Boiling liang zui

Superbly lazy to boil the weekly herbal drink over the stove. So I did it in Ms Thermie instead where I don’t have to worry about splatters. 

Did a check in the fridge 3 wks ago on the peanut roots and noticed we have a lot of barley, popcorn and winter melon strips left in the fridge because I rarely cook it. Reason? Read below. 

Told myself to boil barley the following week but obviously I didn’t coz there were leftovers of chrysanthemum in it’s original packaging (another problem of trying to organize everything in similar boxes) after I boxed them. Boiled chrysanthemum instead and it was also chrysanthemum last week and most weeks 😄 so this week I HAD to boil barley. I will need to force lil’ one to drink since now I have one less kid to coerce. Good news is I’ll only shorten my life span -0.5x instead of 1x. 好像给孩子毒药的，I don’t understand why but they used to drink barley on a regular weekly basis when growing up and now they both don’t like it. 

Don’t ask me about the measurement coz I eyeballed the quantity fitting for 1.5litres. I usually boil barley drink using china barley 生薏米 (also known as jobs tear?) + cooked barley 熟薏米 (I call this popcorn 😂 coz it bears a resemblance to it) + winter melon strips + sugar (I used my lakanto) 

Simmering basket on top to prevent splattering.

I shall increase the water to 2 litres next time 

Filled up the container and into the fridge. 

I was curious if Cookidoo has recipes for barley drink and surprised to know that they use pearl barley and pandan leaf. What is pearl barley? And why do they put pandan leaf? Pandan leaf in a drink gives it a weird taste. It does have its benefits though, namely reducing stress, make you orh orh 😴 better, control blood sugar, prevent cancer, increase appetite and relieve symptoms of arthritis. 

What’s china barley, cooked barley & pearl barley

China barley （生薏米）： known to act as a diuretic and remove excess fluids in the body ('dampness'). In TCM, it is considered cooling in nature and has nourishing benefits on our spleen, stomach, and lungs

Cooked barley (熟薏米）：was told before that this is used to neutralise the cooling of barley. Therefore it’s normally cooked together for barley drink and soup. Of course this is from TCM point of view. Thermomix and other online recipes has never asked for cooked barley at all. 

Pearl barley (样薏米）： pearl barley helps control cholesterol levels and promotes cardiovascular health in general. It also helps control blood pressure and reduces the risk of heart disease and stroke. 

Difference

One more difference to note between pearl barley and Chinese barley is that the former 会生痰.  

However as barley is known to be 寒 it’s not advisable to drink it everyday. 

To end this blog entry, found something but is too wordy and in Chinese for your reading pleasure.