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A TCM doctor's cookbook of grandmother medicine — where European peasant kitchens and Chinese medicine speak the same language.
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A Book Born in the Kitchen
When I was six years old, my father was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. In those years, I watched my mother feed him green concoctions he hated, while my Omi cooked for our whole family in the way she'd always cooked — slow soups, red cabbage with apples, beef goulash, lentil soup with a splash of good vinegar — and I learned, before I had words for any of it, that food could be used to help someone get better.
My father lived for fifteen years against the odds. He didn't live to see me become a doctor. He knew me as an actress, and the kitchen has felt like a place of consequence to me ever since.
Omi's Kitchen is the book that twenty-five years of clinical practice in Traditional Chinese Medicine eventually became. It's the synthesis of two things I have spent a lifetime learning to hold together: the European peasant cooking I grew up eating in my grandmother's kitchen, and the deep, ancient, food-as-medicine framework of Chinese medicine I now practice every day. They turn out to be speaking the same language.
This book is a small act of remembering.
What you'll find inside
Eighty-plus recipes drawn from a quarter-century of clinical practice, organized into six parts:
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Stocking Your Kitchen Apothecary — the Chinese pantry, the European pantry, and the surprisingly small overlap that runs both
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Teas, Tonics & Decoctions — Da Zao tea for blood deficiency, Reishi & Cocoa for the woman who can't stop thinking, Fire Cider for the run-down feeling at the start of winter
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Soups, Congees & Healing Broths — Polish rosół, Master Bone Broth, Ginger Chicken Congee for depleted digestion
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Sweet Medicine — stewed pears for chronic cough, raspberry-honey shrub for heavy cycles, Golden Milk for inflammation
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Remedies for Common Complaints — what to reach for when sleep won't come, when the throat starts to scratch, when the cycle is heavy, when the body needs to be rebuilt after illness
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The Home Apothecary Toolkit — foot soaks, medicinal baths, moxa at home, a cleaner beauty shelf
Every recipe includes the Best for — what the dish does, in plain language. Heritage Notes throughout show how the same medicine appears in German, Polish, Russian, Chinese, Ayurvedic, and Mediterranean kitchens. Cautions where they matter. Nothing fancy. Nothing hard.
I N T R O D U C I N G
Who This Is For
Omi's Kitchen was written for —
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The woman navigating cycles, fertility, perimenopause, postpartum, or the slow exhaustion modern life produces in women's bodies
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Anyone who has been told their labs are fine but knows their body isn't
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The home cook who wants to feed her family well and doesn't know where to start
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The practitioner who wants a beautiful, clinical yet accessible cookbook to recommend to her own patients
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Anyone who suspects their grandmother knew something their doctor doesn't
Get Omi's KitchenIf you have ever stood in your own kitchen at the end of a long day and thought I wish I knew what to make for someone who feels like this — this book is for you.
Choose A Free Bonus with your purchase of the Omi's Kitchen eBook!
Begin in the Yin Commons
The Yin Commons is the free, open-door community of The Yinstitute—a shared intellectual space for women’s health clinicians to gather, reflect, and think together.
Membership is free and open to licensed practitioners. No obligation, no urgency. The Commons exists to restore thoughtful professional dialogue as a norm rather than an exception.
The Yinstitute Program
A full year of integrative reproductive medicine — organized by season, grounded in clinical reasoning, and paced to let the learning settle. 12 Core Lectures. 12 Grand Rounds. 4 optional Herbal CEUs. One clear arc from spring to winter
Ready to enroll?
Registration is open!
The Cohort 1 Private Community opens on March 15, 2026.
First class begins March 22, 2026
Meet your Mentor
Dr. Laura Erlich,
DTCM, LAc, FABORM
I’m Dr. Laura Erlich. I’ve been practicing fertility-focused acupuncture and Chinese medicine in Los Angeles for 25 years. I’m a Fellow of the Acupuncture and TCM Board of Reproductive Medicine (FABORM), founder of Mother Nurture Wellness and The Fertility Sanctuary, and co-author of Feed Your Fertility. I’ve been teaching reproductive medicine as an adjunct faculty member in Yosan University’s DAOM program since 2016, leading continuing education since 2011, and mentoring cohorts in integrative reproductive medicine since 2020. In 2025, Yosan honored me with the Integrative Leadership Award for the Advancement of Reproductive Medicine — which mostly just means I’ve been doing this work for a long time and won’t stop talking about it.
The Yinstitute is a departure from that teaching hustle. After years of weekend intensives and information-packed webinars, I wanted to build something different — a place of reflection and integration, where learning has space to root.
See the Curriculum Overview
Two Ways to Join the Year of The Fire Horse program:
Both tracks include monthly lectures, Grand Rounds, office hours, and community. Complete adds quarterly herbal training.
Core — 48 CEU/year
$1,200/year or $350/quarter
Complete — 64 CEU/year
$1,600/year or $475/quarter
Payment plans available. First 20 annual members get a free 1:1 mentorship session.
See Full Pricing Details
More Than Lectures
You can get information anywhere. What you can’t get is a room full of practitioners who will think with you.
The Yinstitute is built around community and case supervision — not just content delivery. Here’s what that looks like:
Grand Rounds (monthly): Real cases, real complexity, real conversation. We work through differential diagnosis, treatment strategy, and the moments where textbook answers fall short.
Office Hours (twice monthly): Drop-in sessions with me and my TAs. Bring a case, ask a question, or just listen. No agenda required.
The Forum (ongoing): Asynchronous conversation between sessions. Case threads, clinical questions, the kind of collegial exchange that’s hard to find in solo practice.
This is how clinical confidence is actually built: not from more information, but from practicing the thinking — with support.
— Yin Learning for Yang Times —
