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The weather has not been consistent for a few years now. It’s just that some areas make up for the lost of others and some farmers less affected than others. Overall the prices have been consistently rising anyway. Weather or not. We are still gathering information from different regions to have a better picture. Early season prices are unreliable.
The yogurt recipe is a great one. This ginger syrup can actually apply to a lot of things. I hope you have been enjoying exploring things so immediately around you and expand the experiences of your taste buds and how your body responds to these things.
Happy for you.Oh yes, TCM goes way beyond treating illness. I am glad that it has become an inspiration to open the door for you to perhaps a lot other things.It is only a matter of degree, all green teas are relatively cooler in nature. Some cold. Those that are deeper baked are less so, those that are deeper roasted even less. Examples of deeper baked green tea: Huangshan Maofeng (traditional ones), Kaihua Longding etc; deeper roasted: Dinggu Dafang, Mengding Ganlu etc.
Less green tea when you are weaker in energy. More when you feel absolutely active.CheersApple is perhaps the most system friendly of all the fruits. It is neutral by TCM nature and therefore the only recommended fruit for people in recuperation by some TCM doctors. If you like your newly found apple-ginger soup recipe, it’s a good start.
I am not sure about the idea of chewing on raw ginger, but ginger is a great ingredient for making a drink with. Boiling thin slices of it in water for a few minutes, and then pour the water into a cup with raw cane sugar or rock/sea salt and you have a great all time ginger “tea”. Or use the water to brew a wuyi or phoenix oolong. Feel free to put raw sugar or other healthy sweetener in it. It’s a great humid-evil dissipator.There are a few tea recipes in the Tea Guardian site, do look them up in the Tea Preparation section. And about sugars too. Never use white sugar, esp in your situation.If you have no time to prepare a veggie dish, very thinly julienne ample ginger to toss into the salad to balance off the coldness and “humid evils” in some raw veggies.Ginger is such an indispensable item in the kitchen that I cannot imagine one day without it.Enjoy life! You don’t know how lucky you are living in the food basket of the world!I hope you understand that my advices do not constitute any medical opinion; they are only common senses in healthy living. I do hope my effort can help people with living a happier life.
In my previous response, when I said cold f & b, I meant temperature cold. The rich varieties of fruit and veggie in Brazil should be quite difficult for my to categorize for you over the internet which is cold in TCM nature and which is not. It is difficult even for most Chinese who grew up with TCM concept around them and yet who have paid little attention to it.If just by following very simple guidelines there could be some improvement in your situation, I’d be happy for you. That’s why I mentioned things that are cold in temperature that you should avoid. Not only refrigerator cold, but room temperature cold veggie, that means they should be cooked. As for fruits, yes, it is a good idea that they are consumed cooked as well, but it is quite difficult in practice that our daily fruit portions be cooked all the time. So eat them in smaller portions over many times in the day. Or simply eating them not so fast. That is for your systems to deal with them easier.Raw things in all your diet should not be a good idea for you. I am no expert in weight loss, but it is common sense that a person who has difficulties in water metabolism should avoid raw things because they can cause more “humid evils” (TCM term).Your sample about carrot vs tomato, if both are uncooked, the tomato is actually a bit warmer than the carrot. Carrot is quite cooling in TCM term. Some other roots are cold, some others are warm, hot, and neutral. The saying that roots are warmer is a bit irresponsible, or ignorant, wherever you have heard it from.I am sure there is a ton of recipes for cooking veggies in Brazil, and you should not avoid meat either, unless you are a vegetarian. Do try to cook your veggie with a bit of ginger in it, better yet ginger with the skin. It not only helps neutralize the coldness in some veggies, but also to dissipate “humid evils”. There are a lot of herbs that do that, but ginger is a lot more common place and practicable in cooking.I love ice cream and if you like it too, you do not have to avoid it: eat moderately and add ginger to it! If this is too much, consider candied ginger ;-), I also have some great ginger-milk recipes, which I’ll share later in the site for the benefits of more people.In terms of tea choices, Rou Gui is suitable for you as are the others, except for Monkey Picked, if it is the green style. It is basically tieguanyin or related imitations.Baked and roasted are two different ways in processing tea. YOu can read about them in related Tea Guardian chapters.Hope this helps. Cheers,It is a common mis-perception that green tea is lower in caffeine than other categories of tea. It is not. You can read a bit more about this at the caffeine chapter in Tea Guardian:
However, it is not necessarily only caffeine that gives a person a less than better sleep. TCM coldness in things sometimes do that too. For example, if you already have some weakness in TCM coldness, eg, low blood cell counts, shortness of breath, weak digestion, weak liver, during menstruation etc, and then you eat a bowl of cold salad, or a jug of cold beer, or a big piece of water melon close to your bed time, then you may not sleep too well either.Steamed green tea (not all green tea) is cold in TCM nature. It also has high count of caffeine. So it is better to be avoided after late afternoon, if your body is not up to it.Good morning tamesbm,
I am quite envious of you being able to afford all these bedtime!Fairness has never existed on Earth: some people are a lot more fortunate than others. But it is often than perseverance of the less fortunate that creates much of our rich cultural heritage. Too much for the morning isn’t it?It sounds like tea is beginning to work on you to clarify some of the toxins in your body so you are beginning to have exaggerated reactions to things. However, it does also sound like you may have some inner refortification to do to build a healthier body. That’s all from some common sense TCM understanding from hearing the few points you said. I just guess the basic balanced diet concept will work and I am sorry to tell you this: avoid cold stuffs, such as iced drinks, cold salads, cold fruits etc in particular iced drinks. (I know you live in Brazil, sorry!) Your case simply sounds too much like one that of humid toxins as I have mentioned in the related in the Tea Guardian article.You are right that Jasmine green tea is not good for you, so are all steamed green teas such as sencha or gyokuro. Shengcha puer, Silver Needles, Gun Powders are also not good for you. When you want some green tea occasionally, go for pan roasted ones that are more cooked, such as Dinggu Dafang, or sharper tasting ones that are baked, such as Kaihua Longding.I am glad oolong is your favourite, it is the most suitable category of tea for you, as I mentioned in the earlier response.For black tea, your Dian Hong is not as suitable for you as your Qimen, but better ones for you are those sharper types: such as Darjeeling, Jiuqu Hongmei (Red Plum Classic), etc. If you like the rounder body of black teas, you may want to consider classic type lower cost oolongs such as Wuyi Shuixian, baked Tieguanyin etc as alternatives. They dissipate humid toxins a lot more efficiently.The whole idea is to maintain relative TCM neutrality for your weaker digestive system and those teas that are more efficient in water metabolism (rather than simply diuretic).I hope your health will improve soon.It does sound like a green tea brew. If it really is the green tea baimudan, I think it is better for you not to drink it too regularly because of your leg osmosis concern.
Some green and black tea do not help the problem, some may worsen it. In my own observation, the best teas that may deal with the problem in some people are:- White tea baimudan;
- traditional oolongs (as opposite to modern oolongs): eg Wuyi, Phoenix, etc, as opposite to green tieguanyin, new style Taiwan oolongs etc;
- Shengcha puer, but this is not suitable for weaker stomachs and people who are sensitive to TCM chilling substances, such as women during menstruation
However, I have not done any systematic studies of this; only observation from customers and friends; and through my understanding of the different teas.One thing I do know however, is that certain not properly produced green baimudan do exaggerate problems in water retention so it may not be a good idea to drink it too regularly. Having said that though, many other food and beverage items do that even more seriously than any tea, eg beer, sodas, certain salads, fruits etc. Depressing, isn’t it?On the bright side, it is only great to know the true nature of the things that we have all taken for granted so much. It’s rather like swimming, or riding a bike, once the true nature of a thing is well mastered, you can enjoy it to its best extent, when you know how your body is integrating with it.The picture looks like some low quality product that I cannot recognise as anything from any of the proper baimudan origins. They look similar, but the leaf size, edge patterns seem quite different. And they are quite broken. Still I cannot say for sure by looking at this particular picture.
According to your description of taste and smell, however, it surely does not sound too appealing to drink.Try 3g/250 ml/90°C/3 min to see if it turns out any better.It could also be a badly stored low quality product, or imitation product, or maybe artificially scented. If you find it undrinkable, perhaps you should either return it or use it as a deodorizer in the fridge? That’s what I use bad tea for.Sorry about the bad experience.
