Slow-cooked soups (lao huo tang, literally "old fire soup"), are commonplace at banquets, but are also consumed for medicinal purposes. "For me it's always about the soups," says Yen Yen Woo the co-creator of Dim Sum Warriors, a graphic novel with a culinary edge (Yen Yen and her husband are also active in Flushing's Chinese food scene). "There's a soup for every season and every ailment, so you eat winter melon soup when it's too hot. Soups are very important for Cantonese people," Woo explains. For instance, a soup of spare ribs with watercress and apricot kernals (nan bei xing xi yang cai zhu gu tang) is also renowned for its cooling effect upon the body.