Essence…

In our childhood days, we were made to take all sorts of things. There was the milky white Scott’s Emulsion with the picture of a fisherman and a HUGE fish as big as him on his back. Then, there was the horrible Waterbury’s Compound that tasted like rusty metal.

Come examination time, my mum would wake us up at the break of dawn to get us to do our last-minute revision. She would open a bottle of Brand’s Essence of Chicken and divide it into two, add hot water and make my brother and I drink all of it. They seemed to believe that it was good for the brain and would make the children smart and besides, it would also energise anyone who drank it.

I actually liked it a lot so on some days, I would “help myself” to a bottle from the ones in the pantry to drink! If my mum noticed the missing bottles at the time, she never said anything. LOL!!!

We never drank it anymore once we were no longer in school. People would give my dad boxes and boxes on special occasions, birthdays and for whatever reason and on days when he thought he felt lethargic, he would take a bottle to drink and dunno whether it was all psychological or what but he would feel better after that.

All these years, I only bought a box or two for family and friends who were sick or in hospital for some surgery or those who had just given birth. I never had it myself again until that day when my friend, Yan, gave me a box…

…for my birthday and I actually enjoyed it a lot! Of course, I went a bit slow with the six bottles so it did last for a while.

Well, the other day, my doctor said I would need to take more protein, egg white, fish and all those and I thought this essence of chicken would help in some small way, at least. So I went and bought a box of 24…

…the ones with cordyceps. They also have the ones with tangkwei but I did hear that that is great for ladies, not for men. I picked this as I read somewhere that cordyceps are good for the kidneys.

The bottle seems a bit smaller now and these days, it has a plastic cap…

The cap used to be metal/aluminum with a liver red rubber lining.

I would open the cap and stand the bottle in hot boiling water…

…to heat up the contents and then I would drink it straight from the bottle.

The taste of this one with cordyceps needed a bit of getting used to but after the initial sips, I was fine with it. I still feel that I prefer the original though so when I have finished this box, I would just go for that. I can easily buy cordyceps in capsules at the Chinese medical stores, anyway.