Picking pine pollen is hard work, but I enjoy it. The pine flower should be picked at the right time, with the best flowering period. If you pick early, the pollen will be less, and if you pick too late, the pollen will have fallen. When I was young, my friends and I picked pine flowers all over the mountain. We often climbed trees and competed with each other to see who picked more pine flowers. The more we picked, the happier we were. The collected pine flowers can be dried to collect pine pollen. Pine flower powder is not easy to come by. It takes tens of kilograms of pine flower to be dried into a kilogram of pine pollen.
I still remember one time when I was a child, when the pine flowers I picked were drying out in the sun, they were suddenly blown away by a gust of wind. I cried bitterly, as if I had lost my beloved treasure.
In the countryside, pine pollen can be used to make a variety of delicacies. Mix pine pollen into cooked glutinous rice or fermented flour, mix it into a ball, and steam it into a cake. It is called Songhua cake. It can also be made into Songhua cake and baked in a pot. Snacks like pine pollen muffins and pine pollen cakes look golden in color and smell fragrant, which are mouth watering to kids.
There is a long history of people eating pine pollen cakes. In the Song Dynasty, Lin Hong compiled the Shanjia Qinggong, which describes the production method of Songhua cakes. “In spring, pine flower yellow and honey mold are used to make cakes. It looks like chicken tongue and tastes like dragon saliva. It is not only fragrant and sweet, but also beneficial.”.
Lin Hong highly praised that the pine pollen cake tastes better than the hump and bear’s paw when eaten with wine.
“The pine yellow cake serves wine and tastes it while drinking. It makes people feel that the mountain forest is flourishing, not even the hump and bear’s paw tastes better like this.
Besides making cakes, pine pollen can also make wine. Bai Juyi, one of the greatest poets in ancient China, praised pine pollen wine in his poem. Even when he was sick, he drank pine pollen wine first when he was hungry.
Pine pollen also has high medicinal and beauty value. According to the book of Shennong Materia Medica in the Han Dynasty, pine pollen “has a sweet smell, a moderate taste, and is non-toxic. It is mainly used to treat the cold and heat of the heart, facilitate urination, eliminate congestion, lighten the body, benefit the strength, and prolong the life.”
The Song Dynasty’s “Amplification on Materia Medica” said, “the yellow powder on the flower is called pine flower. People in the mountain brush it in time, and it is very good for making soup and pastries,… It can cure postpartum fever, headache, buccal element, dry mouth and scorched lips, more irritability and thirst, and dizziness.”
According to the compendium of Materia Medica written by Li Shizhen of the Ming Dynasty, “Pine flower is sweet, warm and non-toxic. It can moisten the heart and lungs, replenish qi, eliminate wind and stop bleeding, and can also be used to make wine.”
Pine pollen has the effects of health care, beauty and longevity. Therefore, it was listed as a tribute in ancient times and was loved by the beauties in the imperial palace. It is said that Empress Wu Zetian of the Tang Dynasty often ate a kind of “Xiaojing cake” made of pine pollen powder; Empress Dowager Cixi of the Qing Dynasty also liked to eat food made of pine pollen.
The song of Songhua written by Su Shi, a great poet of the Song Dynasty, once wrote a poem named ” The song of Pine Flower”. It reads:
One jin(500 grams) of pine flowers is indispensable,
Do not stir fry eight liang(400 grams) of cattail pollen,
Takes one qian( about 3.72 grams) of both sophora flower and apricot flower,
Pound them with two jin(1 kilogram) of white honey together
Eat it or take a bath with it, which keeps your appearance red and fine till you are old.
In modern times, the rapid development of cell wall breaking technology has made it possible for pine pollen powder to come into ordinary people’s homes. After scientific analysis, more than 100 kinds of nutrients rich in pine pollen are presented one by one, which is the way of health care for modern people.
Among them, dietary fiber is one of the many nutritional elements of pine pollen powder, and others such as multi vitamins, unsaturated fatty acids and mineral elements are numerous. Therefore, many nutritionists call pine pollen a “mini nutrition bank”, and it is self-evident that it plays a role in modern people’s nutrition and health care, such as anti-aging, skin care, cancer prevention, blood pressure reduction, fat clearing, and improving immunity.
The fresh pollen is collected after drying, removing impurities and drying. The moisture of the newly collected pollen is generally about 15%. It must be dried again. After precise screening, the quality of pine pollen is guaranteed to be pure without any impurities.
In order to improve the product quality and maximize the nutritional value of pine pollen, the “cell wall breaking technology” was adopted to greatly increase the wall breaking rate of pollen. The pine pollen after cell wall breaking can directly absorb nutrients and significantly improve the health of human body.
In order to further improve the product quality and ensure the product quality, according to the requirements of the national GMP standard, our pine pollen powder is produced in the purification workshop with 100000 level clean standard. Strict and reliable quality assurance is implemented throughout the whole process to ensure zero loss of pine pollen nutrition, gather natural essence of pine pollen and benefit human health.
Pine pollen is the product of nature. We take the essence of nature and experience the ecological nutrition contained in nature. We restore the nature and thank the nature for its gift – cell wall cracked pine pollen powder.
