Lotus Seed, Sour Jujube and Longan Soup

Why people make this soup

There is a particular kind of tiredness that comes not from lack of sleep, but from too much dreaming — the kind where you wake up feeling like your brain never had a real rest. In Chinese food-therapy thinking, this pattern is associated with what practitioners call “scanty heart-blood and weak heart-qi”: the body is sleeping, but the mind keeps running. Nourilo sees this as increasingly common in modern life, and he offers this soup as a gentle, nourishing way to support the transition into deeper, quieter sleep. The ingredients have a mildly sweet, slightly complex flavour — not at all medicinal-tasting — and the whole family can share it. Drink it about two hours before bedtime.

Method

1. Rinse all ingredients gently under running water.
2. Place everything in a pot with 1.8 L of water. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce to a gentle simmer.
3. Simmer for approximately 1 hour until the liquid reduces to about 900 ml.
4. The soup naturally has a pleasant sweet-tart flavour; no additional seasoning is needed.
5. Drink 2 hours before bedtime. Eat the soft lotus seeds, euryale and lily bulb along with the soup.

Nourilo’s Tips

This soup has a gently sweet and slightly sour taste — genuinely pleasant with no need for sweeteners. For those who sleep but dream excessively, Nourilo also suggests a simpler nightly remedy: simmer fresh or dried lily bulb with 10 longan pieces in 450 ml of water down to 300 ml, and drink before bed. Repeat for four to five nights. Do not use fresh lily bulb if you can help it — dried lily bulb has a stronger therapeutic effect. For people with constipation tendencies, note that both lotus seeds and euryale are mildly astringent (binding); if constipation is an issue, consider swapping them for black wood ear fungus, dried figs, lily bulb and longan in a separate soup.