Homemade Mung Green Bean Flour 自製綠豆粉

Mung beans skins off

When making our Macau Almond Cookies 澳門杏仁餅 during the Chinese Mid Autumn Festival I discovered that I could not find one vital ingredient for the cookies: mung bean flour also known as green bean flour or starch.  So I thought to use some elbow grease and just make it myself.  

It turns out that it is not so hard, just needing a bit of time and patience to make this nutty, roasty, aromatic Homemade Mung Green Bean Flour 自製綠豆粉.

Green Mung Bean Popsicle 綠豆雪條

It's been so hot these few days.  Soooo hot!!  I'm melting!!  What to do?  Well, since we've got an excess of lovely green beans from making our Green Bean Licorice Prickly Heat Herbal Tea  生地綠豆甘草茶, I decided to make a batch of healthy yet still truly delicious popsicles to cool our feathers in the midst of this heat.  

These super easy to make Green Mung Bean Popsicles, or 綠豆雪條, are a classic ice lolly that is the favorite of every chinese kid.  No better way to cool off from the Chinese summer heat!

Green Bean Licorice Prickly Heat Herbal Tea 生地綠豆甘草茶

Do you ever think about how much beverage we buy and lug home to drink?  Water, juices, sodas, etc.  Heavy to lug home, liquid in bottles is heavy, amiright?  We buy beverages too, but it's been humming in the back of my mind for a while that there must be a better option.  

What, for example, did people used do for everyday for cool and refreshing drinks in the days before the invention of modern packaging?  They made their own drinks, of course!  

So recently when my little girl's eczema flared up again due to the already humid weather descending over Hong Kong, I decided to cook up a big ol' pot of Green Bean Licorice Prickly Heat Herbal Tea, or 生地綠豆甘草茶.  A cool, inexpensive, refreshing sweet Chinese beverage that makes a great everyday drink and soothes itchy skin and prickly heat.

Green Bean Dessert Soup 綠豆沙

There is almost nothing so soothing and cooling to drink on a hot, hot summer's day than Chinese Green Bean Dessert Soup.  My grandma used to make big pots of this wonderful soup for us, store it in the fridge and we would help ourselves to big delicious bowls to cool ourselves off after a hot day of play.  

So just as this really hot summer typhoon weather has settled in on us in Hong Kong, I suddenly remembered, (duh! strikes forehead),  the perfect thing to rustle up for taking the edge off this heat is this wonderfully body cooling Green Bean Dessert Soup, or 綠豆沙 or 綠豆湯.