Stir-fried garlic chive flowers with eggs

06-28-12 Garlic chiveflowers, eggs, minced clam stir-fry  Cost: $3.85 (garlic chive flowers $1.80, 3 eggs $0.3, canned minced clams $1.75)

COOKING
Chop garlic chive flowers, beat eggs in salted clam juice. Stir-fry eggs and set aside. Stir-fry garlic chive flowers and add minced clams. Add eggs back and cook till garlic chives are tender.

NUTRITION
Garlic chive flowers are common food in China. They have strong garlicky smell that stimulates appetite. According to About.com, they are high in dietary fiber, protein, vitamin C, carotene and calcium. It is considered "herbal viagra" in Chinese traditional medicine. Eggs provide additional proteins. Clams are thought to be aphrodisiac too. Oops, too much "yang" in the dish.

TASTE
Garlicky, salty and pungent.

CHINESE
Talking about "yin" and "yang", I am going to introduce these two characters "阴" (sound: in) and "阳" (sound: young). As you can see, they share the same component on the left--"阝". This component meant small hill as you can see it resembles one. Since it also looks like an ear (耳，in my previous post), it is commonly called the ear component. Most Chinese characters are made of basic components just like English alphabets. The picture shows you what the right-side components mean.

So the two characters 阴 and 阳 are like mini-pictures. Upon the hill, you see the moon, you feel cool and calm. You feel the "yin". But if you see the sun, you feel hot and energetic. You feel the "yang". 阴 and 阳 are also symbolic of female and male respectively. A quiz for you.What does this character mean "明" as you can see it's the sun and the moon put together.

Imagine the ancient times, the sun and the moon are the only light sources for humans. Putting them together, it gives us light. So this character "明" (sound: Ming) means bright.