Post-partum eating is supposed to be high in protein, to help with losing the baby weight and also to keep you going because you’re losing 500 calories a day while nursing. So both these recipes are handy for those purposes.

I have another reason for learning these recipes and posting them. These are comfort foods that my mom used to cook all the time. And, unlike most American comfort foods, these are actually pretty healthy.

Anything with beans is good, right? I call munggo (or mung bean soup) the Filipino beans and rice. My mom’s version of munggo is a thick soup with strips of pork, shrimp, tomatoes, onions and spinach. I’ve made this dish half a dozen times now and am now reasonably certain I can do it from memory. And, if you happen to cook too much and have to freeze some to avoid eating it for two weeks straight, its easy to resurrect on the stove with some chicken stock.

Here’s the slideshow:

And I go by this recipe:

1 pound mung beans
4 cups water
1 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 pound pork (I use lean pork for stews and slice them into strips as best as I can. Its what I have access to.)
shrimp (to your desired quantity) or Chinese sausage
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion, chopped
3 tomatoes, chopped
salt to taste
bunch spinach

As for torta, this recipe was much more elusive. My sisters kept saying they remembered how to make this, but I didn’t get the idea until I hijacked my younger sister’s Saturday and she made some while I watched and took pictures (in between corralling my two boys). The intimidating thing about this dish was the technique — flipping it from the pan and getting back in there to cook the other side. Anyway, I explain it all in the slideshow.

I believe this recipe will yield at least four pies:

6 pounds of ground pork
1 or 2 pounds shrimp (you can use as much or as little as you like)
3 potatoes, cubed
2 onions, chopped
3 medium tomatoes, chopped
salt
pepper
olive oil
garlic
garlic salt
2 cartons of 18-count eggs (and maybe have another carton of a dozen eggs on hand, just in case.)