My First Luffa

Luffa or petola is one of our favourite veggie except for my son ….. I wonder why????
My first attempt at planting this veggie was fruitless but the plant grew very well and I think it became a bit too much for the shared trellis and it collapsed after a storm. Yes initially there was no petola plant but when the pole bean did not make it, I replaced it with petola and I guess by that time when it was growing at it’s max, the trellis must have had worn out.
The next plant was planted on its own trellis which is of the teepee kind but this plant had to be destroyed because it was infested with hairy caterpillars.
The third plant was also planted on its own teepee trellis and it grew real well but no luffa. There were many flowers and mini luffas that just drop off. Anyway just decided to just let it continue growing since I had no new plants to plant yet.
Then one morning during my usual walk in the mini-farm, I was pleasantly surprised to see a portion of a luffa sticking out from among the leaves of the plant. This is my first luffa after more than three years.
In the west, luffa are usually left on the plant to grow old and dry up. They are then used as bathroom accessories. Here we eat it as soon as it is big enough for the table …… it was really delicious, my very first one, yum!! yum!!
It was already almost big enough for the table when I

View Full Album

discover it and not wanting it to be taken by some pesky pest, I harvested it. Home minister made egg luffa omelette for dinner  ………. burrp!! yummie!!!

A Pineapple Tale

I do not normally eat raw pineapple in my homeland because 99.9% of the time it is sour and sharp. What I mean by sharp is that it irritates the inside of my mouth to extend that it causes cuts and roughness on the tongue. From a young age I learned that there are only two kinds of pineapples, the sour kind which is normal in size and the half sweet and half sour kind which is large. The large kind is called Sarawak Pineapple.
When I first visited Thailand, I was really surprised that their pineapple is 100% sweet and very nice to eat. Whenever I am there I would eat as much pineapple as possible because they are sweet and heavenly to eat. To-date I have not tasted a sour pineapple from Thailand ever before. Sometimes I wonder why nobody grew the same  species here or is it just a natural thing that pineapples in Thailand are always sweet.
Quite awhile ago, my wife’s aunt gave her a Sarawak Pineapple from her own garden and almost 90% of the fruit was sweet. It was a large fruit and with the help of our son she planted the crown. At that time I was very busy climbing the corporate ladder and was not at all interested in  planting. Over the years we had eaten the fruits of this neglected plant a couple of times and it was really sweet but it was getting smaller and smaller.
It was in June 2008 when we had one of the fruit from the original neglected plant offspring and I was forced decided by Home Minister to plant the crown of that fruit in the mini farm. After a year and nine months plus minus a couple of days we were

View Full Album

rewarded with a two and a half kilo or five and a half pounds very sweet and yummie fruit. I am really glad that I was forced decided to plant it.
The crown of this fruit is now planted in a pot to be given to a very close friend of ours when she come visit next. I still have another plant in progress. The original plant will soon produce a new shoot for another awesome fruit soon.

Mini Farm Up-Date

Today my mini farm is almost two years old and it is maturing but is still very much an infant. In my first year of planting everything just seems to be easy except for the bout with sciatica which resulted from excessive extreme digging with the hoe which I broke the hoe stem. The mini farm then was like a mini jungle!!
After getting the mini farm back to looking like a farm, I started to get uninvited guest to feast on my produce, yes those damn pest of all kinds. Being a first time farmer, I just tried to cope with manual power to get rid of those pesky varmints. I had to destroy my angled luffa plant because it was infested with some kind of creepy hairy caterpillars …. yucks!!!!
In desperation I started googling for solutions and joined this very friendly and helpful forum web site “Garden Stew”. It is indeed a real nice gardening and social web site with lots of friendly and helpful members. I have benefitted a lot since becoming a member of Garden Stew and is happy to say that I have also contributed some to the www. This really make farming/gardening more meaningful. Just last week,  Frank the founder of Garden Stew drop by for a short visit and I was really honoured. I was the first member he visited since he set up the Garden Stew.
Last year towards end December till late February this year the weather was really hot and dry making it very difficult to plant anything. The produce from the mini farm was minimal and it wasn’t really tasty. This phenomena is not normal and some experts have labelled it as El Nino/La Nina. Well I guess if capitalist just keep on raping the earth, then ……… your guess is as good as mine as to which direction we are heading to.
Now the mini farm is aging nicely but have yet to attain a balance. Hmmm!! It is mini I hope it can establish a mini balanced eco-system so that those varmints can become food for the friendly inhabitants of the mini farm. Currently those varmints are more or less under control the very organic way and those delicious veggies are starting to fill up the kitchen and our tummies too!!!

View Full Album

Warehouse Sale

It is a sale and on top of it …. YAHOO!!! it is a WAREHOUSE sale. It is not just a sale, a mega sale but a WAREHOUSE sale. WOW!!! it must be great. Those were the thoughts that came to mine mind when Home Minister told me about this warehouse sale and I insisted that we must be one of the first few to be there to enjoy the goodies.

Me being not a shopping kaki or a sale chaser was really surprised at myself to be one of the first few visitors to this WAREHOUSE sale on opening day itself together with Home Minister and Princess. Just a few minutes before they open the door it is already a big mistake to be there having to put up with some no brainer organisers. A very loud DJ who thinks he is some kind of celebrity help make the situation worse. The prices …….. blueak !!! nothing special neither were the merchandise. In short it SUCKS!! full time.

From my experience in the past I always walk out of a WAREHOUSE sale satisfied with what I purchased at a real bargain. These sales were always at the WAREHOUSE of the company holding the sales. I guess holding the sales in their very own WAREHOUSE cut down lots of unnecessary cost. Having to move the product out of the WAREHOUSE to another state just simply add tons of unnecessary cost to products and having a celeb wanna be DJ does not help either. Guess I was suckered by the word WAREHOUSE.

Greetings!!

Gong Xi Fa Cai!!

☺

Wildlife at Home

When we first bought our home way back in the ‘80s, I never expected that there will be so many uninvited guests. The very first one was the slithery kind which I accidentally stepped on it when I was clearing the front yard of the overgrown lalang grass. Since the lalang grass was really long I couldn’t see what I was stepping on as I move along cutting the grass with a very blunt sickle. I was moving backwards and I felt I was stepping on something soft and I quickly turn around to see what it was as I was only wearing my kind of slippers. To my surprise I saw a section of a python at least more than 8 inches across where I had my foot on earlier. Whew!!! I was lucky it did not turn around and attack me ……. maybe the lalang was too long for it to turn around or it was busy feeding. Anyway it was nowhere to be found the next day when I went to look for it.
After we moved in there were the odd one or two mice which we could easily deal with until some very inconsiderate people move in a couple of houses away and set up a bean curd processing factory illegally. They just discharge their liquid waste into the drains and dump the solids around their house causing much of a stench in the neighbourhood. To make matter worst their irresponsible behaviour attracted lots of rats of various sizes. We can see large rats taking a stroll past our backyard and smaller ones dashing across towards their paradise. Luckily the authorities took action after some complaints were lodge and they were shut down. The rats remained for awhile and we had to invest in 3 traps to get rid of them.
Then there were the pigeons which thought that building their nest in our roof is cool.  Looking around the neighbourhood I can still see some kind of pigeon house ruins that remain standing in some of the houses. Well your guess is as good as mine; they must be abandoned by previous residents or even current ones. Getting rid of them was really difficult because they chose the apex of the roof to make their home. One day home minister saw a long thick furry thingy hanging down from the top of the bedroom window at night and I guess that really freak her out. At that time I was still working in KL and was only home on weekends. After some investigation it was confirmed that a “musang” had taken up residence in the roof and the piegons evicted.
A homemade trap ….. I made it off course ☺…… was setup in the attic and managed to trap two very young juveniles. I was in Kuala Lumpur at that time so home minister called the “bomba” or fire brigade to dispose of the trapped intruders with ma musang (aka ma mu) watching very protectively over them. There was no response from “perhilitan” or wildlife department when she called them before calling “bomba”. After a brief show of aggression between the “bomba” and ma mu, ma mu decide that she was outnumbered and left into the darkness with her one remaining offspring. The “bomba” also left with the juvenile “musangs” together my Bosch variable speed power drill. At that time I was still transforming the attic into The Penthouse.
The next intruder was a lone monkey that was making a nuisance of itself on the roof and again “bomba” was called in. A group of them came and started making monkey faces at the monkey …… don’t ask me I have no idea why and moreover I wasn’t there that time too. The monkey moved to the back of the house and the group of “monkeys” on the ground follow suit back and forth displaying their herd mentality or no mentality. One of them even tried using our gardening hose to spray water at the monkey and I guessed the monkey had a real good laugh. Eventually the monkey left.
A couple of years later, another ma mu came to make our roof her home and had her brood of four. One day ma mu did not return to feed her brood and they came wandering out of their safe house due to hunger. She could had suffered an accident or was caught by somebody somewhere else. I was constructing the penthouse at that time and saw them coming out from a hole which leads to the apex of my room ceiling. I managed to catch three of them and the fourth managed to get away from our house into the darkness.
Then came the “burung tiong” or myna birds taking over the safe house where the “musangs” were. They would bring whatever kind of rubbish to make their nest in the roof. They stayed for a couple of years until recently when another ma mu decided to make my house roof a training ground for bird hunting for her three offsprings. Ma mu was not able to get into the area between the roof and the ceiling because I had sealed off all possible entry point after the last experience. Since mama mu cannot get in she sent her young ones in to do the job because they are smaller and is able to get in through the smaller openings. They sure made a lot of noise jumping around attacking their prey. I noticed some bird feathers on the ground every morning.
This time since “perhilitan” had set up their web-site, I made a e-complaint and one of the condition mentioned is that they will at take least 3 days to respond. Instead of waiting I decided to get a trap and try to trap them myself. OK got the trap and set it up just outside princess room.
The “perhilitan” people did come with their trap but did not set it up because I already had my own. They recommended some different baits from what I am using to be more effective because three days had passed with no result. Then early next morning two juveniles were caught in the trap while the third juvenile was circling the trap with ma mu looking for a way to release the two in the trap. When I got closer to the trap ma mu and the remaining offspring decided to leave knowing there is nothing else they could do.
Got the “perhilitan” to come and take the two trapped juveniles away. One of them got its freedom due to the carelessness of the “perhilitan” people while transferring the captured into their cage. The little fellow was really fast in seizing the one opportunity to get away. In a matter of seconds it was already scurrying its way up towards the neighbour’s roof. I guess ma mu and the other must be watching from there.
Then there were also bats who thought that my son’s room air conditioner is a bat cave. Their guano stinks to high heaven  … yuucckks!!!!! The second time when I dismantled the air conditioner to clean it after the first time which I thought I had solved the problem, I discovered there was a gap of about an inch through the wall. The gap was at the area where the piping of the air conditioner exit the room. Got some sealant and sealed the gap and that should solve the problem ……...whew!!! 

Once a most unique intruder came and ended up in the cooking pot. A mud crab with its pincers tied up …… guess it must had escaped from someone else’s cooking pot. Couldn’t find its owner so ….. hehe!!!

Braised Leg of Pork.

After having eaten the "mui choy kau yoke" it is time to really deal with the porkie leg, you know the braised kind with tender chewy skin and fats that melts in your mouth ...... it is really delicious .....hmmm..... just had some of the left overs from my successful first attempt and it is still as good ..... yum, yum!! Used to have this dish when I visited Sg. Petani for business trip with my collegue, yes it was good and I am really happy that I can cook this dish myself now, and I can have it whenever I want now ....hehehe!!!!!!.

I started my quest for the perfect braised pork leg after my breakfast and morning paper routine towards end of last year. Home minister had to wake up real early, around 5:30am to get the porkie leg and she only managed to get it from another stall instead of the original shop she usually went too. That day was the last major festival for the Chinese before the coming new lunar year and pork was in extreme high demand, so even though home minister was there before 6:00am they were almost sold out. I guess she had to pay a premium from the other stall, anyway important thing is that we got the leg.

The premium porkie leg was nicely cleaned and one of the large bones removed.  I would have preferred that the bone intact so that the meat won't shrink as much when it is fried but I might have to cut the leg into two pieces to fit into the wok for frying. This dish call for the three process of cooking that is boil, fried and braised. It took me nearly the whole day to cook this dish but the desire to eat push me on ☺and I was really worn out at the end ot it.

All the tiredness and aches just disappeared when I took my first mouthful of this very very special sin food of mine, it is just simply scrumptious ......... want some?