DIY: Tape organizer

This was one of my Postponed DIY. Finally have the time to do it. 

Things you need:

1. 2 thumbtacks
2. PVC pipe(I  got mine from the plastic book wrapper roll- Wah they actually use PVC now instead of paper!) 
3. 2 PET bottle cap

Cut one part the bottle cap just enough for the PVC pipe to pass through

Use a thumbtack and press the PET bottle to the side of the bookshelf/rack. Then measure the PVC pipe, just long enough to slide through the opening of te PET cap.

Tadaa! Now you can hang and organize your tapes. No more searching hi and low for it when you need it.

You can save space by hanging it high and placing other stationaries at the bottom.

Yay! Another DIY mission accomplish before year end! Happy New Year! 

Video: Sunflower Day To Day

Finally after many round of trying to plant sunflower, I did it! From 5 seeds, 2 germinated and finally one made it with many sunflowers now. Been taking pics of the sunflowers everyday since it started to bloom till the day it withered. At first the sunflower seeds rot cos of the rain but I manage to harvest seeds from the 2nd flower. It' s just amazing to see it change everyday, at least for a crazy gardener like me.

 

Simple watering system for your garden

One thing that really makes me worry is not able to water my plants when I'm out, especially when I travel. So after some trial and error, finally I'm able to construct a simple watering system for my mini veg garden. You need a watering timer like this.

It's about rm120-rm150.

P/S: it comes with a cover, to block water from going in. Remember to close the cover otherwise your timer will be soaked in water and it's a total lost.

And you need a few other tools, which I will mention in the video.

I did this for my gardening page right before i left for my Sydney trip.

There are many places that you can buy the tools, some imported so its more expensive and if you're like me who likes to save $ you can try buying from Formeniaga. I heard they're having year end sale now.

Okay some ppl asked me why not just install the 360degree sprinkler that we use for grass. You can use that, however I have a few reasons:

1. you only water the pots that you want to water. No water wastage and you don't encourage weeds growth.

2. some plants like pumpkin leaves, the leaves will have powdery mildew if the leaves touches water when it's hot. So watering the soil is better.

I hope you find the infos and video here useful.

Happy Gardening!

Homestay in Campsie Sydney

We were in Sydney just last week for our yearly vacation. The last time we were in Australia was at Melbourne in 2012.  We bought the flight ticket like one year ahead during the AirAsia midnight sale and our ticket was only Rm17, not including tax and what not. Since Sydney is a metropolitan city, everything is expensive. And after searching hi-and-lo I manage to find this little home stay via airbnb.com. It's in Campsie, ard 20 mins away from the city if you are traveling with the train. And this little home stay is just are 10mins walk away from the train station. Traveling in Sydney with the public transportation is very easy, because everything is on time and the bus/trains comes very frequent. It is a quiet town and mostly Asians stay here, with few Asian mini markets and a Woolsworth nearby if you wanna shop for groceries. 

When we arrived, our host welcomed us with his baby. Then we found out it was actually his home and whenever he has guests coming over, he'd go on holiday with his family. How cool is that! It is very homely with many personal touch like their certificate, his partners' train toys from 20 over years ago, books, boardgames, Movie DVDs and so much more.

It's been a while since I have posted our pictures in this blog. I have no choice because people actually steal my pics, took my son's pic and put in the adoption site. So I have to watermark my pics big big now.

The master bedroom with the baby cot.

The very spacious kitchen that is fully equipped with all cooking utensils.

if cooking indoor is not enough, you can have a mini Barbecue party just outside at the balcony. 

The 2nd bedroom which our kids trashed later. 

The shared toilet. Everything you need is here. Clean towels, Shampoo for adults and kids too. And even rubber ducky toys for the kids to play when they bath. There are also washing machine and dryer located at the common laundry area at ground floor.  For this vacation, we packed really light since we don't have to bring towels and only brought a few sets of clothings. Everynight I just wash our clothes and it's dried the next day.

Overall we are very happy with the stay here in this little cute flat. The price is reasonable. I think we spent ard Rm1800+ for 6 days and 5 nights. This was my first time using airbnb to book our accommodation and I'm quite please with it. Will continue to use it to plan for my other trips.

Tips:

• If you are traveling with your family of 4 on SUNDAY, you can purchase the AUD2.50 tickets (for one person) from newstand that entitle you to travel with any train/bus/ferry for the entire day.
• If you have 2 kids, you only have to pay for one kid. The 2nd kid travels FREE.

Growing Pumpkin: Why Pumpkin Flower Dies and Drop off

There are a few reasons as to why pumpkin flowers dies or falls off.

One of the reason is that it wasn't pollinated. You need male and female flower to appear at the same time so that bees & ants can pollinate the flowers. If you have only female or male and none of the other sex, the fruit will not form.

Left : male pumpkin flower

Right: Female pumpkin flower.

As for my case, I was wondering how come the flower did not even bloom and it started to dies off. So I monitored my pumpkin flowers and I found out that the fruit flies stung my flower even before they bloom.

this is how the flower looks like after it is stung.

So in order to save my pumpkin flowers, I got to net them up and wait for them to bloom and then hand pollinate them using a brush.

Keep an eye on the flowers and as soon as they bloom, remove the net and hand pollinate it.

If there are fruit flies attacking your flower and fruits, you have to net all of them even after you have pollinated them. Fruit flies can also sting through net, so to be safe use finer nets, thicker nets, or wrap with newspaper and secure with a net.

At the same time you have to trap the fruit flies FAR AWAY from your garden and NOT in your garden. You have to use the fruit fly hormone and build something like this. 

Source credit

Why put it far away from your garden? The smell of the hormone can last for months. they will come from few KM radius and attack all your fruits and vege like brinjals, tomatoes, basically every damn thing in your garden. So get rid of it and also prevent them attacking your pumpkin flowers at the same time. I did this and I manage to harvest 6 pumpkins. Actually there was 7, but the last one dropped off. Maybe the fruit fly manage to puncture the net. But nevertheless the effort pays really well.

Essential tool for Banana Mum

Do you have a child that is going to chinese school and you're a banana mum?

Me too!

In fact I have 2 that will attend chinese school in 2015. And since I can't read or write chinese, I usually have to ask people around about what did the principal just announced and so on. But then filling forms might be a problem cos you cannot ask people to fill up for you. So 2 years ago, I went and ordered name stamps for JD and I used it when I had to fill in forms. It was so easy. So this coming year, JT will be going to standard 1 and I made new ones, with bigger fonts this time.

A standard name stamp like this is about Rm 4.50. But it also depends on your design and size.

I usually stamp all my son's textbooks, activity book and buku latihan with this too and I can use it right until they graduate from primary school. I'd say it's a rather cheap and good investment for a banana mum like me :D

Sasha Bakes: Pumpkin Hokkaido Bread

Harvested 6 pumpkins from my garden a month ago and gave 5 away. Left with one and wondering what to do with it. A quarter went into the soup. And left with 3/4. Many people in my FB asked me to make bread with it and so I thought , why not?

So googled for pumpkin bread and end up with a few versions of pumpkin Hokkaido bread and I wrote down till I have no idea where I got it from. Anyway I tried to add in and minus some of my own and here's the final recipe:

Pumpkin Hokkaido Bread

• 100gm Steamed pumpkin (you don't have to mash it up, just dunk it into the Bread Maker)
• 125 fresh milk
• 1tbsp milk powder
• 8tsp castor sugar
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1 egg
• 75gm Whipping Cream
• 330gm Bread flour
• 1/4 tsp Clabber Girl Double Action Baking Powder
• 40gm cake flour
• 1tsp yeast (make a well in the flour)
• After first beep add in 1 tbsp softened butter
• Raisin, chia seed, pumpkin seed/sunflower seed (add in according to your preference)

Add in the ingredient from top to bottom following the sequence.

Sweet mode
Light crust
Big loaf

And your bread is ready in 2:55 hours.

Your can omit the double action baking powder, it's just that when I use that for my bread, the bread remains fluffier longer for few days. By then everything should be gone :)

The bread is cakey-bread feeling. It's sweet and very filling. You can eat it just like that, like a cake.
Definitely a keeper. Love the colour especially!

Tips:

• To get evenly cut bread, you can buy the bread slicer from Mr.DIY for rm7.90.
• A good bread knife is very crucial to get nice cut.

Growing pumpkins

My aim this year is to be able to plant And get at least ONE pumpkin. You know what? I got 6. *lol* it was a mental moment for me cos the plant grew wild, covered the entire veggie garden area, there was hardly any sun shining the plants underneath it (cos I elevated the plant 7 ft off the ground) , alot of mosquito, and the worst was when female flowers appearing without male and I went hunting around looking for make flowers *LOL* those were the funniest moment I had while growing pumpkins for almost 7 months.

Left: male flower

Right: female flower. Notice that female has a fruit attached

How to pollinate? Use a brush and brush the pollen in the middle of the male flower and then brush it into the middle of the female flower. Make sure you brush in enough supply of pollen , otherwise your pumpkin will not make it and it will either appear like a deflated pumpkin or just rot and falls off . From my experience Only the flower that bloom on the same day can be use to pollinate. 

Once pollinated successfully you can know it the next day cos the fruit will grow alot. 

See how it transformed in just a couple of  weeks. Amazing. 

And then more and more flowers appear and I was busy running around doing the pollination work cos I had to net my flowers due to the existence of fruit fly. If there wasn't any fruit flies, the bees and ants will be able to the do the pollination for me. 

these are the baby pumpkins few days after pollination. 

and the baby grew! My first hand pollinated pumpkin. 

The biggest , the one that I had to give to my mum, just because she called me a plant murderer. She changed her mind now, I hope :P

And these were the 6 big babies that I have harvested. See that the stems are not short, it is advisable to cut it further away from the fruit cos the stem will slowly dries off, while it dries, it will bring virus and will cause the fruit to rot.  Leave the fruit at least 2 weeks before you consume it. Cos the glucose is building in there and making the pumpkin extra sweet!

One picture for the record, cos I am never going to grow pumpkins in my garden anymore.

Unless it's a baby pumpkin, or a non creeping one. hehe

I had 6 and gave away 5 to my mum, my 2 sisters in law, my ex neighbour and my 2nd sister.
And here was the first pumpkin that I have hand pollinated and left untouched for a month.

Mission accomplished. One Target Achieved for this year! :D

Sasha Bakes: Pandan Hokkaido Bread

I baked pumpkin Hokkaido bread using the pumpkin that I have harvested from my own garden the other day and my hub refused to eat it, cos he said "you know I don't eat pumpkin" but I know that's not the only reason cos he always complains that the bread from my Tesco Bread Machine is too big, not square. Don't ask me why. It's just something about square bread that he likes.

See? Not square! 

See? Too big!

Since I have a bunch of pandan leaves and left over of whipping cream, I just decided to bake another loaf although I haven't finished the pumpkin bread yet. 

For own reference: (cos my brain is failing me!)

See? Very square bread! 

The colour is not vibrant cos I'm using natural pandan colouring and flavour. If you want to have greener effect you can use pandan serani.

Ingredients:

Pandan Milk 120gm (refer to step no.1 to get Pandan Milk)

Whipping cream 75gm

Egg 1

Sugar 40gm

Salt 1tsp

Milk powder 25gm

Cake flour 30gm

1/4 tap double action baking powder (i use Clabber Girl brand)

Bread flour 270gm 

Yeast 1tsp

Butter (add in after first beep) 1 tbsp

Steps:

1. Cut pandan leaves and add in 120gm of fresh milk in Thermomix. Speed 10, 15 seconds. Remove and use a teabag  (I use the teabag bags from Daiso) and pour the mixture into the bags and give it a good squeeze. That will be your pandan milk.  

2. In the bread pan, add in ingredients from top to bottom following the sequence and after you have added the bread flour, just dig a small well and add in yeast in the middle. Do not let the salt touch the yeast. If you are using the same spoon, please make sure u wipe it real clean ya :)

3. Select Sweet Mode. 2lbs.  Doesn't matter what colour crust cos you are not baking in the bread machine. But if you are then choosing light and medium should be okay.

4. The bread maker will mix and then stop for a while. When you hear the beep sound, add in room temp butter.

5. After the machine stopped kneading, switch off the BM. But if you are baking in the bread maker, leave it and you are done.

6. If you want to shape it or bake in a pullman pan: The dough will rise double in size (45 mins -1 hour) remove from bread maker pan and punch it. Knead it till it pass the finger test (poke into the middle and the hole remains and slowly spring up) or window pane test.

7. Divide into 3 portion and flatten it then roll it up and arrange into the Pullman bread pan. (You can refer to this expert's page to see how she roll and arrange the dough in the pan. Btw, her recipes are great! ) Remember to oil your pan with butter especially the cover.  Let it rise till 70% of the Pullman bread pan.

8. Put in oven 180degree for 30 mins. The dough will rise till the entire pan is filled, so you will get a very square bread.

9. After done, remove from pan and let it cool on wire rack. Otherwise your bread will be wet.

See? Cool them like this. 

If you want even more perfect bread that looks like Gardenia or Massimo , you can use a bread cutter. Can find in Mr DIY for rm7.90

So this time my hub got what he want. Square bread. Pandan square bread. And not "not-square" pumpkin bread.

He's happy. 

I'm happy.

*lol*

Shrimp Paste Air Fried Chicken Wing

When I saw someone shared about frying shrimp paste chicken wing on FB, I thought "Hey. That's so awesome cos there is another way to marinate the chicken!" My JD loves chicken wing and I'm out of ways to cook it for him. So when I saw the little lorry that sells Thai food stuff (will post about it later) I quickly buy this shrimp paste.

And it looks like this inside. Like our typical belacan but then it's soft. I guess using our belacan also can-lah

So I marinated my chicken wing in a zipper bag (the best way to marinate without making your hands dirty and smelling like ....shrimp paste) Marinate with some shrimp paste, sugar, shaoxingwine and garlic. (I think adding an egg will make it nicer)

And then give it a massage like this. Zip it up and keep in your fridge. Better if its overnight otherwise 1-2 hours is good enough.

So one hour before you want to fry your chicken wings, prepare the coating. I used plain flour and also a little bit of Clabber Girl's Double Action Baking Powder.

How much? this much. Agak-agak. According to many people, this is the ingredient to make your chicken wing much crispier. And I agree.

Give it a good coat. Or if you want, you can marinate it in a zipper bag again. And leave it for an hour.

Toss them into air fryer. Set temp 180 at 15 mins. However, depending on how fat your chicken wings, better to check if it's fully cook or not.

And Tadaaa! Shrimp paste Air fried Chicken wing without any oil!

Rice Cooker Hainanese Chicken Rice

This is one of the "meal" that I usually prepare at least once a month especially when i'm busy rushing my designs. I call it a meal cos that's all I will cook for the night and no one will complain and says that it's not enough. (My JD told me "at least 3 dishes for dinner". I told him "I'm not a restaurant!")

Anyway when I go to the market, I'd ask the chicken seller to remove the bone for the chicken thigh. I usually use chicken thigh, cos although JD and I love chicken wing, it comes with the chicken breast and we don't like chicken breast. The bone will be saved and used to boil soup.

Marinate the chicken with (mix them

Up in a bowl and rub the chicken thoroughly): 

• 1-2 tsp Chinese wine

• A little salt

• A dash of pepper

• 1tsp of sesame oil

• 2 garlic and spring onion to put under the  chicken ( read on and you will understand)

Leave it in yr fridge and thaw it to room

Temperature before cooking

The rice, you need:

• 2 garlic , chopped

• 4 slices of ginger

• 2 shallots, chopped

• 1 tsb oil for frying the rice (I use butter, yum yum)

• Pandan leaves , tie in a knot

• Washed and drained rice

How to cook in rice cooker:

1. Fry garlic, ginger and shallots with oil/butter till fragrant (press cook)

2. Add in rice and fry till they look a little yellow

3. Add in pandan leaves

4.. Add in enough water just like how u cook your rice everyday

5. Place the garlic and spring onion

6. Place the chicken on top of the garlic and spring onion

7. Close the cover and let it cook

So while the chicken rice is cooking, prepare the sauce for the chicken:

• 3 tsp of soya sauce

• 2 tsbp hot water

• 1/2 tsp of sesame oil

• 1/4 tsp of sugar

Mix them well and pour on the chicken. 

Here is the outcome when the rice and chicken is cooked.

Since I have removed the bones, I can easily cut the chicken perfectly with scissors when I transfer them to a plate. Add on fresh tomatoes and cucumbers and drizzle the sauce on the chicken.

Dinner is served!