Zen Garden

As some of you know, I’ve been pestering hubby to do something about our backyard which sadly after over year, not much progress has been made… except for the weeds, which have been thriving very well growing up to as high as my waist!

After some thought and discussion, we decided to reduce the lawn area by bordering it with some gravel… anything to cut down on watering and mowing.

The result is this… Interestingly, many people have commented that it has a potential zen look, which wasn’t exactly what we had set out to do, but coming to think of it, it’s a good theme to build on. We’ll see how this progresses as we continue adding to the look bit by bit.

In case you’re interested, this is the rough plan drawn up by hubby as we planned the landscaping… impressive right? Drawn to scale some more!

Ideas welcome.

Centre of the world

Was browsing through Facebook this evening, enjoying all the pictures posted up by various friends taken over the recent Christmas period.

I happen to catch sight of a familiar image, where a family member had been tagged in… Christmas Eve service at the BCCM KK sanctuary. I immediately thought of my friend Irene’s post where she reminisced over days from our childhood and youth when we were part of the annual big celebration every 24th December.

Everything in the picture looked so familiar, the Christmas lights in the big ‘roundabout’ at the front entrance, the colourful ribbons and tinsel arranged around the sanctuary and on the stage, and even the the extra plastic chairs arranged along the aisles for the anticipated ‘overflow’.

In the pictures I could see a few familiar faces… but many more unfamiliar faces. But the scene itself was strangely familiar with images of youths dressed up for performances, leading worship, singing, dancing, acting etc… I could almost cut and paste faces of my old friends from when we were youths right in those pics.

Alamak, I sound so old, talking like that.

Anyway, to resume my ramblings… on Sunday at church during tithes & offerings, as usual someone would go in front to share something, and on that day a guy from the young families group did the sharing. We know him as a funny guy and typically the ‘clown’ of the group back during our student days. Now he is married, father of a beautiful little girl, working full time and paying off a mortgage just like the rest of our peers.

As I glanced around the congregation, it suddenly struck me that for most of the young people around, to them ‘this guy’ was now considered one of the ‘older people’. For most of them, they would not see this clownish character the same way I did. Looking through the lenses of their youth, they see a grown-up working adult with a kid, who maybe has a knack for telling funny stories, but it would probably not enter their mind the crazy things his guy did when he once was where they are now in life.

Then I thought, “Gosh, is that how they see me???”

Maybe this is simply a sign that I’m not yet as old as I think… the fact that I’m still so conscious of this state that I’m in. Perhaps when I really am old, the novelty of being in this position would have worn off by then.

I think it’s important to retain this state of being able to look at things in retrospect as much as possible. This is partially the reason why I always make my parents tell me stories of the crazy things they used to do as students and youths. Apart from enjoying these highly entertaining stories (like can you believe my mum once hitchhiked her way from JB up to KL??? How many of us now can ever claim to have done that???)… apart from that, it is also a great reminder for me, that we ‘young people’ are not always the centre of the world. Although we may feel that the world seems to revolve around our fantastic escapades and personal drama, remember that behind every person, any person, there is always a story.

Okay, I’d better stop here now as I suspect most of you might be looking as bored as this guy…

I know... that's enough! That's all I have to say for today... thank you very much for listening (reading).

If you see a something strange in your cat’s butt - don’t panic!!!

What is it about children and pets that they just have this innate desire to put strange things in their mouth?

My friend Diana recently twittered that she had caught her baby girl putting a live ladybug, a clump of hair, egg shells, lego pieces, paper, plastic and tissue in her mouth. Really need to keep an eye on her!

In our case with Mishu… the ‘thing’ in question was rafia string. Unfortunately by the time we realised it, the thing had already gone through his digestive system and we found out because it had already emerged at the ‘other end’.

I was at the office on Thursday morning when I received a frantic phone call from hubby who informed me that our cat had a piece of string hanging out from his rear end.

Apparently this is what happened: hubby was just seated at the computer, trying to configure something with our internet, when Mishu walked past him toward the kitty litter to do his usual morning business after breakfast. Minutes later he saw a strange sight of Mishu moving back across the corridor, bum to the ground while using his front paws to drag himself forward, bit by bit. Hubby got up to investigate… Mishu was heading toward the kitchen, still doing his strange butt movements, So hubs immediately caught hold of Mishu to see what the issue was down there. Minutes later I found myself on the phone with him discussing what to do when you find a piece of string hanging out from your cat’s butt.

We were quite concerned at first. So I rang our friend who is a vet who was completely unfazed. Finding a piece of string in your cat's butt must be a common everyday occurrence. Basically there was nothing much do but let the thing pass normally through his system.

Hubs went through an exciting time cleaning up the trail left by Mishu’s string, then he also decided to give him a bath (hubs thought, since he's going to clean him down there, might as well just make a thorough job of it once and for all), as well as snipping off the excess string trailing behind.

Poor Mishu! I’m sure he had no idea why he was made to go through all this ordeal. But he was perfectly alright. Thankfully by the next morning, we found remaining string buried in the kitty litter with the rest of his business.

He’s back to his usual self again… making sure he is always the centre of attention…

(Big thanks to our friend Kin for her calm and cool advice!)

My own version of 4 Ingredients

Every Christmas, I make it a point to have a special family dinner, whether it’s with immediate or extended family and friends or if it’s just hubs and I.

Even weeks before, I’ll start thinking and looking out for ideas of what special Christmas food project I should try out in my kitchen this year. (Last year I made my own honey glaze ham from scratch)

This year as I ran through the different food ideas in my mind, I thought of the ‘4 Ingredients’ cookbook, a collection of recipes by two Aussie women which require only four ingredients or less.

I myself don’t own the book or have ever tried any recipes directly from the book itself. But I like the concept, some of the best dishes I’ve tasted or prepared myself are simply made up of four to five basic good quality ingredients.

So here are some of my culinary exploits in my kitchen year framed around the ‘4 ingredients or less’ concept

Chorizo and cucumber

I got this idea from my boss at our company’s Christmas bbq. Just grill, fry or bbq some sliced chorizo, arrange it on top of a slice of cucumber, and top it off with a toothpick to hold it together. Soooo yummy… and you can also try different varieties of chorizo, such as a spicier meat if you prefer a bit more heat to contrast the cool cucumber slice.

Chorizo + Cucumber… that’s two ingredients. Not bad!

Perfect Roast Pumpkin

I picked up this recipe from Fast Ed on Better Homes and Garden. It sounds delicious and tastes soooooo good, I tell you! Start with a whole pumpkin and cut out a little ‘cap’ on top like this…

Then chuck in about half a block of butter (that’s around 125g), half a cup of brown sugar, and two teaspoons ground cinnamon. Some other optional stuff you could also throw in is some ground nutmeg and ground ginger (about half or one teaspoon each), but I didn’t add those and it still turned out great.

Bake for 1½ to 2 hours in a 180ºC oven. When you lift off the cap, the buttery cinnamon smell just hits you… wow!!! Scoop out some of the pumpkin and drizzle over a bit of the liquid… so good I tell you, so good!

Pumpkin + Butter + Brown Sugar + Cinnamon… four ingredients, yeah!

(My friend Rebecca just reminded me that I had missed out an important step: before you put anything inside the pumpkin, don't forget to scoop out the seeds first! Just use a spoon to scrape them out. Thanks Becca! Good thing you reminded me just in case someone decided to try out the recipe and missed this step)

Butter Roast Chicken, ala Julia Childs

Hubs and I recently watched the film Julie & Julia. Julia Childs is a great icon who popularised French cooking in America in the 1950s. In the movie, I caught sight of a scene of Julie rubbing butter all over a chicken.

So after that I decided to google it to check out what that recipe was. It looked rather complicated at first, but after breaking it down, the recipe at its core required only a few basic ingredients, but just needed a bit of time in preparation and monitoring the cooking process.

First, wash a chicken in hot water and pat dry (they really emphasised this part in the recipe, so I thought I’d better not leave it out). Then rub the cavity with some salt and pepper, and stuff in some chopped onions, carrots, celery leaves and some lemon slices.

With the stuffing, I found different recipes varied this part a bit… some said to quickly fry the vegetables in some butter and thyme or mixed herbs then stuff them in the chicken; some omitted the frying part and just said to put the vegetables straight into the chicken. I decided to opt for the former, and do a little bit extra with the pre-frying since it was such a special occasion.

Truss the chicken legs together, then rub some salt and pepper and a couple of tablespoons of softened butter all over the chicken.

Now for the roasting part… basically you need to baste the chicken every 15 minutes. First basting is with a bit more butter, second basting is with juices from the pan, third basting is with some lemon juice, fourth is again with juices from the pan. After that it’s about checking and monitoring if the chicken is done by piercing the shoulder and see if the juices run clear. If the juices are still red, baste with more pan juices and check again in 7-8 minutes.

I know the chicken sounds complicated, but as I said when you break it down, it’s basically: Chicken + Vegetables + Butter + Lemon

The rest is just the technique and order of putting it together.

And the result… super tasty and tender chicken!

And finally for dessert…

Tang Yuan

My last attempt at making tang yuan was back in June the year before, which was no where near the date of the Winter Solstice festival. This year we missed the actual day (it’s always three days before Christmas). But I thought “better late than never!”. So I decided to prepare this on Christmas Day itself for a Christmas lunch at our friend’s place.

So in way, we still upheld the tradition in some way by eating this tang yuan together with people from our ‘church family’.

Again the ingredients are simple, but just require a bit of time in the preparation and process.

The ingredients for the ‘dumplings’ are basically glutinous rice flour, water and some food colouring. Rough measurements are about a cup of flour and about half a cup of water. Always put the water in a bit at a time as you mix the dough until it comes together .

Tip the dough out to a surface floured with more glutinous rice flour and keep kneading it until becomes a play dough like texture. Add a few drops of food colouring at this stage and knead it in… again a bit at a time until you get the shade you want. I usually divide the dough to allocate different colours for each.

After that it’s just simply pinching off pieces and rolling them into gum sized balls. I used to help my mum with this in the kitchen as a girl, so this is definitely a great activity for kids to get involved in.

When the balls are done, drop them in a pot of boiling water… when they are done, they will float to the top of the water.

For the ‘tang’, its essentially sugar and water. You can use rock sugar or gula melaka and add in some ginger slices for a bit more taste. I also add some red dates.

Is that four ingredients? Let’s see…

Dumplings = Glutinous rice flour + Water (food colouring is optional)

Soup = Sugar + Water

Looks like I can write my own 4 Ingredients recipe book too! I’m sure so can you.

What's under your tree this Christmas?

No presents under the Christmas tree today,

Nothing except a fluffy orange creature

Merry Christmas everyone!!! Hope you find something nice under your tree this year ^_^

Wishing you a blessed time this Christmas as you celebrate the birth of Jesus or simply cherishing special moments shared with loved ones this holiday season…

This baby made the angels sing

And this baby made a new star shine in the sky

This baby had come to change the world

This baby was God’s own son

This baby was like no other one

This baby was God with us

This baby was Jesus

‘This Baby’, Steven Curtis Chapman

…Love from me, hubs and Mishu.

What would you do?

Hubby and I recently celebrated our 5^th wedding anniversary earlier this month. We decided to have a nice laid-back dinner at Little Creatures (your recommendation, Diana!)… I always associated Little Ceatures with good locally brewed beer, but I never knew they served such great pizzas and chilli mussels… and their frites are just wow!!! I will never be fully satisfied with regular fries again.

From our seats, there is a clear view of their brewery… so you can admire the process of brewing the beer while you enjoy a pint

Among the various things we talked about was children… but delving a bit deeper into some of the more difficult questions around this.

You see, my colleague recently told me that her sister had found out that the 3-month baby she was carrying was indicated as having a cleft and at risk for other potential problems, like down syndrome. So they were faced with the difficult decision whether to terminate the baby. I was quite shaken when she told me this. No one in our office said anything beyond the usual sympathetic remarks… because what else could you say? Whichever decision they make, the outcome will affect them them for the rest of their lives… if they choose the terminate, the guilt will continue to haunt them through the years ahead… if they choose to keep the baby, the responsibility of carrying for a disabled child will continue to burden them as long as they live.

I was then faced with the same question. What would I do?

In the past, I would easily answer without even a flicker of doubt that my stand would be not to terminate. All children are a gift from God. How can you wilfully choose to take away another life just like that?

But now, the seemingly inevitable answer seems harder to face.

In the end I know the right thing to do based on my principles… but oh, the burden of the question weighs down so heavily. Whichever way you turn, there is no easy way to face it.

And so now, if I ever meet anyone who has ever had to face this difficult decision. I know my place can never be to judge or even to tell them what the right thing to do is. I can only shut my lips, and feel the heart wrenching pain they must be going through.

Hubby and I talked this over as we ate our pizza and frites and chilli mussels. We have not come to any easy conclusion.

I hope it’s a decision we never have to face.

If it were you, what would you do?

Biggest sandbox you’ll ever see

Ok this is one of the posts where I’ll just use the pics to tell the story:

Last Saturday, we spent the best part of the day wandering in the desert…

Miles and miles of sand dunes, looks like a barren wasteland… but these dunes are the fundamental part of a popular activity…

Sand boarding!!!

Find a dune, get on a board and just whizz down…

It doesn’t hurt because you’re just surrounded by plenty of soft white (hot) sand… such fun!

But then comes the hard part…

Climbing up to start over again… landing in soft sand = nice, but trudging up a steep sandy slope = not easy!

But the pain is worth it… after a rest at the top, it’s down the hill again!

If you think I look dorky in my hat, sunnies and shirt, consider being out in 38 degree heat, in high noon without a single cloud in the sky, surrounded by blinding white hot sand.

More photos in my Facebook here

Another birthday rolls by

As you might have guessed, I have a lot of overdue posts and pictures to share. Here are some images from my birthday which I celebrated in November... Presents received: 1. Latest Steven Curtis Chapman album (from myself to me)

2. Earrings (from colleagues)

3. Jewelry Box (from hubs - he tricked me with a 'small version' of the present and only gave me one of the sections/compartments from the whole set, then later on he surprised me with the 'full version')

For dinner, we went to 'Essex' in Fremantle and hubby was blown away by the meal. Hubs is rarely extravagant in his praise of western food (or any restaurant food for that matter), but upon tasting the food, he used words I never even knew he had in his vocabulary to describe the food... Entrée: five spice seared scallops with crispy pork belly with a warm salad of shitake mushroom and beansprouts - we liked this especially, the scallops were cooked to perfection and the pork belly was nice and crispy and the shitake mushrooms were just yummy!

Main: hubby's was fillet of beef filled with local scallops, grilled and topped with garlic cream and served with potato mash, mine was essentially the fish of the day, but it was some special fish from bunbury (can't remember the name) served with pumpkin and a light salad... very nice indeed.

Dessert: selection of Icky Sticky pudding enriched with butterscotch sauce, crème brulee, key lime tart, strawberries and cream, and a berry parfait

Thanks also for the phonecalls, birthday cards and numerous Facebook messages!!! I feel so surrounded by love.

More Mishu

Back by popular demand, here is more of Mishu...

We've had Mishu for almost five weeks now, and day by day, we see more and more of his personality is coming through. He really likes being around us, and whichever part of the house we're hanging around, he won't be too far away. But it's different from a dog. A dog will immediately jump up and follow you closely at your heels whenever you shift your position, even if it's just a milimeter away.

Mishu's movements are more subtle, for example when getting up from the living area and to go the bedroom to put the laundry away, if I'm away for more than 1-2 minutes, not very long later I will see an orange creature lurking in the doorway, peering about curiously. If he is especially curious, he will give a meow as if to enquire what I'm doing.

Here he is hanging around in the living room on the couch arm rest. That orange cushion is his own special private cushion.

A close up pic of him on his cushion: He looks so cute until cannot tahan sometimes... don't you feel like so *gaaarrggghh*... wanna hug him to bits *eeesh*

He moves around the house at his own leisure, and sometimes ends up in the oddest places.

But we don’t allow him on our bed, and not on the dining table, or the kitchen counter, and he is not allowed inside cupboards and cabinets, which he seems to have an obsession with. The moment you open a cabinet or cupboard, he will want to climb inside.

Recently he started to teach himself how to push the linen cupboard doors open, so we had to put a stool in front to block the way, hopefully he’ll eventually forget about it and we can avoid him getting into a habit with that.

Every morning when he hears us stirring and moving around as we get out of bed, he'll appear beside us and start meowing for breakfast and some attention. Interestingly, he doesn't meow to wake us up at a set time but will only start meowing when he hears us waking up. So on Saturday morning when we sleep in a bit longer, we don't have to worry about him bugging us for food and love.

On some mornings if I creep out of bed quietly, I'll catch him still sleeping. He sometimes sleeps like a person on his back like this. Cracks me up every time.

Many people ask me why we call him Mishu. Well when we come home at the end of the day, he'll be there waiting at the door for us and we'll say to him "we mish you, we mish you!" and he'll aways respond in some way, either meowing, lying on his back for a tummy rub, or rubbing his cheek against our leg. So that's why we call him Mishu!

Aaaaahh, Mishu... you really are the cutest cat!

20 cents

Every now and then I fall into some nostalgic mood - usually it follows events such as receiving a funny message in Facebook from old friends or reading a reflective post on an old friend or family member’s blog.

Lately, every Sunday during tithes & offering, a switch in my brain seems to flick on and bring back images and memories of Sunday School and our own tithes & offering session.

The old BCCM hall would be filled with bright faces of children all in their Sunday best. Girls in frilly dresses, beribboned hair and shiny patent shoes, and boys with shirts tucked-into shorts and socks pulled up to their knees, hair neatly parted and brylcreemed to one side - oh, I will never forget that image to my dying day.

I would receive a 20 cent coin from mummy or daddy to put into the collection bag. From memory, I think 20 cents was the general standard at that time among my Sunday School peers. As the collection bag was passed down the aisle, you could hear the clinking of coins being dropped unreservedly one by one.

I’m not sure why this part of the worship always seemed so exciting to me, perhaps the solemn air about it made me feel I was participating in something highly important. This was highlighted by the ‘offering song’ we always sang prior to the collection being taken up...

All to Jesus I surrender

All to Him I freely give

I will always love and trust Him

In His presence daily live

I surrender all

I surrender all

All to Jesus I surrender

I surrender all

It was a very slow, melancholy tune… we would be up standing, our high pitch childish voices ringing throughout the hall, clutching our 20 cent coins, ready to drop it in as the offering bag came our way. Apparently it was at some point here, one boy (Irwin) would always drop his coin on the floor, at which point his companion (Justin) would laugh and poke fun at him.

All of this contributed to the general feeling importance about the whole ceremony. Furthermore, children find handling money very exciting when they are first given the privilege. 20 cents is not much money to an adult, especially in the context of today’s economy, but it’s a tremendous responsibility for a child… 20 cents = four pieces of White Rabbit sweets OR a popsicle tube OR a potong aiskrim stick… wow… 20 cents can go a long way in those days.

Over time, 20 cents was increased to 50 cents… and later on to a dollar… etc… no matter the amount, we would duly put in the coin in the offering bag every Sunday.

This was the age of innocence… before the temptations of the world came in to plague us.

One form it manifested in was (*cue dramatic music*) ‘The Soft Drink Vending Machine’

You see during weekdays, the hall was also used for other recreational activities like badminton or for social gatherings. I suppose it made sense for the management to respond to general customer need or demand - in this case, soft drinks on demand.

From that point onwards, the Sunday School Teachers started to notice a slight dwindling in amount of the offering collection. Alas! The lure of sugary carbonated drinks was just too much for some kids to hold back from. Thankfully with a little reaffirming of values (and I imagine some parental discipline as well) the issue got under control.

So what can we learn from this in relation to ‘giving’?

#1. Give with the innocence of a child. As children we had no qualms releasing that 20 cent coin, because we had complete faith and trust in the hands that gave it to us in the first place. Learn to give without reservation, because you can be fully assured of God’s provision for your life.

#2. Learn to prioritise (and handle temptations). The lure of ‘want to haves’ and ‘want more’ will always be there. The solution was not to ask someone to take away the vending machine. Instead we had to learn how to resist the temptation and develop the inner strength in the way of obedience. The money was not ours, it was entrusted to us to put in the collection bag - so it is with us today.