Mung Bean Milk

I love the idea of making my own Summer time cool drinks, such as nut milk, bean milk, plant yogurt and fruit spa water. When you use whole plant foods as the ingredients, you know all the ingredients you put in your drink. So you know this home-made beverage is healthy and nourishing, in contrast to the sugar, high fructose corn syrup and additive loaded unhealthy supermarket drinks.

In a sense, I feel lucky as I was not exposed to the western styled colorful and bubbly soft drinks when I was little. Those fancy drinks were, on average, more expensive compared to natural beverages people made at home back then.  On hot, sweaty Summer days, the most common hydrating foods we kept in the fridge were freshly cut watermelons or honey melons and mung bean soup that was made fresh daily.

According to Chinese medicine, we eat different colored beans and grains in each season to nourish different parts of our body. For example, Soybeans ( naturally yellow colored foods) are nourishing for our liver in Spring; Black beans ( naturally black colored foods) are good for the kidneys in Winter; Adzuki beans ( naturally red colored foods) are excellent choice for heart  health in summer; Lastly the white northern beans ( naturally white colored foods) keep our lungs healthy in Autumn. Mung bean milk is a natural cooling and detoxing beverage that many households make during Summer time in China. When I finished school or came home from playing outside with friends, the first thing I grabbed was always the mung bean soup. My grandma and mom both have a habit of making the mung bean soup the first thing in the morning, and then store it in the fridge for our whole family to enjoy throughout the day. People value buying fresh foods and making things from scratch, even though there are plenty of ready-made products available now. I guess that’s how I escaped from all the packaged junk foods, which, luckily for me, turned out to be better and healthier way of eating.

Traditionally, mung bean soup is prepared by putting soaked mung beans in boiling water together with some rock sugar as  sweetener. In this mung bean milk recipe, I made it by blending the cooked mung beans and water along with, of course, my all time favorite natural sweetener – dates! By blending the mung beans, you basically break the beans into smaller particles, which makes digestion easier. And, drinking your beans is a great alternative to get in your daily bean consumption  🙂 ( Three servings of cooked beans daily according to Dr. Michael Greger)