Pear tea for dry skin
As you may have heard me say in the clinic repeatedly, food is medicine! Everything we eat has properties that can either support or diminish our body’s functioning day to day. There are different foods to cook with per season for optimal health and different foods that support us during different types of dis-ease experiences.
We entered Metal Season and Autumn! This means the changing of leaves, pumpkins, and Metal element symptoms such as dry skin. I have recommended this really lovely tea this week, so it felt worthy of a blog post. Dry Skin can indicate Yin deficiency of the Lungs or perhaps Blood deficiency concerning certain organs.
This sweet formula is perfect for moistening Yin and the Skin! Through CM (Chinese Medicine) diagnostics, this formula helps to clear heat, moisten the Lungs, and Moisten the skin and heal dry cough. This is lovely for city dense areas where air quality might effect the Lungs, general respiratory disorders, and lovely for the skin.
The ingredients I love to use:
Two seasonal autumn/late sumemr pears or asian pears - our best nourishing ingreedient
One round white fungus (also known as tremella) - this is collagen in a mushroom!
Handful of lotus seeds - nice for nourishing the heart
Handful of goji berries - building Blood and nourishing the skin
Four red Chinese dates/jujube - cut these in half to remove the pit, another blood nourishing food
Directions: Soak all the ingredients, minus the pear, overnight to rehydrate. (Most of the items can be bought in dehydrated forms, and if you’re local to Durham, H Mart or Li-Mings has these!) Once ready to make the tea, rip the snow fungus into smaller pieces and trim away the darker and harder region of the root of the fungus pieces. In a large pot, bring 6 cups of water to a boil. Add the snow fungus and lotus seeds and allow them to simmer for 30 minutes. Cut the pear into bite-sized pieces (you can leave the peel on, all peels actually contain enzymes for digesting their own fruit when eaten!) and add the goji berries and the jujube the pot and simmer another 30 minutes on medium heat. Once it looks nice and juicy, you can take off the heat and drink through the day, you can add water if the level seems to drop below 3 cups ish.
Enjoy this lovely tea on these crisp days! It is lovely through the year for clear skin and Lung health.
