Mastering My Chai and Rocking my Soup

The following is my entry in the 12 Days Of Natural Medicine Christmas challenge. More info on this contest, with a price pot of 200 Steem, can be found here. Entries can be sent in until Christmas Eve, December 24th.

Got some time to spare? You might wanna grab a drink first and make yourself comfortable. This has become a somewhat lengthy post.

This was supposed to be a story about my morning Chai, the new drink I'm working on mastering, to replace my coffee ( habit). To be clear, I have stopped drinking coffee, about a week ago and I'm doing well. Since then, I've had two decafs ( one of them today ) and they didn't taste too good, something I'm happy about.

As mentioned, I was planning to just write on my morning chai but decided to add a second story and recipe afterwards, as tonight's dinner ( carrot-beets soup ) was awesome and worth sharing. More importantly, it contained some of the 12 healing plants / herbs mentioned in the Natural Medicine Christmas challenge.

Now back to this morning...

After drinking 'um chocolate quente' and um café descafeinado at my hamlet's cafe/restaurant, where I informed about that day's lunch, I headed home. The hot chocolate had been alright ( and definitely hot ), the decaf coffee had been pretty tasteless. The only lunch option available was something I don't like a lot with beans and loads of meat ( feijao ). As I hardly eat meat these days and my stomach ( in the past ) hasn't seemed to do well on beans ( working on changing that believe, hence: 'hasn't seemed' ), cooking my own lunch - something I usually do - was a far better ( and cheaper ) option.

I was meaning to write about my 'chai' though, the spicy, strong tea that is supposed to replace my coffee from now on.

I boiled some water ( to get rid of the chlorine taste of my tap water ), meanwhile melting some clumps of coconut milk on the stove. The coconut milk had solidified, due to the fridge like temperature in my kitchen.

A little later, I discovered that the coconut milk was extremely liquid and translucent and I realized that I'd used coconut oil instead. So I poured out the oil and grabbed the can of coconut milk that I was supposed to use ( it had solidified too ), to melt some of its contents.

When this, in turn, had liquefied into a milk like substance, I added it to the cooking water. The herbs that I decided to use to spice up my chai were: cinnamon, turmeric, nutmeg and black pepper. If I would have ginger, it would surely have been added to the mix too but, alas. The same goes for cardamom, the magic word that I keep hearing, a spice that I don't remember to have tasted in decades.

The drink was alright, I enjoyed it on my balcony, during a brief moment of sunshine ( and, if I need to believe my iPhone's weather app, 4 degrees Celsius ). It was cold, but a warm drink helped.

Me tasting my experiment

Trying to act as if I liked it a lot

My watery chai improv

A little later, in the kitchen, I realized why my chai had been somewhat bland, not that tasteful. It wasn't lack of sugar but lack of tea. Hahaha! I had forgotten to add strong black tea to it. Not even sure if it counts as chai then, probably not.

I made another chai later today, this time I added black tea and some brown sugar ( not the hard drug ). This one tasted better, but I felt the tea could still be stronger.

Anyhow, you can't become a master over night. I only just started out making chai. I like the challenge and suppose that they taste even better if you use fresh herbs ( not just from little pots ), possibly even heat them on a fire and find a way to make your tea stronger, by letting it soak over night.

Any chai expert out here, who can answer my question ( see the alinea above )?

Breaking the ( coffee ) Habit

By the way, it's crazy how after only a week without coffee, I realize how this black little devil ( that merely made me number 2 instantly, gave me headaches ( especially when I didn't drink it ) and increased my overthinking, stress and worries, managed to keep me in its powerful grasp for over two decades. Looking back on it, I merely like the smell of coffee. I can find other ways to get a boost, when I need one. Not saying that I will never drink coffee any more but I'm happy I broke the habit and I'm no longer addicted. It was pretty easy to stop. Just do it! ( and build it off slowly. Going cold turkey is tough )

Story Number 2 - Delicious Soup

A couple of days ago, I found a recipe that tickled my fancy, when researching 'ayurveda'. Or wait, I might have received an email with this recipe or just found it on the website. Whatever the case, I felt like cooking this:

Vata-Pitta Pacifying Beetroot-Carrot-Soup

It appeared to be an extremely easy to make and fast to prepare meal. Here's the ingredients:

250 grams cooked beetroot (beets), chopped
1 pc onion, small, peeled and chopped
1 tbsp low fat cream (optional)
½ cup carrots, chopped
3/4 cup orange juice, freshly squeezed
500 ml vegetable stock
2 tsp olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

My twin sister, who is sweet enough to bring me groceries on an almost weekly basis, when she and her family come over to visit, had supplied me with beets last Thursday. This Sunday, I had bought carrots ( and loads of other veggies. I didn't have any onions ( as I recently learnt that, according to ayurveda, my dosha doesn't respond too well to onions. So I decided to replace those by some leek. Didn't have any oranges either, so I replaced the orange juice by the juice of two mandarins / tangerines. No vegetable stock either. I made my own from turmeric, sweet paprika powder ( red capsicum powder ), sea salt and cumin seed ( if I remember well ).

The beets were pre-cooked, so I added them at the end and let them boil for a bit with the ( baked and ) cooked carrots and leek.

When served - HOT - I added some coconut milk to the soup, plus some sea salt and black pepper to top it off.
Although the soup was entirely vegan, I couldn't stop myself from grabbing some sheep cheese ( not cheap cheese ) and eating it on frying-pan-toasted bread.

What follows is a picture of the result:

The table cloth is a special one. I inherited it from my grandmother, who passed away in January 2018 ( aged 93 ). It brings back many great memories and reminds me of happy childhood Summers in France. You gotta love those roosters!

And yes, I had a corn cracker with peanut butter too. Peanut butter is one of my guilty pleasures. It's vegan and reminds me of The Netherlands. My sister got me a small jar of it, a while back, and I'm treasuring every single spoonful of it. The empty toast was to dip in the soup. When eating, I discovered that I was almost burning the last piece of toast in the frying pan. It was still edible though, just very crunchy.

In Conclusion:

Both the chai and soup that I had today contained one or more of the 12 Natural Medicine Christmas herbs. I'm gonna count the tangerine as an orange to make it 2 out of 12 in both recipes. Turmeric is my daily go to. I put it in my breakfast ( oatmeal ), drinks ( hot milk and now chai ), soups and almost any other types of dishes that I prepare ( from pasta to rice, from bulgur to couscous ) and love to add it to my vegetables. I recently learnt that it's extremely healthy and - since diving into ayurveda ( I will link to previous posts underneath this one ) I discovered that it's especially healthy/ balancing for the Vata ( and Pitta ) dosha that I belong to.

_{I challenge you to Google or even better Ecosia - a search engine that plants trees the word 'dosha', connected to Ayurveda, to find out what it means ( if you don't already ) and find out what dosha(s) are the strongest in you. You might also wanna chekc the health benefits of turmeric and start using it ( more )}

This wasn't supposed to become such a lengthy post but I guess I'm pretty excited about all this and I don't need any caffeine for that ;>)

I'll leave you know with um abraço from Monte Frio, Portugal - a place known for its awesome view and overall relaxing vibes ( even more since the day I moved there ).

_{Here's one more balcony view picture ( taken today ) to get you into Zen mode:}