Selamat Nyambut Ari Gawai Dayak 2012

To all my Dayak Friends...

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An Amaryllis from Taiwan

We were in Taiwan in March 1995 for a holiday and it was great trip, travelling on our own. One of the best part was a hike through the spectacular Tarako Gorge where we get to stay in one of the churches there as well as in a Chinese palace-like hotel. It was great to see all the flowers and fruit orchards of that area - one of the orchard was a pear orchard. Another great place was the flower and vegetable market in Taipei. From that market, we bought quite a few varieties of the amaryllis - all with giant blooms! We brought the plants/bulbs from Taiwan to Malaysia and planted it in our Petaling Jaya garden. In 2008, we dug up the bulbs and then replanted in our Kuching garden. So they are old old plants :-)

Some seventeen (17) years later after we bought the plants (and nearly four (4) years after we moved to Kuching), one of the  amaryllis blooms again in our garden here in Kuching. This is a variety of the hippeastrum reticulatum var. striatifolium. 

It is one beautiful glorious giant bloom!

We were very excited when the first flower bud came up ....

 

 

  

A peek at the slightly open flower bud .... 

 

 

In full bloom, is it not gorgeous?

A close-up shot of the flower ...

 The flower from the back ...

 

Now we are waiting to see if the rest of the amaryllis bulbs we bought 17 years ago are going to bloom!

Sago Worm at the Kuching Satok market

Went to the Kuching Satok Market today and noticed that sago worms are on sale again ... big fat ones. They cost RM0.40 a piece.

I previously posted about preparing it in "A Wriggly Snack".

Enjoy!

Facebook

I am also posting single photos of my garden and house on my facebook page - mostly stuff that does not require any details :-)

If interested, you can take a look here : 

Emerald Garden On FaceBook

Mother's Day

For Mother's Day celebration, we had dinner last Sunday at the Big Oven (along Jalan TAZA), a Western Food restaurant.

Then we had this very simply decorated but very scrumptious mascarpone cheese cake. It was made by a Malay friend (a guy) of ours who is working in a bakery shop.

We left behind an empty cake box and  squeaky clean plates! :-)

Bean Curd Custard 豆腐花 Dou Fu Hua

Lots of people love eating bean curd custard or 豆腐花 (doufuhua) but many (including me) eat it sparingly because of the use of calcium sulphate in making the dessert. However, there is a natural curdling agent that can be used. It is known as GDL (glucono delta-lactone） or 葡萄酸。

 
Being the lazy (!) person I am, I bought 2L of raw soya bean milk for RM2.00 from the local market. 

 
If you want to make your own soya bean milk, just soak 400g of soya bean and then blend the soya beans in 5 batches using 400 ml of water each time. Filter to get about 2L of soya bean milk.

To make the doufuhua (豆腐花), you need the following :

1. 2L soya bean milk

2, 1 tablespoon corn flour

3. 1/2 teaspoon GDL
4. 100 ml water

Boil the soya bean milk (stirring continuously) to boiling point. Meanwhile, mix the cornflour, GDL and water and then add to the boiling soya bean milk. Mix well and then turn off the heat. Pour carefully into a large covered container. Place a piece of cloth over the container and cover it. Leave it UNDISTURBED for at least 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, remove the cover and the cloth (the cloth was to catch the condensation).

To make the sugar syrup, just boil at low heat some sugar with a slice of ginger and a couple of pandan leaves (if available) until it turned syrupy. Add sugar or water as required to make it syrupy.

The 豆腐花 (doufuhua) with the flavoured sugar syrup ...  all ready for eating.

Easy, huh?