Corn Silk Molasses Tea 玉米须黑糖茶

We often discard corn silk, and it's treated as waste. When I was a kid, I collected corn silk whenever I saw someone peeling fresh corn and played masak-masak with it. It's like playing with hair! Absolutely fun and environmentally friendly. LOL!

I saw this recipe years ago, it reminded me that I've seen corn silk sold at Cameron Highlands, and the store owner told me it's good for the kidneys. I've also read about it saying it's diuretic and good for people with water retention. According to Baike.com, it's good for edema, hypertension, diabetes, jaundice, gallstones and it's also good for lactation purposes. Benefits of corn silk can also be found on WebMD. And it could also help with fat reduction, as said in this research paper.

Lactating Red Date Tea 发奶红枣茶

Haha, Yeah, I'm all into anything that gives me more milk. Just anything!!!

This time around I changed my red date tea formula. After reading on the internet about galactagogues, I got to know a common Chinese herb is one of it. It's astragalus root , 黃耆 or  北耆. My mom will sometimes put this into her soups. And then I went searching for 发奶茶 (lactating tea), and got to know another herb that is used, which is Rice Paper Pith, 通草.  It is commonly found in herbal teas that promote urination like "Hui Sap Sui 去湿水".

Tateishi Kazu’s Miracle Vegetable Soup

This is a DETOX soup
I tried this miracle soup after reading Happy Homemaker88’s post on it.
It actually taste quite good, even without salt or sugar or meat. Something like a herbal tea.
Try this if you like.

Please refer to her blog for a long long explaination and to read about her experience.

Ingredients
450 gm white radish/ daikon
225 to 380 gm white daikon greens (the leaves that came with the white radish)
225 to 280 gm carrots (I use Australian carrots for better flavour)
225 gm fresh burdock root (also known as Gobo in Japanese, Uang in Korean, Ngau Pong or Niu Pang in Chinese) [if using dried burdock root, use only 2 ounces or 1/4 of fresh amount required]
• 3-5 fresh shitake mushrooms (sundried) – if not sundried, expose dried mushrooms to sun again. This is to convert the good stuff into Vitamin D in the mushrooms (refer to information on mushrooms below)—I sundried it for one day under the hot sun, and the strong smell of fresh shitakes were greatly eliminated. Actually I don’t like the smell of fresh shitake. The sunning process is vital for the mushrooms to “produce” Vitamin D.

Directions:
1. Don’t peel anything! Don’t add any seasoning!
2. Fill a pot with three times the quantity of water as the vegetable.
3. When it comes to a boil, reduce the flame and simmer for two hours.
4. Strain and drink.
5. Store in refrigerator immediately when cool to avoid losing any of the soup’s goodness. Be sure to store in stainless steel pots or glass containers as the soup may react with other materials (especially aluminium)

If you’re wondering where to get fresh daikon/white radish that comes with leaves, I got mine from Jusco Ipoh's organic section. But don’t say I didn’t warn you about the butterfly eggs. Some even hatched to be caterpillars. But that shows it’s really organic. Be brave and wash them away.

Or just order from your vegetable vendor. The daikons usually comes with the leaves from the farms, but the vendors trim them off before they sell it.

I didn't separately weigh the daikon and leaves, but I just used 700 grams of the whole thing, as I found that the ratio(the whole daikon) is almost like what is stated in the recipe.

I didn't make this daily, but every other 2 day for the 1st two pots,and another pot a week later. If you like to know how did this soup fare... my hubby had black stool after the 3rd pot of soup. He wasn't feeling good about having black stool, but it's a sure sign that it's working on him, and he refused to drink anymore. So, I stopped after the 3rd pot. None of us had black stool, because we had some sort of detox done before, at least once. And I didn't let my kids drink this.

Figs and Tangerine Tea

Few months back, yes, this was done months back.... Blessed Homemaker posted this and I found this to be interesting, I said, I might try this out for nourishment.

But then few weeks later, I had some bad phlegm. So bad, that it was dry and sticks to the back of the throat. There was no coughing, so there was no way I could get it out. And then I remembered this cough remedy from her blog. With just 30 minutes to the medicinal shop's closing time, I wrote everything down and hurried to get my dosage of herbs.

Figs and Tangerine Tea, Zhi Ke Tang 止咳汤
(serve 3-4)
Recipe Source : Blessed Homemaker


Ingredients
10g Fritillaria, crushed (川贝母)
20g Apricot kernels/chinese almonds (南北杏)
1 - 2 dried orange/kat paeng (桔饼)
30g Dried Figs (无花果)
4g Liquorice Root (干草)
1.5 litre water

Method
Rinse all ingredients.
Put all ingredients in a pot with 1.5 litres of water. Bring to boil and simmer for 1 - 2 hours.


Verdict: The taste was very nice, "Gam Gam Tim Tim". I won't say that I was "healed" when I drank this. But it did feel better, slightly better. But since I only took one dosage, it's hard to say. I took all the infusion in one night, but it's one dosage, you see. I was about to travel the next day, so I didn't make anymore.

But nonetheless for those of you who's got a bit sticky phlegm in the throat, try this out, it might work for you. I said might, not "would".

Black Soy Bean Milk

I have long suspected that black beans are in fact black soy beans. Then I saw on a TVB travel show that went to a Japanese soy farm to have some tofu, only did it confirm that what I have in my kitchen are really black soy beans. And lately I saw some organic black beans in Jusco, labled as black soy beans. Yup, what we usually call as black beans are indeed black soy beans.

I have almost 500gm of that in my pantry. My mother bought me a lot of black soy beans for my confinement (Lyanne’s), but my confinement lady didn’t use it all up. So, here’s a good reason to use up all those black black pearls.

100gm black soy beans (You can use regular soy beans with the same method)
500ml water +500ml water

1. Soak black soy beans overnight. Discard soaking water.
2. Put all the beans into a blender with 500ml water. Blend until very fine, for about 2 minutes.
3. Pour blended beans into a muslin bag and press to extract milk. You can use something heavy to press down the bag (elevated on the back of a plate in a tray) if you find it hard to extract the milk by just your hands.
4. Repeat blending process with another 500ml water, and extract milk.

*** You can Choose to combine 1st and 2nd extract together. But I prefer not to. Because I’m going to use the 1st extract to make tofu and the 2nd to drink. If u just want to drink it all, u can mix it together)

5. Put extracted milk into a pot/saucepan and put in a pandan leaf(stripped and tied into a knot). On medium heat(if making a lot, use high heat, but I’m only doing 500ml), bring it to a boil.

Be very careful and watch the pot carefully. The milk overflows easily when it’s boiling.
6. Season with brown or regular white sugar.

* I found that the milk curdles and is not that smooth once I added the brown sugar. Maybe it's due to brown sugar's acidic nature. Try regular white sugar for a smooth milk.

Honey Ginger Tea 蜜糖姜茶

I'm not feeling good tonight.

Every woman is different. Some feel the pain during, some before. Usually, I feel it, before, but not always. And it's only for a short while. Tonight it came by longer.
Before I was ever pregnant, the signs will come exactly 2 days before and after I've had children, it's no longer consistent, and having 2 kids so near has made me forgotten how these days feel like.

So, I made myself a cup of ginger tea, sweetened with honey to make it more palatable. I love ginger, so I don't find it difficult, even if I need to drink a lot of this.

2 inches of ginger, skin on and sliced thickly and smashed.
slightly more than 1 cup water
1 Tbsp honey

Put ginger and water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer on low heat for 5 minutes.
Pour tea into a cup and put in honey to sweeten.

Good for days like this :)

Husbands or sons, if you see your wife or mother not feeling good, try to make her this to make her feel better.

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.