Food Wonder

Congee is eaten throughout China as a breakfast food. Its essentially like rice soup and packs a powerful punch when it comes to tonifying the Blood and Qi energy.
Congee is easily assimilated into the body therefore harmonising the digestion and nourishing the body.

The amazing thing about congee, whatever you add to congee becomes easier for the body to digest therefore adding to its potency.

And the best thing about it, its so easy to make!
Take an amount of rice and add 5 or 6 times that amount in water (ie: 1 cup of rice 5-6 cups of water), cook the rice and water in a covered pot (crock pots are best) for four to six hours on warm (or the lowest flame possible). If you have a slow cooker, definitely use that!
It is said that the longer you cook congee, the more powerful it becomes.

Add your favourites,
Sweet or Savoury

Beneficial properties of adding flavours:
Use one or more of these to flavour and reward your body.
You can pretty much add anything you want 1 hour before you’re ready to eat, the below ingredients have wonderful healing properties.

Apricot Kernals: recommended for coughs, asthma, expels phlegm and intestinal gas
Carrot: Digestive aid, eliminates flatulence
Celery: cooling in summer, benefits large intestine
Chestnut: tonifies Kidneys, strengthens knees and loins, useful in treating anal hemorrhages
Water chestnut: cooling to the viscera, benefits digestive organs
Chicken broth: recommended for wasting illnesses and injuries
Fennel: harmonises stomach, expel gas
Ginger: warming and antiseptic to viscera, used for deficient cold and digestive weakness, diarrhea, anorexia, vomiting, indigestion
Leek: warming to viscera, good for chronic diarrhea
Mung bean: cooling, especially for summer heat, reduces fevers, thirst relieving
Mustard: expels phlegm, clears stomach congestion
Salted onion: diaphoretic, lubricates the muscles
Black pepper: expels gas, recommended for pain in the bowels
Pine nuts: moistening to Heart and Lungs, harmonises the Large Intestine, useful for constipation
Poppy seeds: relieves vomiting and benefits the Large Intestine
Radish: digestant, benefits diaphragm
Brown rice: diuretic, thirst quenching, nourishing, good for nursing mothers
Sesame seeds: moistening to intestines, treats rheumatism
Spinach: harmonising and moistening to viscera, sedative
Taro: nutritious, aids the Stomach, builds Blood
Wheat: cooling, used with fevers, clears digestive tract, calming and sedating to the Heart
Yogurt and Honey: beneficial to the Heart and Lungs

(resource: Healing with Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford)