneficial to the Liver and Gallbladder.

5. This challenge is open to everyone. There are no rules regarding ingredients, including the use of (ethically sourced) meat or fish, although we encourage vegan ideas as they are usually the best for medicinal cooking!

6. Please post before or on Thursday 19th July. If you miss this you may not be added to my recipe post on 20th July, although I often add posts that are a bit late.

Please do comment if you have any questions!

Check our Last week's recipes here

The Medicinal Cooking Collective: The Heart / Fire Element - Recipe Collection #1
https://steemit.com/medicinal-cooking/@eco-alex/the-medicinal-cooking-collective-the-heart-fire-element-recipe-collection-1

More About The Five Elements

We are cooking each week to support one of the five elements. According to the Ancient Chinese, all things in the world can be divided into five vibrational families and the elements of Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal. In the body, these Five Elements represent the five major organs - The kidneys, the Liver, the Heart, the Spleen/Stomach/Pancreas and the Lungs - all of which are necessary for survival. Usually one of these organs is stronger than the others giving extra energy to that organ and helping people to behave in certain ways and clearly influences personality and lifestyle choices - things like food preferences, fun, fashion, decorating, sleeping, playing, etc. And, one of the organs is usually slightly deficient and needs building up. When you are strong in one element, you usually need to build up the other elements to find balance.

The five elements are

fire (火)
metal (金)
wood (木)
water (水)
earth (土)

When our organs are in balance with each other we can experience good health. Our organs can be supported by eating foods that nourish and bring balance to the body. You can see in the chart below how the elements correspond to the organs of the body, what emotions they are related to, as well as the colour and tates that can be eaten to bring them into balance.

In Chinese medicine and cooking, it’s believed that if you are weak or ill in certain parts of your body or organs, you should consume certain colors/elements of food to help you feel better and improve your health. For example, if you have health problems with your kidney, you should eat more food that’s black/water in color, such as wood ear, seaweed, and black sesame.

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