Double Yolks, good or bad?

 

Just when I was overjoyed by cracking two eggs with twin yolks, I found some scary predictions about double yolks on web. Nevertheless, I feel very lucky to see twin yolks especially before Easter!

Organic farming?

It is very disturbing to find out what was supposed to be organic farming turn out to watch farmer painting pesticides on stems and leaves at noon while elderly buy his produce in early morning hours. This is how I started trying out my own vegetable growing.

Growing corn is easy to start out. Peel corn kernels from fresh sweet corn, and then watch the seedlings coming out in a week time. Baby corn will start to grow within 2 months and that’s the time to watch out for pests like grasshoppers. I use newspaper to fan the leaves and grasshoppers will start jumping out one by one which I can easily catch them all. I don’t really like to spend time catching pests, so I keep a few frogs and toads around to do the job. They are excellent helpers and amaze to watch them grow such big size in short period of time.

After 3 months, my garden now is flourishing with different plants and more to come :)

Dragon fruit


Tumeric


Black sesame sprouts

Pineapple


Basil

Ginger

Pasley

Kaffir lime

Peanuts factory?!

Do you dare to eat peanuts after seeing the factory?
Peanuts soaked in salt water and then place on those dusty blue plastic sheets to dry on the floor under sun before roasting.

Genting vs Resorts World Sentosa

I still prefer Genting, which is much bigger in size. Resorts World Sentosa is new and nice, however couldn’t get entry tickets on a Monday afternoon at Universal Studio was a real turn off. I suppose I have never come across going to any theme park by not selling tickets on the same day. Though in general, service in Singapore is really good, very polite and well-spoken.

Nurseries in Cameron Highlands

There are more and more nurseries set up in Cameron Highlands now. Some are more equipped with automated system that their veggies and strawberries look very appealing.

Gemia Island, Terengganu

Gemia Island is about 15 mins boat ride from Marang jetty. It is a secluded island with crystal clear water and all sorts of sea creatures that you can snorkel along the shore to explore. Though beware that sea urchins are abundant especially during low tide in the late afternoon. It is an excellent island for snorkeling, kayaking and rock climbing. Service and food at Gem Island Resort is good, staff are friendly.

Gem Island Resort

Baby turtles are protected inside the pool at Gem island resort

Baby crown fish hiding in the purple coral

Corals expose out of the water during low tide.

Sea cucumber hiding around the rock.

Rabbit Fun Land at Broga in Selangor

Rabbit Fun Land is about 30 mins drive from KL if you don’t get lost on the way. For the price of rm50, a family of four gets to pet and feed rabbits at a small excluded area and to dine for rabbit meat.
Scare to try? Just go for rabbit meat sausage, tasty and tender. It tastes sort of like German pork sausage but much better in texture. You can also get addicted to it once you tried..

How to peel grape skin off easily?

Love grapes but hate to peel the skin of grapes which is often very difficult to come off? I finally found a good method to rinse the grapes so that the skin can peel off easily.
Rinse grapes and then rub grapes with salt and flour. Rinse flour completely off the grapes and that the skin of grapes can come off easily when peeling. This method can also help to get rid some of the chemical toxins from pesticides.

Recipe: Mochi with red bean paste filling

This is my first time trying to make mochi, surprisingly quite easy to make. Just need to take some time to get used to wrap the glutinous rice paste with red bean paste filling inside, otherwise your hands will be all sticky.

1 cup glutinous rice flour
1 tbsp sugar
3/4 cup water

Mix glutinous rice flour with sugar and then stir with water until well mixed. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and microwave for 4 mins. Cool down for few mins. You will need to hold plastic wrap to scoop the glutinous rice paste by hand, flatten the paste and then put a teaspoon of red bean paste in the middle to seal into a round ball. That's the only difficult part.

Lay all the mochi on plastic wrap with cover. After few hours, you can pick mochi up by hand without sticking to your fingers. You may also blend water with pandan leaves to make green color mochi. Mochi can last in fridge for about 3 days.

Enjoy!

Orang Asli at Senoi Village in Perak

Senoi Village is an interesting place to visit where you can explore life style of Orang Asli. It is not too far down south of Ipoh. People are friendly and children are really curious of seeing outsiders visiting them. Their life style is very pleasant where you can see children running around chasing each other, adults chatting outside rest area and females getting ready for meals. Close to the housing area are stream with cool spring water, school, church..
Fresh air with different types of fruit and rubber trees around. There are also things that city folks seldom see or know of, huge centipede and guess what they are cooking? see answer below..











Monkey meat!
Yes, they eat monkey, wild boar...

Pastasia restaurant at ground floor Queensbay Mall Penang

Pastasia serves fusion of Italian and Thai food, mainly serving pasta dishes. My favorite is chicken ham with mushroom white sauce linguine, tasty and rich. Other than that, pasta and lasagna are just so so, home cooked style. I like the environment, pleasant and not crowded. Service is good. It’s a good place to chat with friends or dine for lunch.

Even eggs can be fake?!

Read a report on investigating a school in Guangzhou which specialized in teaching entrepreneurs to make fake food so as to make big profits by selling them. Fake food is made from chemicals and preservatives which is really bad for health. Even eggs can be made fake by adding different types of chemicals in moldings to make them look real. There is also not much difference from real eggs after cooking them, just a little bit more air bubbles on the egg white and doesn’t have any taste of egg. Long term consumption can damage liver and brain. Beware..

Shanghai Ding Tai Feng Restaurant at Queensbay Penang

上海鼎泰豐 is at the Bayan Bay corner shop lot near Queensbay mall. They serve Shanghai style dumpling, pau, dim sum, handmade noodles...
小籠包 used to be really good there when it was first opened back around Sept last year, but now the quality has really gone down alot and without much crowds around. It is really disappointing especially I like xiao long bao very much. Hopefully they are able to hire a good chef so that I can enjoy my favorite xiao long bao there again...

Pickled Radish recipe

This is one of my favorite Korean side dishes. It is healthy, crunchy and easy to make. It can also help to clear blemishes on skin. Though remember not to consume together with any ginseng products, would turn hair gray.

Recipe:
Thinly slice white radish and then put it into a glass container filled with apple vinegar and few tablespoons of sugar. Soak in the container and refrigerate for few hours before serving.

Harry's B1 Korean Restaurant at Auto City Penang

Harry's B1 Korean Restaurant at Auto City is a new branch of Bee Won Korean Restaurant at Sheraton Hotel. Both restaurants serve authentic Korean food as well as barbeque dishes. Food is delicious and has variety of choices. Waitress cooked and served barbeque meat at our table, really good service.

Chili Oil Anchovies recipe

After reading all sort of news on food with MSG and cancer causing preservatives and colorants, I decided to try making chili oil with anchovies at home instead of buying from supermarket. It’s actually very easy to make and turns out delicious. However, it requires using a lot of oil to soak in the bottle, a bit fattening for health conscious individuals.

Here is the recipe.
- Fry anchovies in hot oil until crispy, then set aside to let it cool down.
- Fry finely chopped onions/garlic/dried chili in hot oil, add salt and stir until onions turn brown.
- After all the ingredients cool down including cooked oil, mix together in a small glass container. Let the ingredients soak well for a day before serving.

Orange Eggless Cake recipe

This Orange Eggless Cake is very delicious. The recipe is really simple and easy to make. Must try!

Dry ingredients:
240g self rising flour
½ tsp baking soda

Butter ingredients:
1 whole orange peel grind
150 ml fresh orange juice
150g condensed milk
100g butter
½ tsp salt

Preheat oven 170 degree.
Heat butter ingredients on low heat stove until butter melted, do not boil ingredients.
Shift dry ingredients in a bowl.
Mix cooled butter ingredients into dry ingredients until mixture is smooth.
Bake in oven for about 30 mins.
Enjoy!

Shanghaiese Xiao Long Bao recipe

Well, after lining up outside the restaurant to view chefs there making Shanghai steamed dumplings for such a long time, I must get my hands on to try making them. Hey, actually not really that difficult.
First, marinate grounded pork meat with salt, corn starch, sesame oil, soy sauce, ginger, green onion bulbs, sugar, wine…
For making the dough, put 2 cups of flour into bread machine's dough cycle, mix with icy-cold water and some vegetable oil for ~10 mins. Hit the dough on table few times really hard, this is to make it more elastic. Cut dough into very small pieces. Roll it into very thin round shape and then wrap with pork meat.
Boil water first and then steam them for 10 minutes. Don't forget the vinegar ginger sauce. Enjoy!

Dragon-i Restaurant at Queensbay Mall Penang

Dragon-i Restaurant recently opened its first branch in Penang Queensbay Mall on 2nd floor which we went to try on Father’s Day. When we got there around 1:20pm, there were still unusually many people lining up outside the restaurant. We had to wait for over 1.5 hrs to be seated, first time in my life to do so! Well, those shanghai dumplings made by chefs from open kitchen looked really tempted for us to wait.
Surprisingly, food came really fast after ordered and was presentable. Xiao long bao, Shanghaiese pork chop noodles, braised pork belly, sauteed chicken with dried chili… really delicious. Service is good. It’s really worth the wait afterall.

Sakae Sushi at Queensbay Mall Penang

Sakae Sushi is located at Queensbay Mall 2nd floor. This Japanese restaurant looks very trendy, with varieties of choices on menu. Each table has its own monitor to browse through menu and place orders. It also comes with its own hot water tap for refilling green tea, very convenient. Food portion is a bit small but nevertheless sashimi is really fresh and food is tasty.This is the first branch in Penang, must try!