Lactation Special - Rainbow Chard with Stewed Tomato, Pumpkin Seed-Dried Cherry-Spinach Salad, Cincinatti Radish

My wife and I went today to a Chinese medicine specialist as we had been referred there for
acupuncture to increasing lactation. Among recommendations for diet are to eat whole and natural foods, sourdough vs. yeasted breads, lacto-fermented vegetables (like the organic raw cultured vegetables -- carrot, beet, and daikon radish -- tha we had found this past February in Savannah, GA by Bio Lacto / Deep Root), vegetable stock, steamed or fresh fruits and vegetables (though the practitioner told us to go light on raw), fermented soy products (in addition to tempeh, miso, soy sauce, and natto - something that I discovered in Japan); and to avoid things that we naturally don't eat, like refined sugars, white flour, caffeine, soft drinks.

Specific foods that we were encouraged to eat (I'm hilighting the ones the practitioner particularly called out) for blood included beets, unsweetened cherry juice, cherries, apples, beans, spinach, sprouts, tomatoes, carrots, pine nuts, Jasmine tea, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, watercress, and marjoram; for lactation, radish, leeks, celery, black sesame seeds, lemon, saffron, peppermint tea, Jasmine tea, vinegar, pickled ginger, garlic, black pepper, marjoram, coriander, and chili; and additionally for blood, capers, chili, cayenne pepper, eggplant, chestnut, chives, onion, and vinegar. Not on the lists they sent us home with, she also recommended chard, soups, and pumpkin seeds.

Sorry for the long preamble! Anyway, we stopped at Whole Foods Market on the way home for me to replenish my supplies, and I came up with a dinner hitting home on a lot of the recommendations. (She is also now taking Chinese herbs to help with increased lactation - Ba zhen tang, chuan lian zi, wang bu liu xing, pu gong ying, and tong cao - all of which are plant-based.)

I prepared rainbow chard as I often do, by cutting the stems into 3/4" or so pieces and sauteeing them with half moons of a half onion. When the stems were softened, after about 8-10 minutes, I added the chard leaves, roughly hand-torn into approximately 1 1/2" squares. Just a few minutes later as the leaves cooked down, I added about a third of a small can of stewed tomatoes, salt, and tarragon. I served the chard with a spinach salad that had dry roasted pumpkin seeds and dried cherries. Some Miche bread with peanut butter and Cincinatti radishes rounded out the meal; I also served some unsweetened cherry juice.

I ended up putting the rest of the stewed tomato, some pieces of the chard leaves, fingerling potatoes cut into thirds, some onion, wheat berries, a vegan bouilloun cube, salt, water, and a few other items I'm currently forgetting into a slow cooker so that my wife could enjoy a nice lunch tomorrow. I'm blogging "tomorrow" and am delighted to report that not only was dinner a hit, but she loved the soup!