Sugar Cane Imperatae Water Chestnut Tonic 竹蔗茅根紅蘿蔔馬蹄水

Here's a favorite Chinese tonic, perfect for soothing dryness, quenching the thirsties and expelling dampness from your body.  Sugar Cane Imperatae Water Chestnut Tonic 竹蔗茅根紅蘿蔔馬蹄水 is a tonic with a longish name but it's super simple to make and delicious and healthy to drink!

Fruit Juice Chia Seed Drink

Dear readers, this food story starts with one word: 'regular'.  As I'm sure y'all would know, being 'regular' sometimes can be an annoying problem.  So just add more fiber, amirite?  Easy peasy, amirite?  But what happens when one tries prunes, more veg, more fruit and more fibery food and the 'regular' problem still persists, what is one to do?

And all that jazz led us to this new drink we're making in our house these days because we discovered the amazingness of chia seeds!  Easy and quick to make, this Fruit Juice Chia Seed Drink is super yummilicious and super good for the 'regular' you!

Chinese Preserved Plum Lime Soda 話梅檸檬水

This homemade concoction has to be one of the most refreshing drinks ever!  One long slurp of this Chinese Preserved Plum Lime Soda 話梅檸檬水 and you'll be sighing out a long happy ahhhhhh...  It's sooo hot here in HK, endlessly hot, and I'll bet it's like that everywhere these days.  So try out this easy to make traditional southern Chinese summer drink and slough off some of that heat!

Butterfly Pea Flower Drink 蝴蝶豌豆花茶

Goshdarnnit, it's been so hot these days.  Not only in HK but everywhere...sigh.  No fear, HK Cookery to the rescue, here's a refreshing and beautiful drink for you to revitalize your body from the heat!

Are you not tempted?  Isn't this Butterfly Pea Flower Drink 蝴蝶豌豆花茶 just the most sublime color?  Just looking at it makes you feel a bit cooler, no?  This totally natural color is from the amazing butterfly pea flower 蝴蝶豌豆花.  This little blue flower provides color, is packed with antioxidants and is said to work as a mood enhancer, busting the stress and anxiety right outta your life.

Homemade Passion Fruit Soda

Deliriously delicious passion fruit soda!  Heady tropical scent and flavors burst out in this most refreshing concoction and it's so easy to make!  The best thing to do with passion fruit if you ask me.  And super duper easy to make it right at home!

Hong Kong Made Cola 香港製造可樂

We discovered this neat-o soda recently, selling at a favorite restaurant of ours.  A Hong Kong made cola?  How terribly interesting!  Of course we had to try it!  

This hong kong made cola, called Ma Wan Cola 馬灣可樂, is new on the market I believe.  It is made in Hong Kong (yay!) and originally produced especially for children, having only healthy ingredients.  But healthy cola can be enjoyed by everybody, amirite?!

Winter Melon Tea 冬瓜茶

This delightfully soothing and refreshing Winter Melon Tea 冬瓜茶 is something we recently discovered when eating out at a local Taiwanese restaurant.  It was so refreshing and good I couldn't believe that I'd never come across this delicious drink before!  

Apparently it's a widely enjoyed beverage in Taiwan and super healthy to boot, chock full of vitamin C (boosts immunity!), antioxidants, magnesium, phosphorus and calcium.  Super good for your health!  Winter melon is considered cooling to the body in Chinese medicine so this is the perfect refreshing drink as the weather starts to warm up.  

It was a serendipitous discovery as I've been obsessing recently over the issue of drinks and the fact that modern life seems to requires that a lot of drinks be purchased and lugged home.  I always wondered, what did folk do for drinks back in the days before supermarkets and convenience stores?  They made them at home, of course, and thus my search has been to discover traditional healthy teas and tonic drinks that can be easily made at home.   

What a cool thing it is to have a constant supply of delicious easy to make healthy tea/drink in fridge to sip whenever one is thirsty!

Lemon and Job's Tears Herbal Tea 檸檬薏米茶

Wow...what can I say?  It’s been a really really rough month and really rough almost year here in Hong Kong, as I’m sure you all either have experienced yourself or have followed through the news.  First the protests and now the virus.  Sigh...it’s been crazy here in HK and now the craziness is spreading out unfortunately.

We were actually overseas on holiday when the recent viral craziness started.  As a result of the virus spreading the airlines started canceling flight after flight therefore resulting in us getting cancelled out of I don’t know how many flights and spending, literally, days on the phone trying to connect with airlines, to get on any gosh darn airplane, before, finally!, we snagged a plane home...only to face an eerie sea of masked Hong Kongers and sad empty supermarket shelves.

Kinda frightening at first but I think it's calmer now, there's a new normal, one might say, and folks are getting back to business of living and loving and, very importantly, the grocery shelves are filling back up as folks stop panic buying.

In this time of health awareness I've decided to do some tea therapy, making herbal health teas for my family to drink every day, strengthening our bodies as well as calming our spirits.  Our first tea is a Lemon and Job's Tears Herbal Tea, a refreshingly floral and tangy drink that works as a diuretic, boosts immunity, flushes out body dampness and helps to prevent common cold.  An overall amazing kind of tea!!