Hot Chillis to Kill Your Taste Buds!

We love eating spicy food at home but we do draw the line at the really hot pepper chilli sold fresh in the local market. The Scoville scale for these chillis is on the high side! Of course that does not mean we cannot grow them in the garden ......

We grew this bell-like chilli pepper which is a rather big bush some 2 metres tall. It is very susceptible to cottonwool or mealy bugs :-( So, regular spraying with soapy water  and strong blast of water had too be done.

The bush is full of these hanging bells....

It is a beautiful orange red colour when ripened ....

A couple of slivers of this in the sauce is enough to kill your taste buds for the day ... :-)

We just harvest them and send them to the shop where our staff loves them :-)

Going Bananas ......

Last week, we harvested the bananas from one of our banana plant growing at the back of our garden and it was a huge bunch, too! It took the two of us to carry it to the kitchen patio where we "dismembered " it :-) Before that, we laid out some old newspaper on the floor to soak up the sap flowing from the cut bunches. The smaller individual bunches were then laid out on newspaper on one of our tables to let the sap run dry.

There were a total of 108 bananas ....

This was one of the larger bunch with 25 large bananas.

There was no way we could have finished them fast enough before they became over-ripe. So we distributed them to the guys in the shops and to my sister-in-law but there still remained quite a lot ....so they got turned into 10 loaves of yummy banana bread!

At least we can freeze them!!

Full Month 满月 Celebrations

Our family's first fifth generation child celebrated her first full month (满月) and last Friday (2nd March), the happy grandfather delivered a gift of celebration food to my mother. The happy great-great-grandmother (高祖母) was grinning from year to year and happily gave a big red packet of money (红包) for the child.

True to our Hakka  (客家) family tradition, the gift of food was very simple but very symbolic.......

Two hard boiled eggs dyed red with a large bowl of kacangma (假青麻） chicken in rice wine.

Kacangma (假青麻）is actually a Chinese herb called 益母草 or motherwort (Leonurus artemisia (Laur.)). 

The herb cooked with chicken and white rice wine is a delicious  must-have dish in Hakka  (客家) families for all mothers during their 30-day confinement period after the delivery of a baby.

Now, this traditional Hakka (客家) confinement dish is very popular in Sarawak and sold in many eateries and food courts. One needs not be a new mother to enjoy this dish!