Happy Birthday, Susun Weed

My Witch's Calendar tells me that today is Susun Weed's birthday. Susun is one herbalist who actually knows what she's talking about. I've loved her regular columns in SageWoman. Happy Birthday, Susun; many happy returns of the day!

Here's Susun's advice for a soup to strengthen your immune system:

Cooking herbs and vegetables together for a long time extracts minerals, activates immune-strengthening phytochemicals, and increases the levels of available antioxidants. Raw foods weaken and stress the immune system. To make an immune-strengthening soup:

{ Chop at least half an onion per person and sauté in olive oil until translucent.
{ Add at least two cloves of garlic, sliced or chopped, per person and sauté for a minute.
{ Add two or more cups of water or vegetable broth per person.
{ Add one cup per person of chopped seasonal vegetables such as:

carrots, cabbage, celery, corn, burdock, turnips, potatoes, tomatoes, parsnips

(If using canned soup, begin here.)

{ Add one small handful of seaweed per person.
{ Add one ounce fresh, or one-half ounce dried mushrooms — any kind — per person.
{ Add one-quarter ounce dried tonic roots per person.
{ Add generous amounts of antioxidant seasoning herbs and some sea salt.
{ Bring to a boil; simmer for an hour.
{ Turn off fire and let your soup mellow in a cool place overnight.
{ Serve it the next day, heated up, with freshly-baked bread and organic raw milk cheese.

Seaweeds build powerful immunity. Kombu and wakame are excellent in soups. Cut them small; they swell to 5-7 times their dried size when cooked.

All mushrooms strengthen the immune system. Dried shitake are available and inexpensive at Chinese grocery stores. Reishii, maitake, and other medicinal mushrooms are delicious, as are the more common button mushrooms, portabellos, and dried porcinni.

Tonic roots help our livers, lymph, and kidneys work well, protecting us from infection. I often put these tough roots into a jelly bag and drop that into the soup so I can fish it out before serving. I use one or more of these, fresh or dried, depending on what I have available:

{ Siberian ginseng
{ Astragalus
{ Burdock
{ Dandelion
{ Chicory
{ Yellow dock
{ American ginseng

Seasoning herbs from the mint family — rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, marjoram, and sage — are loaded with antioxidants. I don't just season the soup with them; I add them by the handful for the greatest impact on my immune strength.