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Thursday, January 29, 2009

Red Date Tea 红棗茶







During confinement, according to Chinese beliefs, new mothers are not supposed to drink water, but should take in fluids in other forms, such as soups or infusions. There are 2 main types of infusions that most new mothers drink, one is the rice tea and the next of course is red date tea.

Which is tastier? Definitely the latter.

With experience from previous confinement, this time I pre packed the red dates tea ingredients for my confinement lady (CL), so that there will not be variations of taste. Well, during the last confinement, the CL just grabbed this and that, w/o exact proportions, so the red date tea tasted somehow different each day. I didn’t want this to happen again, so I prepared 27 packs of it. Why 27? I will be in hosp for 3 days, 30-3=27. One or 2 days at the end w/o this, it’s okla for me.

The amount of stuff I bought:
Red Dates / Zizyphi Fructus (hong zao) 红棗: 4kg
Blue Dates蓝棗 : 1kg
Black Dates黑棗: 2kg
Dangshen / Codonopsis Pilosulae (dang shen) 黨參: 1kg
Dried Longan flesh / Arillus Longan (long yan rou) 龍眼肉: 1.5kg
Chinese Wolfberry / Fructus Lycii (gou ji zi) 枸杞子: 1kg

The amount I packed for each day:
Red Dates: 140gm
Blue Dates: 30gm
Black Dates : 70gm
Dang Shen : 30gm
Dried Longan : 50gm
Wolfberries: 30gm
Anything extra, just keep it for herbal soups.

Method:
1. Remove seeds from all the red dates. Score black and blue dates with a knife.
2. Wash Dangshen to remove dirt. Rinse all dates, wolfberries and longan.
3. Put everything into a pot of boiling water (4L) and simmer for 3 hours.






6 comments:

  1. Hi,

    Wanted to find out whether your confinement lady is willing to work in KL and whether she is good? Because some special case arise where the confinement lady that I selected was not able to help me out and I'm going to due in 1st May this year.

    Thanks a lot and happy chinese new year :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. icybergs,
    Wah, now only u find confinement lady. Usually ppl will find confinement lady once they know they are pregs.
    I'm due june 1 and u're may 1. As far as I know my confinement lady will be taking another customer, right after me.
    Please take note, if you want me to recommend her to you, if ever you are late and I'm early, she'll come to me as priority after working halfway for u, because I booked her earlier. She won't work for you one month then. Are u sure u still want me to recommend to u?
    Very frankly, her cooking is just so so, I have to mentor her in her cooking. But I like her attitude, which is why I took her for all my 3 pregnancies.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi,

    Congrats, urs is boy or girl this time? I found one previously but today i only got to know she got things arise so cannot help me anymore therefore i have to find another one. May i know where is this confinement staying? How she comes to KL? I will try to ask around for alternative these two days if really cannot then i will come back to you ok?

    Thanks a lot :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. icybergs,
    The confinement lady is frm my hometown, and a lot of the confinement ladies in KL are actually from out of town. They'll take a bus and you have to collect them from the bus station. I know of another confinement lady who cooks well, if you are interested email me at wendyinkk@yahoo.com
    Since our due dates are so near to each other, I'd prefer that we should not employ the same confinement lady. She mght not work full term for you, u see.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi, Just want to check with you, You have another recipe for the tea, the one that uses paper pith for milk production. So which recipe should we drink for confinment? This one or the other one??

    ReplyDelete
  6. BL,
    Both goes.
    I used this recipe during my 2nd confinement and the one with paper pith for my 3rd.
    This is the common one.

    ReplyDelete

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