It's December!

In my previous post, I said I'd write before November ended.  :), It's December now.

Today, I went to pack some roast chicken for my friend, at their favourite roast chicken shop.

 I happened to have my camera with me and so snapped a few photos of the food sold at the shop.


 

I often come to this fast food shop - Chin Kih  - to eat/pack my lunches. The food is good,  fresh and there's always a variety to choose from.  More importantly the place is clean and the people there are friendly. On their menu are fish- fried or Assam Pedas, towfoo- stuffed or plain, foo chok and vegetables dishes - Mui Choy, Szechuan veg,  spinach, cabbage, bean sprouts, long beans - plain or fried with egg, mixed curry veg, ladies fingers and brinjals 

You can get roast chicken, duck and pork, Char Siew, spring rolls(Chin Kuin) and Pak Cham Kai. 

At this place one of the Indonesian helpers put me to shame. 

She can speak Mandarin; I can't even understand it.

Even got a pic of one of the "managers"

What have I been doing since my last post? My eyes have been glued to YouTube. I've been busy watching Stephen Chow's movies. I pick the ones in Cantonese since I'm then able to understand better since I understand some Cantonese. Sometimes the subtitles can't be read. eg white sript against a white background. But this is better than our local tv stations. Sometimes the Malay subtitles are placed right on top of the English subtitles and so both cannot be read! Wasn't I surprised to see at the beginning of one of the Stephen Chow's shows that we could choose to listen to it in Cantonese or Malay! I didn't listen to it in Maly and so I can't comment on it.

Anyone interested in his shows. 

Try this.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=stephen+chow+movies&search_type=&aq=0&oq=stephen+chow+

2008's almost gone and 2009's waiting to be born. A nephew got married in January and now a niece is getting married on 20th December. May both couples have the love & happiness that everyone wishes for.

Christmas is coming soon. I will be with my sisters and brother and their families this Christmas. I've not spent Christmas with my family for 3 years! Am I excited? I AM. 

Ok faithhful reader, SHSC, my next post will be in 2009.

Happy Times

My friend Sue keeps asking me why I have not put in a new post. Now that I'm writing, I noticed that it's been almost 6 months (1/2 a year) since my last post. Why didn't I write earlier? i don't know. Maybe after reading the political blogs, I felt like mine was so ordinary.

Coincidences:


At my last posting, I had trimmed my hair and now I just permed it yesterday.


In my earlier blog i caught a mouse and I caught another one 3 days ago.


Then among the cakes I baked, the popular one was Banana Cake. Since then Chocolate Chip Cake is the one on top of the list.


What have I been doing this half year?


I've been spending happy times with the fresh cheeky endearing young students who come for English tuition and bring their world into my life. They come , do their exercises, converse with me and one another and now we have English word games and fun, Here they are.

The first picture above show Esther, Joel and David, all in Standard 6. They'll be in the secondary school next year.

Here are Emily(Std 5),Jin Peh (Form 1) and Jeremy (Std 4)No, they are not really laughing. Look closely into their mouths, Yes, they are 'Draculas'! Their fangs are biscuits.

My oldest and youngest student. Joanna's in Form 2 and Sin Ying's in Standard 2. Joanna is the eldest sister of Emily and Jeremy.

Here are Jeremy and Emily with their youngest brother, Christopher and elder brother Danny. Danny is in Form 1 and the little one is in play school. He doesn't come for tuition. The photo was taken after their lesson,

2 pairs of siblings. The brothers are standing behind their sisters. The 1st pair on the left are Jia Hao (Std 5) & Xin Yee(Std 6). The next pair are Angeline (Std 5) & Wei Hong (Std3). Angeline's cousin, Pei Ling joined the class recently. She is in Std 5 too. No photo taken yet.

There are 2 more young ladies both in Form 1. I couldn't upload Nages' photo which I have under Picassa! I have not taken a photo of Siti Nabilah yet.

These youngsters occupy 2 hours of my nights from Monday - Friday. Some start a little earlier and some a little later. So no more dinner outings for me. Nowadays it's mostly breakfast, brunch or lunch outings during the weekdays.

During these months, times have been good for me. However I've attended a few funerals, heard of the demise of others. Sad but not directly related to the heart strings. There have been weddings too. Happy and sad times - the weave of life.

I've watched movies and dramas on the net plus some on television. The net is more attractive since I can choose my time to watch the shows I like.

Reading emails and forward take a lot of time, especially when my computer's so slow despite the fact that I've sent it for reformatting.

See to type this blog and especially to upload the images took me a few hours! I'll continue soon - before November is over.

Life

Good Friends

It's good to have good friends. I have a problem remembering dates - birthdays, anniversaries etc. Since I live from one happy day to the next, the calender is not much in my thoughts.

So this good friend of mine will remind me, "Hi Flo, it's So and So's birthday soon/today " This year she had to remind me that I had 10 minutes more to wish her a Happy birthday! That's how good, friends can be.
Then she reminded me " Hey you have not written in your blog!"

So here I am to write my thoughts/feelings since my last post.

Now plastics are my good friend. I love plastics though I know they pollute when thrown around.
I love plastic bags. They are light and attractive.
They are durable and recyclable.
They are waterproof - my things remain dry should I get caught in the rain.
I can place my feet with my new shoes on and walk on wet dirty roads if I have too.
I can use them to store my things - ALL KINDS of things.
I use them when i have to handle 'dirty' things. They protect my hands indeed.
I also use plastic bags to knead my dough.No dough sticks to my hands and I don't have to buy gloves.

I just discovered a new use for a plastic bag. I use it to steam my hair. Look!I was at the hairdresser's and she steamed a customer's hair with cling wrap. I remember steaming my hair sitting under a 'steamer' for a long time. So I decided to steam my hair but with a plastic bag! So now I'm steaming in the comfort of my home writing in my blog.:)

Back to plastic bags. I give away cookies,cakes,food in handy plastic bags. There's no need to try remember with whom my container is. Besides I can place lots of individual bags of goodies for different people into one big bag and they get distributed easily.
When I go shopping, I love the bags they supply.
Finally I recycle the plastic bags that I have used into garbage bags.
So I love plastic bags. They are my friends.
( I don't do this, but I have seen people using plastic bags tied to their plants/trees/ windows to act as scarecrows.)

I have another good friend. She abhors plastic. "No, no need to give me the plastic bag," she'll tell the cashier but she has not yet progressed to carrying her own paper/fabric/rattan bag around like some others do.
Readers, do not worry. I try to minimize using these 'treasures' of mine.

During the last fortnight, I've watched a few Cantonese shows on You Tube- To grow with love, Tai Chi & CJ7. I enjoyed Tai Chi the most. I found a new song that I like on You Tube -
Ray Boltz's "Thank You".

Something that I'm so thankful for is Mozilla Firefox.
Whenever in the past Microsoft had to shut down unexpectedly, I would have to start a new session all over again.
Now Mozilla Firefox gives us a choice to continue the previous session/to start a new one.
It makes life so much easier. :)

My latest recipe - a hit with my friends- is Banana bread.
For those interested, here is the recipe that I adapted and call Flo's Delicious Banana Bread.

Here it is:

FLO'S DELICIOUS BANANA CAKE.

INGREDIENTS

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
  
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon ( optional)

3/4 cup white sugar
3 eggs
• 1/2 bar butter/margarine/1/2 cup oil
• 1/2 cup milk/water
  
4 ripe bananas, mashed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup raisins (optional)
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
1 cup chocolate chips (optional)

1 cup mixed fruit(optional)
Decide which option you'd like. It's ok to use 2 options in one recipe.)
I like to sprinkle the top of the loaves with black sesame seed.

METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2. Lightly grease and flour a 9x5 inch loaf pan.( I prefer a 11"X 11" tray - won't be so high, so easier to eat)
3. In a large bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, cinnamon and white sugar.
4. Stir in eggs, , bananas and vanilla extract.
5. Fold in your optional ingredients, if desired.
6. Pour batter into prepared pan.
7. Bake in preheated oven for 45 to 60 minutes- for the loaf tin and 30-35 minutes for the tray. (until a knife inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean).

The above is the same recipe bakes in patty tins for children. The black specks are black sesame seeds.

And now I shall end my post. Happy reading my good friend. ;)

Feeling Happy

I'm feeling happy. Baked a curry sardine +cabbage pizza for dinner.Of course it was topped with cheese. My housemate who ate it said," Auntie , you can open your own Pizza Restaurant!" :)

Here is a pic of an earlier pizza, since i didn't take one of the pizza I made today..Yes, I don't use a pizza pan. I use the old griddle which I use to make thosai, pancakes and chappati.(Hmmm - I seldom make them) I make pizzas more frequently these days.

Later at my tuition class, I made some banana pancakes for the four youngsters while they were busy doing their work. Later Nages ate 2 pancakes. Jeremy didn't like it and so his elder brother, Danny helped to eat half of it. Their sister, Emily couldn't finish hers and wanted to give half to her elder sister, Joanna (who doesn't come for tuition). So I added another one for Emily to take home. No, I didn't take any photographs, but if anyone's interested you can get this recipe which I took from All Recipes and you will be able to see their photographs of the pancakes too.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Banana-Pancakes-I/Detail.aspx

Some one sent me this site and I spent most of my afternoon browsing the videos in it. Maybe you'll like it too. I like Fred Astaire's dancing. I've not watched him before. My mum used to tell me about his dancing and she mentioned the names of his dancing partners too - Ginger Rogers, Eleanor Powell. Ha ha ha! I recalled the names only after reading them on the videos I saw.
Here's the site.
http://www.almacarioca.com.br/arte.htm

Greg, just in case you read this, my flow of thoughts often jump from this to that or from this event to that...the way it happens. That's why the rat was in my first blog. It was trapped one day before I baked the orange sponge cupcakes. :)

Today's blog tells of the things I did today or things that happened today.

Why am I writing today? Because I wanted to comment and couldn't do so because I'd forgotten my password. So I came to write in my own blog instead. Yes, I know what to do to retrieve my password now, but the desire to comment in the earlier blog has gone.

Why am I feeling happy? :D
A good friend has had her knee operated on today to replace the knee cap, and I'm looking forward to be able to see her walking around once more.
There'll be a Saturday night dinner (20 hours from now) followed by another on Sunday with friends. So they are happy occasions - just for getting together. So I do have reasons to be happy. :-)

I have become a blogger

I have put off becoming a blogger because I prefer to read blogs and comment on them. However I find that on many blogs, I need to be a blogger to be able to comment.

So I surrender and own a blog to be able to comment. Actually i just wanted to thank Greg & Nee for their all in one sponge cake recipe but I couldn't comment/give thanks without creating my own blog first.

Here are the delicious
orange flavoured sponge cup cakesI adapted from their recipe.

(Sunquick orange given to me by my friend YBP)

So having my own blog now will allow me to thank them and others too for their recipes that I have read and wanted to comment on.

Yesterday I had an unexpected visitor.

It was a real surprise for the bait had been put

for more than 2 weeks.

Here it is trying to escape.