Three-bean Soup for Nourishing the Heart during Summer
Based on the Chinese 24 solar terms, the hottest season of the year which is summer has already started on May 5 this year at the northern hemisphere. According to Chinese astronomy, the temperature during this period is significantly higher. There is massive amount of warmness with humidity causing moist air rising into the atmosphere where it can easily form a thunderstorm. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) theory, fire is the element related to summer and fire is associated with the heart. During summer, people tend to feel irritable and easily become hot-tempered due to the summer heat. TCM beliefs anger affects directly the liver emotionally and influences the heart indirectly. Anger causes liver yang (fire) to rise, which can eventually be transmitted to the heart causing heart fire. That explains anger through the heart. With these internal and external factors, it will lead into mental restlessness with sleeping difficulties and prone to insomnia, dream disturbed sleep, palpitations, mouth and tongue ulcers, summer boils and other symptoms of the fire. That is why in TCM teaching, we have to nourish our heart during summer in such a way to balance our body system. In the dietary practice, we should eat less flavoring, greasy, high-fat and spicy foods, inclusive of iced-cold items, rather need to eat more light meals with nutrient-rich foods, such as yam, wheat, corn, lotus root, lotus seed, octopus, fish, lettuce, green peas, eggs, red dates, strawberry…….for these foods have effects in eliminating heat; stopping excessive sweating,; replenishing body fluids; preventing heatstroke; improving appetite and helping our body to recover from fatigue.
Herewith, recommending a soup called “Three-bean Soup” that is used for the purpose of nourishing the heart during summer which is taken from the book called 《Zhu"s Compendium of Effective Formulas》, a compilation process work during Song Dynasty. This dietary recipe helps in clearing away the internal heat, eliminating dampness from the body, strengthening the spleen and stomach function, and invigorating the kidney function. The ingredients are as follows:
1. Green Mung Bean 20g
2. Red Bean 20g
3. Black Bean 20g
4. Right amount of Chinese Rock Sugar
Cooking Instruction:
1. Wash the beans, then soaked in water for 1 hour
2. Have the three beans into the cooking pot, then add appropriate amount of water
3. Cook first in high temperature fire then shift lower with slow cook for 1 hour until the beans break open and soften
4. Put the rock sugar and then cook for additional 5 minutes
5. Eat the beans and drink the soup together after cooling a while.
Description and Indications of each item:
1. Mung bean is sweet in taste, with a strong cooling effect. It passes through the heart, stomach and liver meridians. The indications are to clear away heat for body detoxification, induce diuresis to alleviate edema, eliminate summer heat for refreshing thirsty.
2. Red bean is sweet and sour in taste which is neutral in nature, but more on the cooling side. It passes through the heart and small intestine meridians. Its main indications are to induce diuresis to alleviate edema, and resolve toxin and expel pus.
3. .Black bean is sweet in taste and neutral in nature. It passes through the heart, spleen and kidney meridians. It helps in eliminating dampness and diuretic, improving blood circulation to dispel pathogenic wind, clearing away heat for body detoxification, strengthening the kidney function to revitalize the body.
4. Rock sugar is sweet in taste and neutral in nature. It passes through the lung and spleen meridians which has the effect of invigorating the spleen and replenishing the middle-jiao area, restoring stomach function and moistening lungs, cough control and getting rid of phlegm.
Recommendations: This recipe may not suitable for everybody and cannot be taken excessively, because of its cooling effect which might cause stomach discomfort for those people whose digestive function is weak with yin deficiency or deficiency-cold in spleen and stomach, especially those old people and children. Instead of having rock sugar, may substitute with brown sugar (have warming effect) and can add some amount of rice into the recipe to cook as congee in order to achieve the effect of warming the spleen and stomach for protection.
