not bake but 'half baked'

A 'half baked' dish that I did last weekend.
Oyster sauce ginger chicken.

As usual, I forgot to add in a few ingredients. I have this bad habit of forgetting to add one or two ingredients when I cook. The problem only happens when I don't refer to the 'recipe collection'.
Sometimes Most of the time, I'm just to lazy to go back and forth to refer the recipe when I cook. hahahaha....

5 little chicken drumsticks
1 tablespoon of oyster sauce + pepper
julienne ginger
1 teaspoon of soy sauce

my missing ingredients was
sesame oil
chinese wine


I marinated the chicken with the oyster sauce and pepper for an hour of more. I prepared the ingredients in advanced and then went on cleaning and mopping the house.

photo by melmok

Stir fry the ginger till the smell exploded (which smells wonderful) then add in the chicken. Let it cook for a while till the chicken is white.
I probably added about half a cup of water and let it simmer till it dried up.

photo by melmok

The last time I cooked this 'little' chicken drumstick, I undercooked it. The outer part was white and cook, but the inner part near the bones was red and uncooked.
So this time around, I left it there to cook longer with the help of the water.


The dish came out ok. Meat = Totally cook. :)
Just without the kick of the sesame oil smell and the chinese wine taste.

photo by melmok

Accompany with Pork Bone Soup with Red Dates, Dried mini Scallops and NZ Spinach.

photo by melmok

Together with my disappointing Fried Slice Luncheon Meat.

photo by melmok

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bye bye leaf miner

After spraying some neem oil with garlic juice and planted garlic chives next to the bok choy. The leaf miner have gone to heaven. It's free from leaf miner for now. woo hoo

Just can't wait to harvest the veggies now.

photo by melmok

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trails that never leaves...

Just as my bok choy was growing nicely.
The little pests (leaf miner) came back!...

Argghhhh...

photo by melmok

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growing bok choy

hehehe... it is finally growing...
*I'm seeing bigger leaves.....* woo hoo....

photo by melmok

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stir fried bittergourd with chicken and black beans

Yummy....

photo by melmok

Soil compose after 6 months

My soil compose is finally ready to be use. Let's just see how well the lemongrass and baby pak choy will grow...
*oh my baby pak choy.. Forever that height....*

coming soon... DIY project

I went to a cheapskate mode while I was hunting for accessories during my Bangkok trip.
I refuse to pay for something I could possibly do it my self.
While exploring the market, I stumble across a shop that sells all these beads, strings and supplies for accessories.

So I ended up buying these...

photo by melmok

It's still sitting at a corner right now... cause I'm waiting for my other purchases to arrive.

After coming back from my trip, my DIY bug went up the chart, and made me purchase more stuffs online to smoothen the process of my DIY project.
Still waiting for my purchases.. let see how this DIY project goes....

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3 + 1

After years of talking about it, I finally made the trip to Bangkok for holiday. Did a lot of walking/shopping and finally experience the Chatuchak Market. While we were there one of the nights drinking, I realize and told KY that our honeymoon trip was around the same month. I saw a little boy buying a scary rubber mask and then I realize that Holloween is around the corner. I remembered before leaving Hong Kong (our honeymoon trip), the local was starting to setup the decorations for Halloween as well. How time flies, now I have to remember to add 1 more year...


Some thing to reminisce over...

photo by melmok

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nihon

Oh my... I really suck at blogging big time!

I meant to blog about my hectic week months ago and I totally forgotten bout it.

For the past month or so, I've been busy trying to keep my bok choy seedlings from dying, been busy working on some freelance design to make some extra cash to fund my natural beauty products and been busy trying to submit as many p.o's as possible... (that's what my coll. said)  P.O. sent. Waiting for delivery...


Anyways, 2 months ago I had to go to Japan for work purpose. After coming back from Japan, I had to follow up with the piled up work from office and on top of that, a cousin of mine that I haven't seen for 13 years came down for a short holiday from Glasgow with her husband and 3 beautiful children. They are all so grown up and looking at them makes me feel old....!! *that feeling really sucks...*

Oh well... Back to my trip...
Before heading to Japan, the only food that I was so looking forward to eat was their Ramen.

That's the only food I really miss eating ever since I tried the real 'stuff' 5 years ago.

Sad to say that I didn't pass by any ramen shop while I was there due to the tight schedule. But this time around I DID manage to try some new food and 'drinks'.
Udon(yes, I didn't manage to eat Udon on my first trip), Oden, Chikuwabu and oh... ShoChu... (which I did not manage to snap any pictures)

photo by melmok

photo by melmok

photo by melmok

photo by melmok

I spent what ever time I had at Muji, drugstores and supermarkets. Which I had miss out from my last trip there.

Made my way to Muji at Yurakucho (apparently its the biggest shop) from the supplier's office on my day at 4.30pm.

photo by melmok

Spent a couple of hours there before my feet was starting to give up on me.*again it was my shoe problem*

On my way back to the hotel. I stopped by at local supermarkets to stock up some Japanese snacks and to my surprise, I found the particular Jamaican Rum that my mom was hunting for her fruit cake, which we can't get it here locally. I was ecstatic when I saw it on the shelf and grab hold of 2 big bottles. (I just found out recently that the airport in Australia has it!)

I just couldn't help myself...
Donated a couple of $$ to Muji before leaving the land of the rising sun.

photo by melmok

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stagnant bok choy

I tried to organize my labels/tags for all my post the other day and realize that when an update was made, my post automatically goes up as the latest post.
Shouldn't it just stay there as it's originally posted date?... hmm...

Anyways, I manage to kill the leaf miners with garlic juice spray. Woo Hoo....
But now my bok choy has been in the same condition for weeks now.. no sign of growing or dying. I couldn't stand it being stagnant so I decided to put a couple of chicken poo to it.

photo by melmok on Flickr.

Few days later, I manage to get around to collect the used coffee powder from JT. So now my bok choy is filled with chicken poo and coffee powder.
Hope I don't over kill it with fertilizer... hahaha....

Shall wait and see what's going to happen next....

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Thyme - up..up...

I've tried to grow thyme uncountable times and my most achievable 'state' was an inch height with 3-4 mini leaves... After that, it just died! I've wasted a lot of seeds then I decided to take a little break from my 'hobby' and my little break became a year... :D

2 weeks ago, I decided to give it another shot.


My thyme started to germinate....

photo by melmok

4 days after ... more came out to play...

photo by melmok

wooo hoooo...
I hope it will grow more then an inch height this time around.

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chicken mushroom soup

Out of the blues, I remembered one of my favorite soup during my childhood time. I can't remember when was the last time I drank this soup. I never really appreciate soup when I was younger and I was fussy with chinese soups. I guess as time pass by and as we grow older, our taste buds change.

So here goes another soup.

photo by melmok

Chicken Mushroom Soup (Chinese Style)
- lots of chicken bones or 1/2 kg of chicken ( i stock up my chicken bones to boil soup cos it adds flavor with the pork bones)
- 6-8 shitaki mushrooms ( i replace it with chinese mushroom cos i didn't have shitaki mushroom in hand)
- 6 rice bowls of water
- a hand full of wolfberries
- a hand full of dried scallops
- salt to taste

I added my left over canned clams with it's juice. The soup turned out wonderful and it tasted as good as I remembered.



Then to spice up our taste buds, I made sambal four angled beans.

photo by melmok

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trying to grow bok choy

I went over board with the bok choy seeds and made the same mistake again. I sow too many of them in my little DIY starter pots (little recyclable newspaper pots)!

photo by melmok

A week or so later, it germinated to a bunch which I had to kill all of these seedlings and save only one.... *hmmm...* 
I tried splitting it to a few but it was too stressful for me.

photo by melmok

I thought I could lay back and wait for my seedlings to do it's thing. But then few days ago..
I notice something. Did my research and found that my little seedlings has leafminers. *blahhh...*

photo by melmok

Temporarily I've sprayed garlic juice on my seedlings and now I'm waiting for my neem oil to arrive so that I kill these leafminers and it's larvae...


On top of that, I notice that 1-2 leaves in each seedlings is getting yellow... argghh...
I shall wait and see....

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plug in timer switch + more chinese soup

photo by melmok

Ah.. I finally found this plug in timer at Ace hardware store for my weekly soup weeks ago.
I was having a hard time trying to figure how to set the timer and finally manage to get it work after a few test. All I had to do is rotate the dial to no 1 and just pull up the little plastic pieces from '1' onwards till '8'.


Ta dahh... 8 hrs of slow cooking and we have our soup...
2-3 soup weekly.....

photo by melmok

Old cucumber soup with pork bone with dried scallops.
Wanted to add in the dried oysters but I ran out of it... Then after taking the first sip of the soup, I realize I could have added in some red dates and wolfberries that I've just stock up during the weekend. *slap on forehead*

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DIY Siew Yok

photo by melmok

I totally forgotten about my roast pork belly post.
My mom passed me a pack of seasoning and ask me to try out this easy peasy chinese roast pork belly. Rub some rough sea salt on the skin and season the rest of the meat with the seasoning for at least 8 hrs.
Then take out the sea salt out and grill it,
1st round, 2nd round, and after the 3rd round I manage to estimate the time for each size of the pork belly.

It turned out deli....ciouss...! It taste exactly like how it's suppose to taste like except it's juicier.
The only set back is that I was getting sick of the pork belly.

From the packaging, this seasoning is meant for chicken. Need to find some one who reads chinese and tell me how to use it for steam chicken.....

photo by melmok

thinning thyme and coriander

Its been 3 weeks now. It's still growing. Some of the leaves are browning and I think I should thin these plants. But I don't know how tooooo.....

photo by melmok

photo by melmok

I'm clueless now... leave it or thin it?
Argh...

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life with soapnuts

Months ago, I've tried making my own shampoo.. well, not really my own.. but a DIY shampoo.
I ordered my self a bottle of castile liquid, brewed some rosemary and wah lah...
my own diy shampoo...

After using it alternative days for 2 weeks. I didn't feel that the texture of my hair has change instead it became drier. So to counter that with rinsing it off with 1 part vinegar and 2 part brew rosemary...
I was hoping that it would help with me scalp condition, but it didn't. So i gave up after 2 weeks of trial.


Then came my discovery of soapnuts.
I realize I have not pen down my experience with soapnuts ever since I started using it.
I LOVE it.!!
I've used it for laundry wash and the cloths came out soft and clean and did i mention soft...? I mean ... really soft comparing with washing our cloths with the normal detergent. Yes, normal detergent does give the nice fragrance but after drying it under the sun, the cloths are all stiff and hard. You know what I mean?

I don't like to use softener cos I feel like, I'm adding too many chemical just to wash my cloths and it does more harm then good. On top of that, the cloths would not last long as well.
What I do is, I would add some of my fruit enzyme and sodium bicarbonate. The enzyme is for extra cleaning and the sodium bicarbonate is for stains. I can do away with the softener.


I've even tried cleaning my old jewelry and coin collections. I reuse the soapnuts from my laundry wash, soaked it for about 2 days and everything was bright and shinny. It looks like brand new.., clean! Well if you ignore the scratches and all.


Since my diy castile shampoo did not do so well with my scalp problem... I'm trying soapnuts this time around.

Will see what happen....

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handmade

I've been storing my 500pcs of muslin bags for ages now... and this year around it has finally been leaving me bit by bit.

My first successful buyer makes handmade accessories and cards. Looking at her paper crafts brings me back to me high school times when I use to be quite 'active' in handycraft stuffs. :)
I remember making my own recycle papers.... making my own notebook with nice little detailed hard cover to go with it... ahh... those were the days...

Anyways,..
I looked thru her site and saw something that I like. A nice looking necklace to add on to my collection. The price was reasonable, so I made the purchase.
Joey was nice enough to throw in a discount price and a little cute pin.
so niceeeeeee :D

The necklace came with the muslin bag. Love it.

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simple weekend lunch

Made dried noodles with stir fried beef on the weekend. On top of that, I couldn't help myself to make another round of herbal chicken since I have a quarter of chicken before I restock some fresh meat for the coming week.

This dried noodles recipe is really easy. Normally the 'mr' would whip this meal up when we're lazy to head out for lunch. Cook the noodles, chop some fresh shallots, add some pepper, cook garlic oil, a spoon full of oyster sauce and mix it all up.

photo by melmok

photo by melmok

This time around I made a stir fried beef to go with it.

photo by melmok

photo by melmok

photo by melmok

Mix it up and you have a yummy fast lunch.

photo by melmok

Plus my mouth watering herbal chicken that would keep me alert for the day.

photo by melmok

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stir fried pea shoots

Made stir fried pea shoots with garlic, prawns, wolfberries and dried oysters last week.
The wolfberries and dried oysters was an additional ingredients... I soaked both ingredients thinking that I was going to make soup.... my brain was not working well that evening.

So instead of wasting it, I added it to the pea shoots dish. :)

photo by melmok

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