fishing trip

the boys in my house have been busy going on their 'hunters' and 'gatherers' trip. they actually had to pay to hunt and gather.
nevertheless, they felt it was worth every cent of it.

they caught all sort of fish- red cod, snappers, little sharks, yellow tail (ikan kembung)
we have been eating sashimi, fish curry, assam fish, sweet and sour fish, and finally home made fish balls.

they left the boat at dawn and go to nearby island to fish. they seem to not mind the fishy smell and the sunburn they come home with..

i think the painful thing of the trip is all the gut cleaning they need to do ..fortunately, i only took part at the 'eating' part. *grin

Korean Jap Chae

This is an easy to cook dish.

Ingredients needed:
Korean cellophane noodle
Sesame oil
Sesame seed
Carrot
Spanish Onion
Capsicum ( I use yellow and green)
Spinach
Korean Soy Sauce
Pepper, Sugar to taste

First, boil the cellophane noodle until the noodles turn transparent.
Drain and coat with sesame oil.

Julienne the carrot, capsicum ( into match stick).
Cut the onions into thin wedges.

Heat up the wok with sesame oil and saute the onion wedges and veggies.
Add in the boiled noodle and stir.
Mix in the korean soy sauce, pepper and sugar to taste.
Spinach is cooked separately with sesame oil as garnish.
Toast the sesame seed before garnishing.

p/s: This is a vegetarian version. Usually in the Korean restaurant, Jap chae is cooked with beef and garnished with eggs. As usual, I took the liberty to modify the recipe to my liking. 

what's blooming now..

here's the bloomer this month.


This is allysum also known as sweet alice. The colour for the above is called Rose.
I bought them in November as seedling punnet and planted them into the garden bed.
Two months later, it's blooming. Allysum is a type of perennial and they are normally mass planted on garden bed as borders.

I have killed an anthurium before. This time I tried to make sure this one survive. I got them sometime in August and it wasn't doing very well in September. Even as I was being careful, the plant looked very limp/droopy.Then an orchid member told me, anthurium loves warmth and loves a good soak in the water. I went home and immediately immerse the whole pot in a bucket of water. When the bubble stops bubbling on top of the potting mix, I brought it back into my living room. The next day, the whole plant perks up.
In December, I saw a bud. (You have to look real hard on the left hand side pic). In January, the flower bloomed. It's a pink anthurium. In Summer, I have to water it 3 times a week.

back in action

Happy New Year !!!

2006 ended pretty swiftly for me. we had a christmas party on the 23rd and it ended up a few of us singing christmas carols.

on christmas eve, we had the opportunity to do a 'hand chimes' performance. (see pic below) it's rather fun. we perform 6 christmas carols with the chimes after 3-4 practice.

on christmas day, jake cooked the turkey and we had christmas dinner at about 8pm.

bad news was, our pc has gone kaput. POOF was the sound it made after i read a few emails..
i watched a whole lot of taiwanese and japanese series when the pc was kaput.
recommend watching "Attention Please" a jap drama.
still watching silence , a taiwanese series.
currently listening to 183club and 7 flowers song.