La La Land: Something new for my confinement

3 years ago, I get my confinement herbal bath raw material from my uncle who stays in Bentong, Pahang. He harvested those special leaves which he planted behind his house and dried them up under the sun. Those special dried leaves will be used for each of my bathing time for the entire 1 month of confinement period. My CL will prepare the herbal bath for me, just dump in some dried leaves into a big pot and bring to boil for an hour. I really love the aromatic smell of this herbal bath. It smells exactly like 1 of the Chinese herbal tea call "pak zhi chou". But it was quite mah fan when CL poured everything into a big pail for me to use. CL gotto filtered out the leaves before I can use it for my shower. Messy...messy.

But this round, my herbal bath is so much more easier to prepare and hassle-less. Actually ar, I have forgotten to prepare those special dried leaves for myself. During my early pregnancy, MIL already had those dried leaves in stock. And I thought that those were for me. When I was back home from hospital, CL was asking for those dried leaves and I pointed to her the big black plastic bag. Silly me, those dried leaves were not meant for me! MIL said " eh, these are for baby's shower lah, not for you". Oooh uuhh...communication break down :P I've made the wrong assumption. CL said "don't worry, now you can get it from the kedai ubat cina, all pre-packed nicely. very convenient". So my mom went to get it for me. This special dried leaves are call "dai foong ngaai". See the nice packaging on the right side? It costs RM1.70/pack.

This is how it looks like. Remove it from the transparent plactic bag and put it into the pot, boil for about an hour. With this packaging, CL doesn't need to filter the dried leaves anymore. But there were times where the whole pack koyak while boiling...don't know why.

Another MUST DO thing is to drink red dates water as substitute for plain water. According to CL, drinking plain water will cause gassy stomach wor O_O Really?? But last time I took hot plain water also, coz I had gastric after taken the red dates water for 2 weeks. And this round, I had the same problem too. So my CL prepares ginger rice water for me instead. She'll stir fry (just heat the wok and fry without oil/water) the plain white rice and sliced ginger separately. To prepare the drink, just take a few spoon of both and pour hot boiling water into a vacuum flask. It can be served 15min later. Once I started to take this drink on alternate day with the red dates water, my gastric stopped =) The taste...not bad though. Mild ginger rice flavor.