Hokkaido Pumpkin (Pumpkin porridge)

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, strengthen 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, 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

Cut the Hokkaido pumpkin in half and 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 porridge will be, which may not taste to everyone.

After boiling, pour out all the water and mix the boiled pumpkin with 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 to the spleen. It has the ability to solidify the ground, ie to dry out the excess moisture that spleen very often suffers, while supplementing the spleen Qi. Nothing better in the morning our digestion can desire.


Carrots strengthen Qi’s spleen and stomach, 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 its 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.

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