Dandelion & Flower Tea

Today's TOTD — dandelion roots, red dates, chamomile, chrysanthemum and jasmine flowers, with the  jasmine picked fresh from our garden. 🌼🌿

A few of the ingredients also come with their own little wellness perks:

🌱 Dandelion root — traditionally used to support digestion and liver health, and as a gentle source of antioxidants.

🌼 Chamomile — known for its calming properties and often enjoyed to help with relaxation.

🌼 Chrysanthemum — traditionally enjoyed as a refreshing, soothing herbal tea and contains antioxidants.

It's such a soothing and aromatic tea, with strong notes of chamomile and chrysanthemum. I absolutely love it! ❤️

I'm feeling like a tea connoisseur now, brewing a different combination every day. 😂🍵

A Whole Lot of Pandan Leaves

Our neighbour has an entire garden filled with pandan plants, growing right on the ground. The pandan leaves are almost like wild weeds — so green, thick and incredibly luscious! 

So whenever Dad needs pandan leaves for baking or cooking and our garden doesn't have enough, he often asks our neighbour for some. A few days ago, our neighbour generously gave him a whole bunch of pandan leaves.

Dad then spent practically the entire afternoon in the kitchen washing, chopping, blending and squeezing the leaves to extract the pandan juice. To do this the old-fashioned way, he blends the pandan leaves with some water, then pours the mixture into a muslin cloth and squeezes out every drop of juice. Talk about labour intensive! 😂

He then stores the pandan juice in the fridge overnight. By the next day, the water and the concentrated pandan essence separate naturally. Dad pours the pandan water into another container to use for cooking, while the concentrated pandan essence goes into the freezer. That precious green essence will eventually be used for baking cakes and making pandan kaya. 💚

Dad is 83 years old, and this is the only method he knows. But I have to admit, there is something rather satisfying about doing it the traditional way. No fancy gadgets, just pandan leaves, water, a blender, a muslin cloth and plenty of elbow grease! 😆

I also kept some of the pandan leaves to make pandan tea. Sometimes I brew them on their own, and sometimes I mix them with flowers, green tea or black tea. The aroma is absolutely wonderful, and the tea tastes terrific! 🍵🌿

And we don't waste the pandan pulp either. After Dad has squeezed out all the juice, we put the leftover pandan pulp into containers and place them in our cars and bathroom. They make everything smell so fresh and naturally fragrant. Apparently, pandan is also said to help repel cockroaches, so that's another little bonus! 😂

From one big bunch of pandan leaves, we get pandan juice, pandan essence, tea, natural air freshener — and hopefully fewer cockroaches. Now that's making good use of a gardenful of pandan! 🌿💚

Pandan leaves + rose tea for mum; pandan leaves + rose + jasmine + blue pea flower tea for me.

My pandan rose jasmine blue pea flower tea. So aromatic.

Freshly extracted pandan juice before separating the water from the essence.

Pandan pulp as air freshener for our bathrooms and cars

Big bunch of pandan leaves from our neighbor.

One of the Best Kitchen Investments I've Made

My Tea Of The Day is a beautiful blend of chrysanthemum buds, osmanthus flowers, blue pea flowers from our garden, red dates, and goji berries, all gently simmered in my new glass kettle.

Dried flowers, herbs, red dates, and goji berries taste so much better when they're briefly boiled rather than simply steeped in hot water. Simmering brings out more of their natural sweetness, aroma, colour, and flavour, making every cup much more satisfying.

I love this kettle. Once the tea is ready, I just press the Keep Warm function, and it keeps my tea at a perfect 40°C, so I can enjoy warm tea throughout the day without having to reheat it. There are 20 functions in dual language (English & Chinese) to choose from on the panel.

As someone who drinks tea every single day, this has easily become one of the best kitchen investments I've made.

If you're a fellow tea lover, I highly recommend it. I bought mine from this Shopee seller 👉https://s.shopee.com.my/Lm8mEnU9G

Tea of the Day: Garden-Fresh Jasmine Green Tea

As many of you know, I'm a tea lover and I enjoy experimenting with different tea concoctions. ☕🌿

Today's TOTD is green tea infused with fresh jasmine flowers, hand-picked from my garden this morning. 

I absolutely love this combination. It has the refreshing, delicate taste of green tea, beautifully complemented by the sweet, dewy fragrance of freshly bloomed jasmine. Every sip is soothing and uplifting.

This simple cup of tea is packed with goodness — powerful antioxidants from the green tea, paired with the calming properties of jasmine flowers. Jasmine is also believed to help reduce stress, support digestion, and promote relaxation, making it the perfect tea to unwind with. 

Tea is how I stay hydrated

For optimal health, the general recommendation is around 2.1 liters (about 9 cups) of water a day for women and 3.1 liters (about 13 cups) for men, although individual needs vary depending on factors such as activity level, climate and overall health.

My challenge is that I don't really enjoy drinking plain water at room temperature. I prefer it chilled, but cold drinks tend to trigger phlegm for me. Since warm water feels gentler and is easier for me to sip throughout the day, I found another way to make hydration more enjoyable.

The answer? Tea!

I'm a huge tea lover. I enjoy almost every kind of tea—flower teas, green tea, matcha, black tea, flavoured teas, dried fruit teas and herbal infusions.

I also love lemon and lime drinks, but after years of drinking them regularly, the acidity affected my tooth enamel. So I stopped drinking fresh lemon and lime juice frequently.  Instead, I use dehydrated lemon slices, which add a lovely citrus fragrance and pair beautifully with different teas and herbs. I still add a few drops of organic lemon juice into my water every now and then to make the water more palatable. 

Here are some of my favourite tea concoctions:

🍵 1. Chrysanthemum flower buds + osmanthus flowers + dried hawthorn

🍵 2. Green tea + chrysanthemum flower buds + saffron

🍵 3. Green tea + osmanthus flowers + dried lemon slices

🍵 4. Dried lemon slices + dried hawthorn + half teaspoon black tea + fresh blue pea flowers

🍵 5. Chrysanthemum flower buds + dried lemon slices

🍵 6. Peppermint tea + chamomile tea

🍵 7. Chrysanthemum flower buds + osmanthus flower + half teaspoon black tea + saffron + goji berries

I get my dried chrysanthemum flower buds, hawthorn and other flowers from an online seller on Shopee. What's already sitting in my cart now is dried dandelion, which I plan to add to my future tea experiments.

I find it so much fun creating different tea combinations every day. It turns something as simple as drinking water into a little daily ritual—and it helps me reach my hydration goal too.

These warm, fragrant teas make staying hydrated so much easier. 

I always get my chrysanthemum flowers, dried hawthorn and other dried flowers and herbs from this seller on Shopee > https://s.shopee.com.my/18uYGeZnY

Do you enjoy drinking tea? What's your favourite tea combination? I would love to discover some new blends! 💛

Dried lemon + hawthorn + black tea + blue pea flower tea

Chrysanthemum + osmanthus + green tea

Chrysanthemum + osmanthus + saffron + green tea

Chrysanthemum + lemon + green tea

Chrysanthemum + hawthorn + osmanthus tea

Chrysanthemum + hawthorn + blue pea flower + green tea

Clean & Cool Green Tea

I got a surprise yesterday morning when the delivery man from a courier company called me to inform me that my Clean & Cool green tea had arrived. I did not know that they even work on Sundays. I then told my maid to go down to collect the package but my maid came up again asking for a trolley. I got a bigger surprise when I saw not only 3 bottles of green tea but 3 big boxes of Clean & Cool (C2) green tea. Now, that was really cool!!



Rascal #2 and #3 quickly helped me rip open the boxes and removed the bottles of drinks from the boxes. I could not wait to try all the flavors.



The C2 green tea comes in 3 refreshing flavors - lemon, apple and forest fruits. Rascal #2 quickly grabbed a bottle of the lemon flavored C2 green tea while I tasted all the 3 bottles immediately. The lemon one tastes like ice-lemon tea, the apple one tastes like apple juice and the forest fruits tastes like Ribena. The C2 green tea tastes even better when chilled or drank with ice cubes.

What I like about the C2 green tea is that they come in a cute convenient 350ml resealable PET bottle, which enables you to conveniently drink your green tea on the go. Rascal #2 even brought her bottle of lemon C2 green tea along with her when we went out for lunch yesterday.

Clean & Cool (C2) has all the goodness of natural green tea leaves of Camellia Sinensis variety which are known to contain Catechins. C2 is brewed and bottled on the same day to preserve the freshness and flavor of green tea. It is non-carbonated and ready-to-drink with a cool and clean taste. It is definitely a healthier alternative to carbonated drinks.

The 3 boxes of C2 green tea arrived at just the right time as the hubs now no longer has to buy soft drinks and packet drinks for CNY. Our guests will now be able to drink chilled refreshing flavored green tea!

C2 green tea is now available at Jaya Jusco, Mydin, Giant, 7-11 convenient stores or your nearest mini market. Go get a bottle to try today!

Caffeine-Free Herbal Tea

This is the box of caffeine-free herbal tea that I bought from Village Grocer last week. There are 5 packs of flavours inside - lemon zinger, peppermint, sleeptime, chamomile and wild berry zinger. I have not tried all the flavours yet but I find the chamomile very soothing. If you're looking for caffeine-free tea, do check out Village Grocer. They sell a wide range of them. I did a google search on Celestial Seasonings and found out that their ingredients used are in accordance with the guidelines set by the FDA. Want to know why I'm so into caffeine-free products now? Come back for the updates.......

Brewing My Favorite Tea

Apart from Japanese tea, I love Crysanthemum flower tea. My mil who is a discerning tea lover has a cute and handy tea brewing set from Korea which I can make my tea in a jiffy. I just need to put in the Crysanthemum flower buds into the ceramic strainer and after letting the flowers steep in hot water for a few minutes, I remove the ceramic strainer and pour out the tea into my cup. I use this tea brewer almost everday to brew my favorite Crysanthemum flower tea.

The Crysanthemum flower buds. These tiny ones in buds have a stronger aroma than the big petals Crysanthemum.




The special tea brewing set from Korea.

Investing in Tea

Anyone wants to invest in tea? More and more people are choosing to invest in tea these days, especially Pu Err tea as the prices of tea (good quality, superior tea) have been going up steadily for the last few years. In fact, the price of tea has gone up even higher than the price of gold. The older the tea is, the more price it will fetch. Unbelievable eh? I also find it hard to believe but I've been reading it from the internet and from the papers very frequently these days.