Eating Habits

Tap water here is also very good, so I don't have a problem drinking it right from the tap.
I'd think that it's just a habit with the Chinese. I assume that in China tap water isn't good so they have to boil it and it just sticks as a habit when they emigrate.
I find it a bit oppressive-compulsive... Those filters filter out most of the important minerals and they tend to be a breading place for bacteria, so ok, the boiling gets rid of the bacteria, but in the end you just get poor water.
I personally wouldn't drink plain hot water, just not my thing.

iHauntTheSepulchre wrote:

The tap water around my place is perfectly clean and drinkable. I've always wondered though, why do (generally Asian) people boil water, cool it, and then drink it? I've never understood this. We always have our kettle on the boil, but that's because it's for tea and coffee.

I guess it depends on location. The water here is drinkable, a lot safer than US water, but in a sense it is just habit. The effects of filtration would also depend on the location of the water. England isn't really full of clean streams/wells/rivers running down from mountains like you'd get in other places around the world, so I would imagine the water we get from taps would've been filtered/recycled many times already! I just know that filtration helps our kettle stay cleaner and that it tastes smoother at the end.

Not sure about bacteria..I know that some filters I've seen are horrific (weird sponge-ended 'filters' for taps) but not sure about the type of filters we have. I guess in a sense, as I can't see inside the filter, there might be some kind of bacteria regardless due to the conditions of a filter kettle..Which would be boiled away anyway.

You've got me curious now. I'll have to look into it.

In history, supposedly Chinese people boiled water to make it safe whilst English (?) people fermented it or something? I recall that as being one of the reasons Asians just genetically don't handle alcohol as well as Westerners.

Seem to recall something just generally about the heat being good for your body and circulation as well. One of the reasons it's usually custom to have some kind of herbal soup after dinner, although these days, it's just the older generation that know what soups to make, what goes in them and why you drink them.

Herbal soup after dinner? Now I'm curious, would that be like a tea, or really more like a soup?
Here we usually eat soup before the main meal. But that's just really something to do with the eating habits, customs etc. I read that in India people eat desert first and then the main course. Sounded to me loony, but the reason is like that when you eat something sweet you lose a bit of your appetite so you don't eat too much...

Our well water is pretty good, and drinkable as is. But I have a Brita filter pitcher in the fridge, that I bought several years ago when we lived in an apartment. We were on city water then which wasn't very nice, but now I still use the filter just out of habit. I change it about every 6 weeks, so I don't think bacteria is a concern.

One of my aunts drinks hot water now, instead of tea. I'm not quite sure why she switched, but she does suffer very much from arthritis, so it's probably something to do with that. I drink herbal tea sometimes in the winter... it's nice to have a warm mug of something to warm up your hands.

A lot of Chinese medicine helps to 'heal' by aiding circulation in some manner. There's a lot of ointments you can get e.g. to rub on bruises..The herbal stuff inside the ointments helps warm your skin and encourage better circulation, although they don't half smell odd.

Some soups could be like tea I guess. It depends what you put in it, although most of the time, if we're after something really herbal, it is just made the same way tea is, e.g. Jasmine/Camomile tea, where it's a more gentle boil.

You can get salty and sweet soups too, though..The sweet ones would probably be considered more tea-like..It's hard to describe, but usually, things like roots and dried fruits are boiled and the soup that's created is consumed. The 'soup' created is always relatively clear and light, similar to tea, so it's not like an English soup where the liquid is thick and opaque.

Here's a list of some typical ingredients..Also gives you an idea of what kind of stuff goes into the pot:

www.homemade-chinese-soups.com/chinese-herbs.html

Going to see if I can find a typical picture too..They all come out looking the same, they just have different smells..

That picture there is pretty much how all soups end up looking as far as colour and texture goes ..Although whether you eat the bits put into the soup or not is optional. Never been able to stomach it myself, but all of the older generation often eat the remainders of the ingredients afterwards as some aren't cheap by any means!

Thanks for the info, Envy! By the ingredients I'd also say it's more of a soup then tea. I wish we had a good supplier of 'exotic' groceries here. Always when I stumble upon a yumy Chinese recipe I have to give up from cooking it because I can't find some of the ingredients.