Hokkaido Pumpkin (Pumpkin porridge)

In the diet with the omission of starches, it is a little trouble to find a suitable breakfast that, in addition to the absence of cereals, meets the requirement of traditional Chinese medicine to warm Yang’s spleen, and strengthen the Qi centre.

In this article, we will focus on an alternative healthy breakfast that meets all the requirements of traditional Chinese medicine and a starch-free diet:

• is warm, just cooked from fresh ingredients
• the ingredients have a beneficial effect on health, thus strengthening the Qi spleen. Such a breakfast adds energy, and strengthens the body overall, including immunity
• is tasty its preparation takes only a few minutes, which is often the most important in the case of breakfast

Ingredients (for 2 persons):

½ medium-sized pumpkin Hokkaido
2 carrots
black sesame seeds, a little olive oil, salt

Procedure:

Cut the Hokkaido pumpkin in half remove it from the spoon and throw it out. Cut it into cubes and cook with chopped carrots in salted water. The water needs to be salted a little more (I give one teaspoon of salt per person), because the water will eventually be poured out. The pumpkin does not need to be peeled; the skin, which is very stiff in its raw state, softens perfectly after cooking. Cook for about 10 minutes. The more we exceed this time, the more watery the porridge will be, which may not taste to everyone.

After boiling, pour out all the water and mix the boiled pumpkin with the carrot with a stick mixer. Serve the porridge sprinkled with black sesame and drizzled with olive oil or walnut oil. We liked it with other seasonings, such as black and green olives, a few grains of pickled green pepper, etc. There are no limits to imagination. Certainly, it would be possible to think of sweet varieties of porridge with goji, cinnamon, stevia or hot non-sweetened compote.

Analysis of ingredients for TCM:

Thanks to its yellow colour and dull sweetish taste, Hokkaido pumpkin belongs to the element of the earth and the spleen. It can solidify the ground, ie dry out the excess moisture that the spleen very often suffers while supplementing the spleen Qi. Nothing better in the morning than our digestion can desire.


Carrots strengthen Qi’s spleen and stomach, and supplement Yin’s lungs while dispersing food stagnation – which is very useful for smooth digestion and metabolism in the morning. Regularly eating this breakfast (at least 5 times a week) also improves vision very soon. The other side of these benefits is the slightly orange-yellow colour that we get after some time of regular consumption. However, this is both fully reversible and completely harmless to health.

Black sesame very powerfully complements the essence of the kidneys, and this is particularly important because it is a meatless breakfast where the kidney essence would otherwise be cared for very little or not at all.

Warm Hokkaido cocktail with white chocolate can be found here

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