The Soup Queen

I have been drinking Ba Zhen Tang twice a week now for about 6 weeks. ( See my previous post ) When I say twice a week, it's not that I boil Ba Zhen twice a week. I brew Ba Zhen herbs in my slow cooker in 700ml of water for about 4 to 5 hours on Auto mode. I usually drink 350ml of the soup and save the remainder for two days later. Two days later, I'll gently reheat the soup on the stove and drink it while it's warm. This means my one pot of soup lasts me two sessions. I've also switched up my drinking time. I used to drink it at night (11pm or so) because I used to brew the soup around 7pm. But the problem is that at night I used to toss and turn, unable to sleep! When I told my sinseh this, she told me to drink it in the evening around 6pm (or at least before dinner time). I found that switching up the time of drinking Ba Zhen Tang was better. I didn't have difficulty sleeping - apparently, Ba Zhen invigorates the body so all that energy at night was ...

Remember I was complaining how my hair was falling like crazy some months ago? My hair salon lady told me it could be the rice intake. So I started eating more rice and also ate a host of other stuff (black sesame and white sesame seeds) and realized that my hair issue did improve. Organic Herbal Shampoo Powder from Vanamoolika India The back shows you the ingredients used in this powder shampoo.  I also observed that my hair fall increased when the weather was hot and my scalp was sweaty and itchy. I usually wash my hair every two days but sometimes when my scalp became too itchy, I had to wash my hair daily. I realized it also helped prevent hair loss. I deduced that when my scalp is itchy, the hair follicles may be "open" and this made my hair drop. While I feared daily hair washing could increase the number of hair dropping, the reverse was true. When I washed my hair daily and my scalp was cool, hair fall became less and less. I was so relieved! ...

Remember how I was wailing about my hair falling like mad each time I washed my hair? Well, I told a friend, Then, who runs a hair salon and whom I go to each month for my henna hair colouring treatment (yes, these pesky white hairs keep popping up so when I get tired of plucking them by the roots, I go and henna them all). She's Indian so she asked me if my diet changed. I was eating less rice at that time because I didn't want to get too flabby around my waist. She told me that she personally experienced hair loss too when she reduced her rice intake. She advised me to get back to my normal rice intake and see if it helped. I decided to also get a bottle of hair loss shampoo from her. It was more to satisfy my own desire to do all I could to help my hair loss from getting worse. The girl who worked for Then did tell me that her boss did eat a lot of fruits and yogurt. Yogurt is cooling for the body. That was in January. I started reading more online because I did...

Ripe berries or fruits from my 9 foot curry leaf tree.  This is a photo of the ripe fruits from my 9 foot curry leaf tree or known scientifically as  Murraya koenigii   . Yes, most curry leaf plants are about human height.  Mine is a bit special because when it was still a young sapling, I used a lot of my own homemade compost . It had so much of nutrients that it started growing taller and taller.  Right now, it is shading the compost pots!  Which means I am cooler when I stand under this tree to do my daily composting. You see how wonderful it all works out to be?  Because these berries attract the Asian koel (black birds with fiery red eyes which make the annoying loud "ku-yo, ku-yo" sounds), the curry leaf seeds get propagated everywhere.  Yet some drop right under the tree and start growing. I have a curry leaf sapling attack haha. I keep pulling the saplings up as there's just too many.  Besides throwing ...

Remember I mentioned about he shou wu , a herb that helps hair growth? It's also called Fleeceflower Root or Polygonum Multiflorum. (My hair shenanigans were a big deal to me. You can read about Shou Wu Chih or my hair darkening tea posts.) I bought some - actually RM5 worth of it - and boiled it a couple of times. Each time I also added some dried black dates too. Initially I'd simmer the herb over the stove but later decided to use my slow cooker. When i couldn't finish drinking it all I'd store it in an old-fashioned thermos flask. Two weeks ago I was in town buying dried scallops and Chinese sausages for my mother in law when I decided to ask the shop assistant if they had he show wu. Mind you, this was a Chinese medical store cum grocery store.  So below was what they recommended to me. It was RM16.50 for a 200gm pack. When I opened it, the slices were thicker and darker. It wasn't sliced thinly - in fact it was hard and knobbly lik...

In my last post I wrote about dried Shou Wu slices which I bought from my regular herbalist. In this post I am going to let you in about a more convenient method of imbibing this herb especially if you find it tedious to boil your own brew.  I read about Shou Wu Chih or Shou Wu Essence and went to a Chinese medical hall (not my usual herbalist, mind you) and asked about Shou Wu. The owner, a man in his 60s, recommended that I try this product.  Here's what the Shou Wu Chih contains:  It is more than just Shou Wu extract. It also contains ginseng, dang gui, chuan xiong and other herbs.  The liquid is dark coloured and thick, a bit like cough syrup.  The medical hall owner told me that this Shou Wu Chih can be taken nightly, using that given "cup" (which measures about 30 ml).  Between me and the husband, we took about 7 days to finish the entire bottle of 300ml. We each took a 30 ml dose each night just before we went...

I don't know if I mentioned this but the past few months I have been experiencing some hair issues. Granted, I have never had long hair - my hair is always above the shoulders. The only time I remember having really long hair was in my campus days. I had hair past my shoulder. After that, I have always worn my hair short and fuss-free (yes, if you read this blog long enough, you know I like things to be practical and easy).  It could be stress or it could be hormonal. After all I am 40 this year. I think things change inside a woman's body when she hits the big 40. On top of that, I have been stressed with a lot of things - some fun, some not so! I was the head planner/tourist guide for my parents and sis when we went to Hong Kong for a week (and I was so majorly stressed that I started having nose bleeds in HK which scared the life out of me. I never have nose bleeds). I blamed it on the crazy hot summer weather of Hong Kong. And then when I got back, I was ...