herbs and potions

Currently drinking mangosteen tea because can't tell if allergies or mild cold trying to sneak its way in. Sometimes I latch onto the random Chinese medicine principals my parents raised me on. I swear by ginger tea, and every Chinese kid has had to suck down gallons of ban lan gen when fevers hit. I was on the edge of an unexplainable addiction to Chinese cough syrup one year - yes, that pitch black stuff. I've consumed goos and dissolved powders and unidentifiable hot plant waters all in the name of health. And almost all "regular" foods serve their purposes, too. "Feeling xyz? Eat more abc."

Mung bean soup was my favorite almost-cure-all. For its detoxifying and heat-clearing properties. 去火, as they always said. A phrase I heard over and over again because that dry NM heat was not always my body's best friend. Least of all my lungs. Every time I feel the illnesses creep in, I curse myself for taking breathing for granted yet again.

from here.

But in between modern Western whatever treatments like codeine, inhalers, antibiotics, allergy meds, and Mucinex (it's always something different), I like to feel old school and of-the-earth with the remedies my parents broke out every time they heard me cough.

Boiled mung beans with Asian pear, jujubes, and goji berries for 10-15 minutes for one healthy pile of mush (note: there's no rhyme or reason to the combination). That feels great when you're under the weather (like, smushed and suffocating under the shit weather), and every bite feels like ingesting handfuls of happy shiny compounds that rush right to the ailing areas of my insides (I recently rewatched Osmosis Jones). Even if it is largely placebo.

And then I can nap happy for 3, 4, 5, 6 hours.

"Cause time is money, and my interest ain't on you so that's the difference." - Ella Mai