FROM MOTHERS TO MOTHERS: A Collection of Traditional Asian Postpartum Recipes

New Condition.

Asian American Pacific Islander Health Research Group (AAPIHRG) was organized in 2008 on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley by students and health professionals who were interested in promoting health in underserved immigrant and refugee communities. AAPIHRG fosters research and teaching of neglected health issues within these populations as part of an effort to educate and to prepare students to serve these communities in the future.

In the fall of 2014, AAPIHRG began a project to collect and preserve information on traditional soups and dishes used in various AAPI cultures for the nourishment of new mothers during the month immediate after the birth of a child. This project was named the Postpartum Nutrition Folklore Project. The goal was to collect and preserve information that would soon be lost.

In giving births and recovering from the birthing process, women, through the ages, had to nourish themselves back to health as well as to ensure sufficient breast milk for the newborn during the postpartum period. Mothers and babies survived and thrived because women not only learned how to care for themselves but also learned how to pass this knowledge to the next generation of mothers. Some of their wisdom was concentrated in the preparation of traditional postpartum soups and dishes.

AAPIHRG organized a group of students to collect traditional postpartum recipes from six Asian cultures by interviewing their mothers, grandmothers and relatives. The future goal of this project is to encourage interest and research on a broader collection of recipes, a scientific analysis of the nutritional value of these recipes as well as the entire postpartum experience.

17 bilingual recipes from China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Hmong, Filipino, Korean with color photos, easy to follow instructions and local ingredients.

17 recipes include:
Papaya Soup with Slow-cooked Pig's Feet
Braised and Caramelized Pork Stew
Beef Bone Soup with Carrots and Young Papaya
Boiled Chicken with Special Herbs
Chicken Soup with Ginger and Wine
Tulia Clams with Tomatoes and Ginger
Seaweed Soup with Beef
Pig's trotters in ginger and sweetened vinegar