Moon cake

Glad to say that I have successfully tried to bake moon cake. I made it from frying the paste till baking. Of course I knew there are ready made paste sold in the shop. That I am not so interested. I want to do it the whole from the scratch from soaking beans till baking the molded cake.

I will not be writing the recipes because there are already many blogs writting about mooncake.

Baking bread made easy

This is the fastest method to made bread. It does not need to manually knead and wait for it to prove. What is needed is that you dump in all the required ingredients into the bread maker.

Ingredients
320 g bread flour
25 g sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tbsp milk powder
1/8 tsp cinnamon powder (optional)
2 tsp instant yeast
1 egg
145 ml cold water
25 g butter
80 g raisins
20 gm melon seeds (optional)

Bread ready in approx 3 hrs time. Slice it when it is no longer hot with sharp knife. Suggested serve with serikaya.

Serikaya made easy

Serikaya has always been my all time favorite. As it is never easy to cook serikaya the traditional way since then I have stopped making my own serikaya. One has to stir and stand by the stove nearly hours to make serikaya the traditonal way. Today I cook it by using breadmaker.
Ingredients.
2/3 cup of sugar (1 cup will be more ideal for those not health conscious)
1 cup of egg (5 eggs)
1 cup of santan
12 - 15 leaves of pandan

Whisk the egg with the sugar, pour all the ingredients into the basket of the breadmaker. Press the jam function program button. The kaya will be ready in the next 1 hr and 5 mins. Never mind if it may looks a little bit like scramble egg. When it is luke warm, transfer the kaya into the blender and blend till smooth.

It is so fragrance. The smell of genuine home made kaya is totally different from the shelf ready made kaya at the supermarket.

The cost are :
Eggs - RM 1.50
Sugar - Abt RM0.50
Santan - RM2.00
Pandan - free (home grown)
Total cost RM4.00

If I were to buy from the wet market, this serikaya are sold at RM3.00/plastic cup . I can have about 3 cups - worth RM9.00. This is a saving of aprrox RM5.00 or in other words the RM5.00 is for labour cost.

Sources and idea of this breadmaker made kaya are from :
http://thelazychef.wordpress.com/2006/09/02/nonya-kaya/ and

http://www.agnestan.net/2009/05/07/kaya-from-a-bread-machine

Many thanks to the authors for generously shared their ideas of cooking.

Full Bloom

This plant was planted by me about 5 years ago. It has a purplish blue colour. The whole plant is taller than me. I guess it to be about 6 feet height. The plant is now growing wild and sturdy.

My Virtual Pet

I have been absence nearly for 10 days. The reason is because I am now hooked and addicted to my virtual pet in the Pet society online game in the facebook. Earlier when my friends asked me to join them I was very reluctant to play. After a period of calling and inviting from them I relent. Seems that I am now much more excited than them.

Basically the game is such that you accumulate coins when your pet visit your friends, play a few games such as skipping rope, racing, hitting baseball, fishing etc. From the coins one collected, you are allowed to create your virtual dream home from one room to many rooms bungalow with back and front garden. It allows you to purchase variety of furnitures according to your creativity and design. You then decorate and arrange as to your preference.

I admire the person that create this online. It really simulate real life situation. Example, if you plants vegetables, upon harvest you may sell them if you like. You can change the dressing of your pet too. Very interesting and fun. On my first few days log in this game, I played 3 to 4 hours non-stop. When my friends see me so absorbed in this game, they told, "There I told you so, very interesting one".

True, if you haven't play this game, try log in Facebook and join me play Pet society. Please add me as your friend because each each visit is paid 30 coins.

Hungry Ghost Festival

Today mark the first day of "Hungry Ghost Month" according to the Chinese Lunar Calender, being the 7th month. Many years ago there are many people praying near the roadside on the first, middle and the last day of the Ghost Festival. The reasons or purpose being to seek blessing from the ghost, the wandering homeless spirits and all sorts of evil spirits. A "kow taw" to them with jossticks, hell notes and fruits and food too. These days these rituals are still carried out by some. I can feel that it is lesser now compared to say 20 years ago where nearly all houses after the sunset all family members come out to pray at the road side. Traditions are traditions.

Some superstitious say that during these "Ghost Month" many death, accidents and illnesses may occur. Well, beliefs are beliefs, there is no point in either defending or denying them. Be it let it be.

Rambling on a Sunday night

Today I attended a course the topic of which is "How to handle difficult person". I am too lazy to regurgitate the facts. Let me test and experience it before I share them. This is because in the past I have read lots of books with such titles before and none of them are effective.

Most of the time I encounter people so eager to belittle, unfairly criticise, humiliate and gave me sarcastic remarks. I am a little surprise I do not receive negative comments from my topic on "Why I hate babies". If it were on person to person level, people will straight instantly attack me, "Why hate babies, what harm have babies done to anyone?". As it is in the blog, nobody bother to attack me.

A while ago, i read from the NST online that 80,000 Malaysian may be infected with H1N1. This figure is a very alarming and scaring. Could this be the beginning sympton of human extinction. Time shall tell.

On the Star online earthquake rock Sumatra, tremor felt in KL and Penang. So far in my life I have never felt any tremor or shake due to earthquake even during Tsunami 2005 times. My spiritual teacher explained me that I was sort of "protected" from unnecessary "threat"