Thankful Thursday

We have been battling the flu bug around here for a long time! While I was visiting Son #2 and family, my daughter-in-law, Kara, told me about an immunity broth that her sister had come up with. Her sister is a dietitian and nutritionist. Well, I am always thankful for "natural" ways to stay healthy, so I decided to try the broth since I was not feeling quite up to par yesterday. I went to our health foods store and got the ingredients for the following recipe:

IMMUNITY BROTH
A recipe to provide immune support. This recipe was given to us by Dr. Jon Kaiser at one of the education events The Houston Buyers Club hosted. We are not recommending or prescribing this recipe for any condition - just simply sharing a broth recipe that may help provide immune support. For those who aren't familiar with some of these ingredients or how to cook with them, you can find most of these ingredients at mainstream grocery stores, except for shitake mushrooms. These are almost always found at specialty grocery or organic stores such as Whole Foods Market.
*4 cups of organic vegetable or chicken broth (I prefer chicken broth, it tastes much better than the vegetable broth)
*4 ounces of organic cooking greens-a mixture of chard, kale, collard greens, mustard greens, spinach. etc.
*Chop a few cloves of garlic and a half onion (yellow or white) and sauté them in a ¼ cup olive oil. When the garlic starts to turn brown, pile into the pan all of the extra greens(not used for the broth) and sauté them in the pan.
* 5 shitake mushrooms. Do not buy the packaged-dehydrated shitake mushrooms. Buy them fresh.
* 2 shallots and/or garlic cloves, chopped Shallots are a type of small brown skinned onion and usually found near the onions. In the broth, (I usually include both garlic and shallots).
* 2 or more carrots, sliced.
Bring the shallots, mushrooms, carrots, garlic and broth to a low boil for five minutes. Stir in organic cooking greens. Stir for two minutes, cover and remove from heat. After ten minutes, drink a cup of the warm, nurturing broth, then serve the vegetables over rice, noodles, or anything else. (prep time: 15 minutes).
*Optional additions: chicken, tofu, shrimp, seitan.

I used kale, spinach and red chard for my greens. I also added some shrimp. I did not add any seasonings and found the broth just delicious. My husband had some and came back for more a couple of hours later--we finished the whole pot last night. We ate the greens and other ingredients with the broth. This morning I went to our local grocery store to see if they had organic chicken broth and shitake mushrooms for another batch of the broth. Sure enough, I was able to get both at our neighborhood store, so another pot of the Immunity Broth is on the stove now. Yum! And so, my Thankful Thursday thanks goes to Kara and Kim!!