Ginger Red Date Tea for Yang Restoration

Since it's season changing time, it's a good time to look at boosting your immune system.
It's a very simple tea with ingredients that have benefits to boosting different aspects of your body.
If you just read about the ingredients and what's it good for, it honestly seems like something you can drink every once in a while to boost your immune system. But with traditional Chinese medicine, there's a balance to everything so you don't want to over do it either.

My aunt in HK sent me specific date and time to drink this tea as it's the best time to restore balance to the body.
Specifically from Mar 18-22 before 11am every day.
Maybe it's a mental thing but my mom has friends that claim it works and helped boost immune system the years they drink this.
Doesn't hurt to try :)

Ginger Red Date Tea

For 1 cup

Ingredients

• 2 thin slices of ginger
• 1 large Red Date or 2 small Red Dates (seedless)
• 1/2 tsp Brown Sugar
• 1.25 Cup of Water

Directions

1. Wash and cut 2 thin slices of ginger
2. Remove seed from the red date (it's a must! or buy seedless)
3. Add all ingredients to a pot and bring to light boil
4. Turn off heat immediately and let it steep for 10 mins

And you're done :)

Super easy if you have seedless red dates already so you only have to put everything together and heat it up.

If this is too spicy for you, add a little more brown sugar.

Korean BBQ Sauce

I love KBBQ ribs but it's very expensive to order when you're at the restaurant. So I asked my Korean friend how he makes his KBBQ ribs.
And his response was, it's simple, just throw in everything, blend and marinate it overnight and then cook it.
He was able to give me a list of all the ingredients but he was not able to give me the amounts since he never measures it.
I tried the same and I found that generally, the taste is very similar as long as I don't go overboard on any one of the ingredients (ie half a finger of ginger, too much soy sauce etc).
So I took the time to measure and test the recipe and tested it on my husband until he thought it matches fairly well.

Another note I wanted to make up front is what I used for the sweetener.
He uses only honey, it has a unique flavour and it thickens the sauce!
Honey will make the sauce nice and thick and clingy which makes it easier to use to marinate. But at the same time, honey can be very expensive depending on you live. So my recipe below uses a bit of brown sugar to replace some of the honey but you can always swap it out for pure honey.

So this post will cover the marinate itself. You can make a big batch and keep it in the fridge or freeze it for future use or just make it as you need.

Korean BBQ Sauce

Prep Time: <5 mins Makes enough to cover about 500g of ribs pending on the box/bag you're using for marinating

Ingredients

• 40g Soy Sauce
• 5g Ginger
• 10g Garlic
• 2 Green Onion
• 20g Honey
• 10g Brown Sugar
• Juice from Half a Lemon
• 10g Vinegar
• 40g Water

Directions

1. Measure and put all the ingredients into a blender and blend
2. Let the foam settle, after 10 mins or so, stir the foam and bits into the sauce if it doesn't mix in on it's own
3. Use right away or save in fridge or freezer. Shelf life is shorter then what you buy because there's no preservatives

Simple right? :)

Enjoy!

Honey Ginger Tea

The first time I had Ginger tea was in HK after eating Hairy Crab....
Hairy Crab is considered to be very cold and many people are actually allergic to it.
I didn't know I was because it was my first time eating it...
So I felt really super sick after....surprisingly the Ginger Tea helped push back the ache for a time period until my allergic reaction broke out....

Now I drink when my tummy hurts and it helps it feel better (I think some people drink Ginger Ale and it does the same thing...but this is healthier :))

Also, according to Chinese Hot/Cold theory, since Ginger "hot/warm" it's good when you're starting to get sick with a cold too.

It's really super simple to make as long as you have ginger at home...(since I'm Chinese I always have ginger at home)

Ingredients
2 slices of ginger (medium size)
1 Mug of water (A little bit more since you'll loose some to steam)
~ 1 tsp honey or to your taste

Cut 2 slides of ginger from the root, fairly thin is fine.

Put it in a pot/kettle and fill it with your cup of water and bring the water to boil.

Boil for ~30secs and turn off the stovetop.
Let it sit there and steep for about 10 mins.



Add about 1 tsp of Honey into your cup before you pour your tea into the cup.

Stir and you're ready to drink :)

I hope it helps