Spring is the time of new beginnings, rebirth and renewal. It is when nature comes back to life — dormant plants and animals wake from their wintery slumber, flowers bloom, animals are born, and the landscape comes alive.

Most of us urban dwellers are used to living seasonless lives where it is difficult to observe the changing seasons. With modern technology, we can eat the same foods and do most of the same things year round. But just because we can enjoy these conveniences doesn’t necessary mean they are good for us. They ignore our body’s need to make adjustments with the seasons to maintain good health and prevent illness.

In Chinese medicine, the seasons affect us in many different ways — physically, mentally and spiritually. For your health, Spring is a great time to eat a lot of green foods. Sprouts and baby greens are especially good, as are dark green leafy vegetables. Head to your farmer’s market to see what’s in season. Spring is also the best time for green tea. The best quality green tea leaves are the first leaves of the season. In China, people pay upwards of hundreds or thousands of dollars to enjoy a cup of spring’s first batch of Dragon Well green tea grown in Zhejiang Province. A portion of the best is reserved for ranking government officials and visiting heads of state.

Spring is associated with the wood element and the Liver and Gallbladder. Wood represents progress, growth and overcoming obstacles. It is the most yang, or active, of energies. This makes it a great time to start new projects, especially major ones. Right now you’ll have more energy, focus, and drive to accomplish difficult tasks compared to, for example, the winter.

At the same time, be aware of the challenges of Spring. Spring is the emotional energy of anger, stress and frustration. When blocked or constrained, it is easier to feel these emotions or see them expressed by others. Take care of these emotions constructively by keeping yourself centered, staying balanced, maintaining good communications and being patient.

What you can do:

1. Exercise. Exercise is important to help get or keep things moving. Hike, garden and play sports. If you want to take a more holistic approach, take a medical Qigong class. There are a number of simple and effective medical Qigong exercises that help soothe the liver, reduce stress, as well as strengthen your clarity and resolve. Regardless of what you decide, doing it outdoors would be best. The sun and fresh air helps when you feel stuck. Seeing all the beauty of nature will raise your spirits and inspire you to get moving on your life’s projects.
2. Diet. Eat your greens. No, not green M&M’s or gummy bears. Sprouts, baby greens and green leafy vegetables are what I highly recommend. Your best source will be your local farmer’s market where you don’t have to second guess what’s in season.
3. Treatment. Come in for an acupuncture tune-up, herbal prescription and/or nutritional plan. Chinese Medicine is designed to harmonize your body, mind and spirit with the changing seasonal energies. Like taking in your car for a regular oil change, your body will appreciate preventative treatments to maintain good health. You’ll stay healthy, maintain high energy levels and be more productive so you can continue doing what you love. If you’re stressed out or can’t sleep, just one treatment will go a long way to help start this season on the right foot.

Henry’s Spring Tea Recipe

• Green Tea such as Dragon Well tea (Chinese: Longjing Cha)
• Chrysanthemum Flower Bulbs (Chinese: Ju Hua)
• Mint Leaves (Chinese: Bo He)
• Steep in hot water – Boiled water that is then cooled to 175 F recommended.

Comments:
If you are near Highland Park, this tea will be available at Antigua Coffee and Tea

Dragon Well green tea is high in vitamin C and amino acids. It also has one of the highest concentrations of catechins and can reduce the risk of stroke, heart failure, cancer and diabetes. Chrysanthemum and Mint both help the liver and the sense organ of the liver, the eyes, in different ways. The best chrysanthemum are the unopened flower bulbs. All of this can be found at one of your better stocked Chinese Herbal shops. In Los Angeles, Wing Hop Fung in China Town and Monterey park comes recommended. If you have some extra cash and appreciate good quality green teas, check out the Ming Qian Dragonwell Panan Supreme 2010 from Red Blossom Tea in San Francisco. They do mail order but it is $400 a pound. They have some more affordable grades that I also recommend. An ounce ($28) or two will last you a while and, unlike some other types of teas, Dragon Well doesn’t do well sitting on the shelf for a long time. Newer is better so don’t stock up.

Henry Jun Wah Lee, L.Ac. is a Physician of Chinese Medicine, Licensed Acupuncturist, Medical Qigong instructor and Eastern Nutritionist. He has a private practice in Pasadena and Los Angeles, California. For more information, please contact info@HenryJunWahLee.com or visit his website, http://www.HenryJunWahLee.com

Henry Jun Wah Lee L.Ac. will be hosting a Chinese Medicine Café hour at Antigua Organic Coffee and Tea near Highland Park on Saturday May 8, 2010 from 5 to 6:30pm.

Come experience the benefits of Chinese medicine for health, wellness and community at a progressive coffee house east of the Los Angeles River.

Destress and relax with a 20-minute ear acupuncture or acupressure treatment from a highly skilled Physician of Chinese Medicine. Enjoy a cup of herbal tea that’s perfect for the spring season, eat snacks, and meet the community.

See what Chinese Medicine can do for you!

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A seasonal Chinese cooking class with

Henry Jun Wah Lee, M.S. Oriental Medicine

Register online

Class Highlights:

1. Learn how to make healthy eating a normal and effortless part of your daily life.
2. Enjoy a delicious bowl of Chinese Herbal Chicken Soup prepared by Henry.
3. Participate in and see a live demonstration of the entire preparation and cooking process. The class will be held in a working kitchen.
4. Learn where/how to shop for ingredients – including how to get sulfur-free, pesticide-free and/or organic herbs.
5. Learn the philosophy behind Cantonese cooking.
6. Gain a deeper understanding of the properties of foods which will help you decide how to shop and modify dishes for your specific constitution or condition.
7. Receive useful handouts and a bag of herbs you can take home to make your own soup right away.

Class Information:

In this class you will learn how to cook one of the signature Cantonese soups for the winter time: the winter Herbal Chicken soup. This soup is used as tonic in the winter as it warms the body, boosts your Qi or vital energy, builds blood, and strengthens the immune system. More importantly, in the context of this cooking class, this soup tastes really darn good!

That’s right, eating healthy doesn’t necessarily mean you have to compromise on taste. Over thousands of years, the Cantonese from Southern China have refined and mastered the art of integrating food with medicine to make tasty dishes that you and your family/patients will love to eat. So why reinvent the wheel trying to figure out what to cook when the Cantonese has been integrating natural medicine with their cooking for centuries.

You don’t have to be a good cook nor do you have to have any knowledge of Chinese Herbs or Chinese Medicine to take this class. This is a beginner cooking class for people who want to play an active role in their own health and well-being. This class is designed to be fast, fun, practical and informative.

Day and Time: Sunday, January 24th, 2010 from 10:30am to 2:30pm.
Location: Silver Lake in Los Angeles, California
Class Fee: $40.00 (before Jan. 18) or $45.00 (on or after Jan. 18).

Class size is limited to 12 people maximum so reserve your space early!

Register online

For more information please contact Henry at 310-980-8645 or email info@henryjunwahlee.com

This is the first in a series of cooking classes on making healthy and delicious meals with Chinese Herbs. Learn authentic Cantonese style cooking from a Cantonese Chef.

Class Information:
Eating healthy doesn’t necessarily mean you have to compromise on taste. Over thousands of years, the Cantonese from Southern China have refined and mastered the art of integrating food with medicine to make tasty dishes that you and your family/patients will love to eat.

Beginning with How to Cook Chinese Herbal Chicken Soup, chef/instructor Henry Jun Wah Lee will introduce you to Cantonese cooking and how it can help you make wellness, and longevity a normal part of your everyday life.

Benefits of the Chinese Herbal Chicken Soup:

The herbal soup you will be learning to make is a tonic that is perfect for the coming winter as it warms the body, boosts your Qi or vital energy, builds blood, and strengthens the immune system. You will also learn several modifications include one for post partum women to aid them in their recovery after child birth.

In the class How to Cook Chinese Herbal Chicken Soup you will:

1. Enjoy a bowl of Chinese Herbal Chicken Soup. Trying to buy this at a quality restaurant can cost you $15-$25 a bowl, if you can find it.
2. Participate in a live demonstration of the entire preparation and cooking process. The class will be taught in a working kitchen.
3. Learn where to shop for ingredients – including how to get sulfur-free, pesticide-free and/or organic herbs.
4. Learn the philosophy behind Cantonese cooking.
5. Gain a deeper understanding of the properties of foods which will help you decide how to shop and modify dishes for your specific constitution or condition.
6. Receive useful handouts and a bag of herbs you can take home and make your own soup with right away.

This is a beginner cooking class for people who want to play an active role in their own health and well-being. You don’t have to be a good cook nor do you have to have any knowledge of Chinese Herbs or Chinese Medicine. Henry will guide you through the whole process in this fast and fun half-day class.

Class Fee: $58.00 (before Dec. 1) or $68.00 (on or after Dec. 1). Fee also includes a bowl of soup, handouts and herbs you can take home.

Day and Time: Saturday, December 12th, 2009 from 9 am to 1 pm.

Location: Los Angeles, California. Exact location to be determined.

Class size is limited to 12 people maximum so reserve your space early!

For more information or to register, please contact Henry at 310-980-8645 or email info@henryjunwahlee.com

About Henry Jun Wah Lee
Henry Jun Wah Lee is a Medical Qigong instructor with a Masters degree in Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine. He has been cooking since he was a child, learning and honing his skills in his family’s Chinese restaurant in Philadelphia, PA where he grew up. His bicultural background provides him with unique insights on bridging the gap many westerners face when learning Chinese Medicine, or integrating Chinese wellness practices into their lives. For more information, please visit www.HenryJunWahLee.com

About Cantonese Cuisine:
Southern Chinese (Cantonese) cuisine is renowned both internationally as well as across China for its delicious flavors, diverse and exotic ingredients and health benefits. Cantonese cooking has been refined for more than 2,000 years – much longer than most civilizations have existed. Its depth, history, and wisdom are revealed not just in its flavors but also in its integration with other aspects of living – health, culture, art and philosophy.

For the Cantonese, food isn’t just something tasty you put in your mouth. Food is life. Food is medicine. It is how we can nourish our bodies as well as our minds and spirits. Thanks to the influence of the Taoists, developers of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Cantonese cooks look not just for flavor and freshness but also for taste, temperature and other medicinal properties of foods. Chinese herbs are a natural part of everyday cooking and goes into soups and dishes. They can be used for prevention, overall wellness, longevity and for specific illnesses.

Important produce you should buy organic

Eating high quality food is important for your health. But if you are on a budget and want to save money, shop smart. Not all conventionally grown produce are harmful. The following is the list of foods you really should buy organic because they are highly contaminated with pesticides. Pesticides are not only harmful to us when we eat it, they are also harmful to farm workers and our environment.

Fruits

• Apples
• Apricots
• Bananas
• Cantaloupe from Mexico
• Cherries
• Grapes
• Kiwis
• Lemons
• Limes
• Nectarines
• Peaches
• Pears
• Pineapples
• Raspberries
• Strawberries
• Tomatoes

Vegetables

• Carrots
• Celery
• Corn
• Cucumbers
• Green Beans
• Green & Red Bell Peppers
• Hot Peppers
• Lettuce
• Potatoes
• Spinach
• Winter or Hard Squash

Others

• Baby Foods
• Milk
• Oats
• Nuts
• Rice
• Farm raised Salmon

This list gathered from the Delicious Organics Website. Visit them for more information about why each of these foods were chosen for the list.

Visit my Chinese medicine web site: http://www.HenryJunWahLee.com

Hey, did I mention I am a Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture Intern at the Yo San University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Los Angeles, California? If you are in the Southern California area, come see me for acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, and medical Qi Gong!

My website just went up so come check it out! The address is based on my Chinese name. http://www.HenryJunWahLee.com.

This weasel may have picked your coffee beans

Human Picked Yuzu Truffles

So why is weasel picked coffee so good? From Wikipedia:

A popular and intuitive hypothesis to justify this coffee’s reputation proposes that the beans are of superior quality before they are even ingested. At any given point during a harvest, some coffee berries are not quite ripe or overripe, while others are just right. The palm civet (weasel) evolved as an omnivore that naturally eats fruit and passes undigested material as a natural link to disperse seeds in a forest ecosystem. Where coffee plants have been introduced into their habitat, civets only forage on the most ripe berries, digest the fleshy outer layer, and later excrete the seeds eventually used for human consumption. Thus, when the fruit is at its peak, the seeds (or beans) within are equally so, with the expectation that this will come through in the taste of a freshly brewed cup.

Human Picked Yuzu Truffles
Made with Yuzu juice from Japan and dark chocolate from the Caribbean! The fruit was most likely picked by human hands. This fruit is something of a blend between a grapefruit and a mandarin orange. Sour and aromatic, it is used a lot in cooking. Ingredients: Fair-Trade & Pesticide-Free Valrhona Caraibe 66% Dark Chocolate from the Caribbean, organic heavy cream, organic butter, yuzu juice from Japan, unsweetened cocoa powder, and lots of love. Enjoy!

Durian Coconut Truffles

Rose Almond Truffles

For this week’s truffles, the theme is getting ur freak on. I decided to experiment with a couple of new flavor combinations involving aphrodisiacs: Durian and Rose. Hey, it’s spring time. Time to get freaky.

Durian-Coconut Truffles
Durian’s one of my favorite fruits from Southeast Asia. It’s a spikey fruit that can cause serious head injuries if it falls on you. Its smell is potent. Depending on who you talk to, it can be described as either fragrant and rich or overpowering and offensive. Due to its strong and penetrating smell, the fruit is banned in airplanes and finer hotels throughout Southeast Asia. I will be keeping these truffles in an airtight container.

According to Chinese Medicine, durian is a yang tonic with very warming qualities. The Javanese also believe it has aphrodisiac qualities. The fruit is high in vitamin C, potassium, and the serotonergic amino acid tryptophan, and is a good source of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.

These durian coconut truffles are vegan. I used the actual fruit and not an extract. Made with organic coconut milk and rolled in toasted shredded coconut and unsweetened cocoa powder, the coconut helps take the edge off the strong flavor of the durian while keeping its smooth, rich and distinctive flavor. This is probably not going to be the hottest selling flavor but for durian fans, it’s going to be a treat.

Rose-Almond Truffles
I had a request for rose truffles and I thought I’d have some fun and give it a try this week. I made an initial batch using Rose Water but getting enough rose flavor in the truffle caused the truffle consistency to be too soft. So then I did some research and found therapeutic grade white rose otto essential oil which I diluted in vodka. I paired the rose with organic almond extract to add more depth to the flavor. For these truffles, I am using Valrhona’s 66% dark chocolate from Ecuador. These beans have delicate floral notes of jasmine and orange blossoms, yielding to a long finish of refined bitterness and woody flavors.

Organic Blood Orange Truffles

Organic Almond Truffles

A new batch of almond and blood orange truffles are now available at the Yo San Bookstore. Both are made with Valrhona Guanaja 70% dark chocolate (fair-trade and pesticide-free), organic heavy cream, organic butter and unsweetened Valrhona cocoa powder.

The blood orange truffles are made with real zest and you may find a few slivers of it in your truffle. Citrus and dark chocolate go so well together. The almond truffles are smooth and enhances the bitterness. Great for those of you who really like bittersweet dark chocolate.

FYI, I make a fresh batch every Tuesday. Flavors can change from week to week. Let me know if you have any flavor requests.

To maintain high standards of flavor and freshness, I will be bringing them in small batches each day from Tuesday through Thursday. If they sell out, that’s it for the day. $1.50 each or 4 for $5.00. You can also place special orders with me for quantities of 10 or greater.

Enjoy!

Look for me in the Learning Garden every Saturday at 10 am.

Every Saturday morning from 10 am – 12 noon, I lead a Qi Gong practice group at the Learning Garden in Venice, CA. The practice has been going for more than 5 years. It was originally formed to provide a place for students of Master Hong Liu to have regular group practice.

Starting Saturday, March 21 I will be opening the class up to new people who are interested in learning Grandmaster Hong Liu’s Medical Qi Gong. Whether you are a natural healer, a student of the healing arts or someone interested in self-healing and cultivation, this is a great place to get introduced to his forms.

To give a little history, I have been a student of Master Hong for over 8 years. His classes and the amazing results I personally witnessed from his treatments were what originally inspired me to become a Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner. I’ve seen him bring people out of comas, cure hepatitis and beat cancer using Qi Gong and medicinal herbs. I highly recommend his forms due to their simplicity, effectiveness, their specific medical applications and the wide range of exercises that are offered.

If you don’t know who Master Hong Liu is, he is one of the few Qi Gong Grandmasters in the world and is regarded as a living treasure in China and Hawaii. He was a western trained physician in China who studied under several Qi Gong Masters. He has written a book, The Healing Art of Qi Gong which tells about his story. The last 1/3 of the book is filled with practical, easy to learn and easy to teach Qi Gong exercises you can do for a variety of diseases. He currently travels around the country teaching classes, doing research on the benefits of Qi Gong and providing private healing sessions.

About the class
In the first hour we start with warm up and preparation exercises, followed by Spring seasonal Qi Gong which changes about every 15 days. The seasonal Qi Gong helps you stay in tune with the seasons and are great for general wellness as well as for specific Spring-related medical conditions. In the second hour, we do one of his more advanced forms. If you are new, I recommend doing only the first hour.

Cost is $5 per class. 20% is donated to the Learning Garden.

About the Seasonal Qi Gong
The movement of the Earth and the Sun create our seasons. The seasons affect your energy and your internal organs. The effect can show up in your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual states.

You can learn how to draw from the peaking energies of the seasons rather than fighting them, ending up drained and dry. Using 3,000-year-old practices, you can maximize your internal organs, sleeping and eating patterns, emotions, thought patterns– even your prosperity. Learn how to nourish the beginnings of yang energy in the Spring so that your mood, joints, liver and gallbladder are in their best shape.

Class Location:
The Learning Garden (www.thelearninggarden.org)
Southeast corner of Venice Blvd and Walgrove Ave, next to Venice High School in Venice, CA. Entrance is through the gate on Walgrove Ave. There is usually ample street parking on Walgrove and on Venice.

Class starts March 21, 2009 at 10 am.

Contact:
Henry Lee, e-mail henry@evosia.com or call 310-980-8645. Contact me if you plan to attend. Visit my web site: www.leejunwah.com