12 • May 2016 • UPBEAT TIMES, INC.


Kenwood, CA. ~ Lately as I try to eat a healthier diet, I’ve been remembering my mom’s wa- tercress soup which she made three times a week. She’d pour everyone a humungous cup aſter dinner. My brother and I were allowed to go off to play while it cooled, but then she had to track us down to get us to drink it. We were always avoiding her or we’d promise


her that we’d drink it in a little while and then ignore it. She’d have to spend a lot of time get- ting us to drink the darn thing. For young children it was defi- nitely something to run away and hide from as it was like drinking liquid vitamins, but my mom was patiently persis- tent and always managed to get that longevity broth down our throats.


Upbeat Times 17th Mom’s Medicinal Tonics Another memory I have is


when my mom gave birth to my brother who was ten years younger than I. She made this big pot of pig’s feet mixed with ginger, vinegar, and gin. It was suppose to be very healthy for post-birthing moms and re- membering the smell of that heady pungent mixture, I can well imagine it could raise the dead. My last memory


is when I was ten years old and the whole family went on a trip to San Francisco. I came down with the most terrible case of hives—I was covered from head to foot and the itch was horri- ble. I think my mom tried vari-


Annual Spring Guide 2016 By Jean Wong ~ lijeanwong.blogspot.com


ous lotions from the drugstore, but nothing worked so she end- ed up getting a bag of rice and chewed it into this thick paste using only her saliva. She ap- plied it all over my body and it worked like a charm. During my teen- age years I thought back on things like watercress soup, pig’s feet, and rice mixed with saliva with an “ew!” atti- tude—how primi- tive and disgusting could my mother get.


Now it turns out that watercress can reduce the presence of key tumor growths and can signifi- cantly reduce lymphocyte DNA damage. So perhaps there was a kind of wisdom in those old


folk remedies. Tey might also discover that


the viscosity of


that thick, fatty pig’s feet soup is just the ticket to restore a woman’s vitality. Much of my writing about my


mom pokes fun at her foibles and nervous, eccentric ways, but recalling her potions, I am touched with the devotion and steadfast perseverance she had to always nurture and keep us healthy. Grinding hard kernels of rice into a paste with her own teeth must have been a long, te- dious process. Now on a cold rainy day, when


I am sick in bed with a terrible flu, I find myself yearning for my mom’s cooking and in spite of my life-long diet of fat avoid- ance would give anything for a hot bowl of pig’s feet mixed with a heſty dollop of gin!


Don’t you think it’s better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?” ~ Audrey Niffenegger


527-7277 - open Mon-Sat 9-5 www.buckstoves.net


225 West College Ave., Santa Rosa 12 • May 2016 • UPBEAT TIMES, INC. “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt


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