Blogs

Some things come as a pair. Beans on toast. Fish and chips. A cuppa and the biscuit you swore you weren't having. Over in a Chinese kitchen? Goji and red dates. Where one goes, the other usually tags along. Open the cupboard in plenty of Chinese homes and the two bags are sat side by side, usually held shut with a clothes peg, and when one comes out the other tends to follow it. So this one's about the pair. Why they work, how I make the tea, a flask version for cold mornings, and the two other places they...

Reishi is bitter, and that is normal. How I simmer dried reishi slices at home, what the tea actually tastes like, and the red dates, honey and ginger that make it go down easier.

Show most people a bag of goji and you get the squint. Then: "raisins?" Sometimes it's cranberries. Fair enough, really. They're little, they're reddish, they're wrinkly and they come dried in a bag, so your brain just fills in the gap for you. They're neither, though. Once you've had a few side by side you won't mix them up again, so here's what goji actually is, how it's different in the mouth, and what to do with a bag once you've got it home. So what are they? Dried fruit, off the goji plant. Lycium barbarum is the posh name....

Saturday 10 October is World Mental Health Day. You'll see plenty of posts telling you to "reach out" and "check in". Good advice, but a lot of people don't really know what that looks like in real life. In a lot of Chinese households, nobody sits you down and asks if you're okay. Someone just turns up with a pot of soup. One of the most common greetings in Chinese is "Have you eaten yet?" It isn't really about food. It means "I'm thinking about you". This post is about that idea: food as a way of looking after people....