Karnival Si Jantung Hati

If you have time today do join in this HeartKids Charity Carnival held at Dewan Annexe, UITM Shah Alam. Lots of great stuff to get there, spend and donate for good cause. I will be helping out Supermom Nadia at the gardening booth so hope to see you there.

Sneak Previews of stuff donated for the gardening booth by kind souls:

 Supermom Brenda Ang ~ cute cactus and herb seedling plants.

Supermom Herny Yusnizar ~ 20 packs of Vermicompost (RM3)

Supermom Hebatullah Kamilah ~ 20 varieties of seeds (10 pack each) :

1. Red Bangladesh Amaranth
2. Local Semi Red Rounded Leaf Amaranth
3. Late Flower White Stalk Choy Sum
4. Local Green Rounded Leaf Amaranth
5. Oily Green Long Bean
6. American Coriander
7. Aromatic Basil
8. Golden Yellow Round Leaf Amaranth
9. F1 Hybrid Five Star Lady's Finger
10. F1 Hybrid Pearl Gold Sweet Corn
11. F1 Hybrid Extreme Yield Red Chilli
12. F1 Hybrid Golden Thousand Super Sweet Corn
13. F1 Hybrid New Green Eagle Chilli
14. F1 Hybrid Market Wonder Cucumber
15. Red Flower French Bean
16. Fu Chew Brinjal
17. F1 Hybrid GF Special Feet Brinjal
18. GE Grade A Water Convulvulus (kangkung)
19. F1 Hybrid Star-8 Cucumber
20. Type B Curly Leaf Chinese Kale

 Gardening booth in progress yesterday setting up.

Supermom Nadia and her mother Salehaton hard at work.

Some of the plants that will be available:

Suriram spinach, Rambutan fruit seedlings, Mango fruit seedlings, Water hyacinth, Walking Iris seedlings, Snake plants, White anthirium plants, Spider plants.

Some fresh fruits and vegetables are also available:

Lemons, Green Papaya, old coconut for coconut milk, rambutan, NamNam, Passionfruits, Chillies, Pandan leaves, Curry leaves.

Hope to see you there!

More items not listed yet!

Thank you very much for the donation received from all.

Local Edible Produce Swap and Lemon Poppy Seed Cake

Our local community organise fruit and vegetable swap on the first Saturday of the month during winter and spring season. You don't have to live in our community to join in. If you want to know when the next swap will be held, the organiser will send you an email or I can email you the address. Yesterday, we participated and brought some of our excess fruit, herb and vegetable seedlings. The only fresh produce that we managed to pick early in the morning to share was yellow cherry tomatoes, chilies, snow peas and lemon grass.

We came back with a nice basket full of produce ~ Pumpkin, lemons, eggplant, persimmon and quince jelly. Our fisherman brought back 3 salmon trouts. Since winter season has begun, it is salmon trout and bream season. There will be many salmon trout to fish in St. Kilda and Mr. Fisherman will have frequent trip there  early Saturday morning during winter. So with fresh fish and eggplant, we made ikan masak assam pedas for lunch. I have not bake a cake since I gave birth to our first child Ilhan, and when I visited A Nyonya's Kitchen ...for all season blog, the lemon poppy seed cake look so delicious I decided to have a go making it. Thanks to Catmint, we have some poppy seeds and lemons from the local swap to bake this cake.

Lemon Poppy Seed Cake  (recipe from A Nyonya's Kitchen...for all season, terima kasih)

Ingredients:

10g poppy seeds (actual was 40gram)

125ml milk

250g butter, softened

1 tbsp finely grated lemon rind

275g caster sugar

4 eggs

335g self-raising flour

110g plain flour

240g sour cream

Method:

1. Combine poppy seeds and milk, soak for 10 minutes.
2. Beat butter, rind and sugar with electric mixer till light and fluffy.
3. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until combined.
4. Stir in sifted flours, cream and poppy seeds into mixture, in two batches.
5. Spread mixture into pan, bake for about 1 hour at 160 deg C.

Lenay was excited making this cake, she was really worried that the cake will be over-baked and keep a close eye on it while the cake is in the oven. Where was the cook while the cake is in the oven? She was already near the veggie patch, absorb on planting shallots and other vegetables. Lenay had to call the cook many times to take a look on the cake. We were supposed to wait for an hour but Lenay poke it with toothpick about 45 minutes and it came out clear. So when the cook returned to the kitchen one hour later, she was surprised the cake was out from the oven. Leaving it baking one hour should be fine as when we cut the cake there are still some moist spot. The cake was very delicious. We will enjoy making this cake again in the future. Since we only have one baking pan, the extra batch we use the muffin baking pan. I hope Mr. Fisherman will let me buy some baking pan. 

Joining in Wendy's Garden To Table Challenge.

Local Fruit and Veggie Swap May 2011

The only community event that we sometime participate for local fruit and veggie swap is held in West Croydon every first Saturday of the month. Today the host were James and Evie. I wanted to catch up with Evie so we went, although I don't really have many excess produce from my garden to share. Our host managed to surprise us with a very big pumpkin on the table from his friend that even 20 months old Rayyan can fit in the pumpkin. On the table to share today were lemons, eggplants, rosemary, seedlings, pomegranates, walnuts, jerusalem artichokes, seeds and of course big portions of pumpkin for everyone to bring back home.

We brought back many cut pieces of pumpkin for friend and neighbours. Lenay was excited of recieving the big pumpkin seeds and surprise me by counting it. She counted 64 pumpkin seeds and want to try growing it when she return back to her parents home. One of her wish came true today I reckon, because she always wanted to have big pumpkin seeds. Usually she likes to eat pumpkin and sunflower seeds but I don't see her doing it today. I was excited on something else, another plant that I wanted to try growing this year in my wish list have been granted ~ Jerusalem Artichokes/Sunroot. A fan of it, I am not yet. It is just curiousity of how the growing plants look like.  Growing sunroot in Adelaide can make it forever not leaving your garden if you don't harvest them all, you will want to call it a weed after a few years, well that is what I hear from every gardener that grow this tubers. Since I am a novice at growing this plant, do you know whether this tubers can grow in partial shade/ or shade very well or not? How about the soil, will clay be a problem?

What did we managed to bring along?

Scooped some celery seedlings today to give-away at the swap and clear my conscious regarding their fate today. I planned to prepare the veggie patch that have hundreds of self-sowed celery seedlings for cool season vegetables. Happy we managed to complete the task today. At least some were saved from being green manure as I prepared the bed for other veggies. We also brought some seeds to share which is suitable to sow this month~ Red onion odourless, calendula sunshine, lettuce, coriander, lakspur (Making a note so I don't bring the same thing again for the next swap). Hopefully for the next swap, the self-sowed coriander are big enough to bring along. Lucky, at the last minute before we went, I managed to snip some ripe red chilies to share.

So many pumpkins on our kitchen table. But Hazel is having "The Pumpkin Challenge" which have many wonderful pumpkin recipe to try!

Home Sweet Home

Hooray!We finally in Adelaide yesterday afternoon. There is a little bit of fluid around Rayyan heart but the medical team in RCH let us go home and WCH will follow up on Rayyan's condition. Rayyan arteri pulmonori is still narrow and there is a little bit of leak after surgery according to the ECHO results. Well before the surgery, Rayyan was mostly depending on his shunt (bypass) for oxygen to flow to the lung and his oxygen saturation was about 70%. Before having a shunt was much worse, oxygen saturation sometimes drop to 40% and frequent "tet spell". We are very aware that in a few more years, Rayyan might have to undergo surgery again although he just had complete corrective heart surgery. We really appreciate if anyone can give us advice on which health insurance company is good to have in Malaysia (just in case and it is good to be ready for anything).

Ilhan almost gave my cousin, Lenay a heart attack. He was so happy after we call to inform in a few hours will be Adelaide, he bump his head on the floor. We are not sure how did that accident happened but he must have been jumping on the sofa and slip just as I was saying goodbye to Lenay on the phone.Lenay said her hand was shaking so badly, she spilled traditional ointment (ubat gamat) all over the floor. Ouch, a very nasty bump on the forehead.

There were many cucumbers that Lenay harvested while we were away, so we joined the West Croydon Community Fruit and Veggie Swap this morning. We brought cucumbers, chives and spring onions to share

and returned home with

Garlic cloves and other stuff that we ordered from New Gippsland Seed & Bulbs company has arrived which I ordered before we left for Melbourne. I can't wait to plant garlic cloves next month. I ordered 50 garlic cloves that consist variety of Adelaide Red, Oriental Purple and Italian (common). 50 cloves are not enough, so I might have to get some more bulbs. On average weekly we used about 3 garlic bulbs (3bulb X 4 weeks X 12 month = 144 bulb) which means we need to grow more than 144 cloves.

It will be our first time growing beetroot and ranunculus this autumn.

It feel so good to be home.

Rayyan had a very sound sleep last night.

Seedy Sunday

We planned to be in Melbourne this week and this day is supposed to be Rayyan's complete corrective cardiac surgery that we have been waiting for a long long long time. However, the day before Rayyan's pre-check up before we fly off to Melbourne, on Thursday morning Rayyan fell down from the bed and fractured his collar bone. I did not realised he fractured his collar bone as this was not his first time fall down from bed. But he seems in pain the whole morning and I had to rush to a meeting with my supervisor after he settled down to have his morning nap after breakfast. My husband brought him to the hospital after he finished work and Rayyan had his X-rayed confirming that he had a minor fracture in his collar bone. So Rayyan had to wear a sling now for about 2 weeks. Of course, the next day for his cardiac appointment the nurse and doctors were stunned to see someone had a fractured collar bone when he is set to be operated. After discussion with the surgoen in Melbourne, the surgery will be postponed for about a month until Rayyan collar bone is properly healed. We are having a difficult time to make sure Rayyan not hurting himself, with a sling in one hand, he still attempt to climb the sofas and bed. Although he is already 17months old now, he is just learning how to walk a few steps and he weights 8 kilogram. It amaze us to see Rayyan with a sling and out of breath (due to his condition), he is still determine or stubborn to walk  a few paces carefully. I honestly don't know how I survived last week.

So, I thought I could not participate Seedy Sunday at Glandore Communtiy Garden which is organised by Seed-Savers Group Adelaide where you bring your excess seeds,seedlings or cuttings and share with other seed-savers because we were supposed to be in Melbourne.  But due to our bad luck, we managed to join in this group of wonderful people. I always wanted to join in but I am actually a very shy person. I needed something to boost up my spirit after a very busy and eventful week. I would like to thank Andrea and other people inviting me to this Seedy Sunday and made me feel so welcome.

I made a seed inventory and my seed wish list last month, from this 'Seedy Sunday" most of my wish is fullfilled and I am so happy! So many seeds and bulb will be my first attempt at growing them, I hope in my hands they will grow well. I never dreamed that I can have a go at growing potato onions and elephant garlic this year.Any idea how to plant potato onions? My mother was so happy to meet someone that is very generous to share some blue iris (Japanese~ayame) rhizomes. She planted it almost immediately after we reached home.

I have always wanted to try dragon carrots and looks like this autumn we will be growing them. Hopefully in early spring, we have colourful carrot harvest as we plan to grow other afghan carrot variety as well.

I was planning to buy some parsnip seeds but there were parsnip seeds on Seedy Sunday! My umbellifers seed wish list has all been ticked off~ fennel, chervil and parsnip. We also got some parsley and dill seeds.

This are silverbeet seeds look similarly like lettuce. I really have to plan my cold-season planting very well as there are many new seeds I am trying this time which I have never even eaten these western vegetables before like silverbeet, red chard and rainbow chard. There are also other new brassicas seeds that will be introduced in our garden mizuna, purple sprouting broccoli and giant purple mustard that comes from Seedy Sunday.  I learn a lot from this Seedy Sunday about seeds and meeting people dedicated with collecting seeds is very inspiring and motivated me more to collect my own seed as well.

The Lights of Lobethal

Last night we went for a drive to Lobethal valley in Adelaide Hills to see how the community there light up their house and garden to celebrate this month festive season.  The community here has continue doing this for more than 60years and it is one of the main community event in South Australia every December. This year we avoid driving here to enjoy the view on the weekend because cars hardly move on the street, it will be bumper to bumper. It was a relaxing drive last night as not many cars were around and we managed to cover more ground than last year. This time our driver my dear husband did not complaint as he gets to enjoy the sights while driving. Last year, he had to focus on the car in front of us.

Not only in the garden but Christmas decoration in the window as well.

I was surpised that this home owner even dress up as Santa Claus and greeted everyone so warmly into his garden. Usually we just admire those light decoration from outside the garden.Can you see the red costume?

It was a cold night even though it is SUMMER! My mama was so excited she was willing to come out of the car to take picture with Mr. Santa.

We came to see this house last year and enjoy our time looking at the Christmas light decoration so this year we did the same.

Have a nice weekend everyone. I will be hopping on an island this weekend!

Hari Raya Aidilfitri di perantauan

We have been busy these few days with cooking and celebrating Raya Aildilfitri with family and friends after a month of fasting in Ramadhan. We invited many friends this year to our house for a small traditional feast on the first and second day of Syawal. I don’t have much culinary skill but Mik and I managed to prepare home made traditional foods, cakes and biscuits such as Peanut sauce, Chicken Rendang, Beef Rendang, Chicken rice, roti jala,ect.

Ilhan with his traditional costume from his grandparents from Terengganu.

Children enjoying food at backyard.

  Ladies and babies with traditional costumes.

Celebrate Raya Aidilfitri together with friends.

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri!

September Fruit & Vegetable Swap

There was a Community Fruit & Vegetable Swap local event in West Croydon held at James and Evie place, our host for this month this morning. We brought some chilies and cauliflowers to share this time.

Year 2010 is a good cauliflower year for us. We have already frozen cauliflower stocks in the freezer.  We are nearing our objective of prolonging cauliflower season this year. There are still more than 30 cauliflower plants growing with different stages of growth at our place. This veggie patch is growing the youngest cauliflower plant in our place (seedling transplanted last June). Please ignore the periwinkle plant, I know it is still looking sad:( in early spring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our hosts James and Evie front garden greeted us with colourful flowers suitable for mediterranean climate .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gathering at the backyard where fresh produces are shared. Ilhan had a wonderful time playing with friends and getting his pants covered with mud. Our hosts has a dog and Ilhan is scared of dogs. He jumps to anyone who are nearest to him crying to be carry if the dog is near to him. I feel very sorry for people who was force to carry Ilhan end up with dirty clothes. He was not afraid of dogs before but since last year he is scared of dog and I cannot convince him not to be afraid with dog now. What should we do?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our hosts recycled oil raw drums to grow food. Interesting idea.

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We brought back grapefruits, lemons, daun kesum (Vietnamese mint) and two stems of daisy-like flower to propagate ( we been told it can grow 3~5 metres tall in a year and flower in winter, thought it was sugarcane or bamboo stem at first).

1st veggie swap

Since last year I wanted to join community fruit and vegetable swap near my local area but did not seem to have the time. Today, hurrah we finally get to join them. Woke up early this morning and ran outside looking at our patch what excess vegetables that we could share with other people. We decided to clear one of the patch that were growing chinese celery and cauliflowers for spring planting preparation (done and manured today). So we brought with us chinese celeries, coriander leaves, a punnet of coriander seedlings and chilies.

So excited were we that we were the first one to arrived. Many interesting vegetables that I have not seen or cook before. I got to bring home some jerusalem artichoke. I had never eaten or hold it in my hand before. All of us thought it was ginger at first. Lan the man who brought those jerusalem artichoke said they have flower similar like sunflower and can grow 3metre tall. I plan to cook it tomorrow and see how it taste like. Any good recipes I can try anyone?

I learn a lot today from other people how to grow veggies in Adelaide. Kids were also enjoying themselves playing bubbles and climbing trees.

I am looking forward for the next fruit and veggie swap meeting.

Anyone interested to know more about community fruit and veggie swap here is the website.

http://users.tpg.com.au/vegeswap/