Baked Chicken Balls

Ingredients:

1. 500gm of minced chicken (marinated with sea-salt and sunflower oil)
2. 1/4 cup of organic all-purpose flour
3. 2 tablespoons of sunflower oil
4. 3 cloves of garlic (outer layer removed and chopped into tiny pieces)
5. 1 stalk of chives (chopped into tiny pieces)
6. Soft brown sugar

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1. In a large mixing bowl, mix all of the ingredients above.

2. Preheat oven at 180C.

3. Line a baking tray with baking paper.

4. Once all the ingredients are throughly mixed, scoop round balls of the mixture with a soup spoon and place on baking tray.

5. Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes or until chicken balls are slightly browned.

6. Serve with warm rice or as finger food.

Bon appétit!

Claypot Potato & Chicken Stew (With Garlic and Chives)

Ingredients:

1. 1 whole chicken cut into 12 pieces (season with sea-salt and left overnight in the fridge)
2. 7 large potatoes (skin removed and cut into quarter size)
3. 1 garlic (outer layer removed)
4. Chives (cut into 3 cm in length)
5. Sunflower oil
6. Sea-salt
7. Soft brown sugar
8. 1 cup chicken broth

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1. Pour about 3 tablespoons of sunflower oil into a large clay pot. Heat the oil and add the potatoes.

2. Cook until potatoes are soft.

3. Add the chicken pieces and the chicken broth and bring it to a boil.

4. Let it simmer for 1 hour.

5. Stir the dish until potatoes have turned mashy and a thick gravy has formed.

6. Add the garlic bulbs and chives and stir for another 3 minutes.

7. Season with sea-salt and soft brown sugar to taste.

8. Serve hot with rice.

Bon appétit!

Container Garden - An Update

We harvested 5 cucumbers from the plant before it got destroyed by the cucumber bug.

The bugs even ate the pollinated cucumbers!

Fresh spinach from the garden! Little boy ate all of it. He just loves spinach stir fried with garlic.

The toad who lived in my garden and subsequently became a FAT pig. This is Terry the FATTY-LICIOUS TOAD!

Fresh herbs for my mum. I have lavendula, mint, peppermint, lemon balm and parsley(which died).

A harvest of herbs and okra! The okra just keeps on producing. 

The Glorious Heavens - Part 20 (Hot Days!)

It has been so hot of late, that at one point it reached 40C! We've been having heat waves almost everyday. Even the tap water is HOT! By 8am in the morning, the sun is already blazing away. Thank god for air-con! 

Stir-Fry Garlic & Chives Chicken

Ingredients:

1. Garlic (1 whole bulb - outer layer removed)
2. Spring onion/chives (1 bunch - cut into about 3cm in length)
3. 1/2 chicken (cut into 8 pieces - season with sea-salt)
4. Sea-salt
5. Sunflower oil

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1. Heat a wok.

2. Once the wok is hot, pour about 3 tablespoons of sunflower oil.

3. Add the garlic and cook until aroma of garlic fills the kitchen.

4. Add the chicken, a sprinkle of sea-salt and stir fry until the dish is 98% ready.

5. Add the spring onions/chives and fry for another 5 minutes.

6. Scoop up onto serving plate.

7. Serve with hot rice.

Bon appétit!

Fried Egg with Minced Chicken & Chives

Ingredients:

1. 8 eggs
2. 200gm of minced chicken (season with sea-salt)
3. 2 stalks of chives/spring onions
4. Sea-salt
5. Sunflower oil

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1. Break all eggs into a large bowl.

2. Add 2 tablespoons of sunflower oil and a teaspoon of sea-salt into the bowl and beat the eggs.

3. Add the minced chicken and chicken to the beaten eggs.

4. Heat a wok.

5. Pour the mixed concoction onto the wok and stir until it is cooked.

6. Serve warm with rice.

Bon appétit!

Totally Stressed Out!

A pipe has been leaking in the wet kitchen for awhile now. Water has been seeping out of the outer wall!!! The water bill even spiked to over RM100! The previous contractor-cum-plumber is an idiot. So was his boss. A straight-forward piping job was turned into a round-the-bush-hide-and-seek game. We couldn't figure out where the hell the water pipe was! It should have been an A to B route but it turned out to be A to T to Z and then B!

There was so much drilling and hacking and flooding in the wet kitchen today just to find that bloody pipe. I was super-duper-extremely stressed. And the kitchen is still flooded. And the amount of debris was frightening. Even with my thickest mask on, I could still smell the glue and cement and chemicals. Hubby was stuck at work. Parents are stuck at their place as their washing machine and dryer broke down (a second time!!). My mum said, 'When it rains, it pours!'

Thank god for this present supervisor who was recommended by my neighbour. They did her renovation. And they are reliable. And they helped me A LOT with rectifying the previous idiot's mistakes. Work will resume at 8 in the morning tomorrow.

Meanwhile the kitchen is still flooded. But hubby finally found the leak!!!!!  We can now see water running down from the pipe at one of the places the plumber had hacked in the afternoon.

The flooded kitchen with the cement mess and debris!

Fixing a new piping line. 

I think I should take up plumbing classes! HAHA!!

Steamed Stuffed Bean Curd

Ingredients:

1. 2 large pieces of soft bean curd/tofu.
2. Spring onions (chopped into tiny pieces)
3. 200gm minced chicken (seasoned with sea-salt, brown sugar and sunflower oil)
4. Sea-salt
5. Soft brown sugar
6. Sunflower oil

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1. Mix the minced chicken and spring onions together.

2. Cut the bean curd into 3 parts.

3. Make a small crater in the middle of each bean curd with a spoon.

4. Mix the bean curd that was scooped out with the minced chicken.

5. Spoon the minced chicken mixture onto each crater.

6. Arrange the bean curd pieces on a plate which is to be placed into a steamer.

7. Steam for 15 to 20 minutes.

8. Serve while it is hot.

Bon appétit!

I wasn't 'gentle' enough with one of the bean curd when I was placing the minced chicken onto it. You can see the broken bean curd!

Cod Fish + Spring Onions Fillets

Ingredients:

1. 1 large thickly sliced cod fish
2. 1 stalk of spring onion (washed and chopped into small pieces)
3. Sea-salt
4. Soft brown sugar
5. 1 egg
6. About 3 to 4 tablespoons of organic all-purpose flour

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1. Preheat oven to 200C.

2. Line a baking pan with baking paper. Season the cod fish with sea-salt.

3. Bake for about 20 minutes.

4. Once the fish is done, debone it.

5. In a mixing bowl, add the deboned fish chunks, spring onions, a sprinkle of sea-salt and soft brown sugar, egg and the organic all-purpose flour.

6. Mix all ingredients thoroughly.

7. Preheat oven to 200C.

8. On a baking tray lined with baking paper, drop tablespoons size of the fish mixture.

9. Bake for about 20 minutes.

10. Allow to cool before serving. You can either serve it with rice or eat it on its own.

Bon appétit!

The Right To Be Alive

Alive.

The definition of alive can be defined as not dead or lifeless. It can also mean to be in a state of action. It also means full of spirit and energy. Alive also means to be vibrant, vivid and having the quality of life.

As an individual on this planet, I strongly believe that we have The Right to be Alive (and not dead) where freedom is concerned. The freedom to speak our minds, the freedom to have our own individual thoughts, the freedom to be ourselves and in being different and yet the same.

We deserve The Right to be Alive in our dreams. We should be able to have dreams without being afraid of them being shot down. Our dreams have a Right to be Alive!

We deserve The Right to be Alive in our beliefs. Practicing dead beliefs or practicing for the sake of practicing is equivalent to not practicing at all. Don't be a hypocrite. If you are convinced with the beliefs that you have, be alive (vivid) about it!

We deserve The Right to be Alive in our education. Our children deserve to be alive in their learning. They must be taught to think and to think freely. Where thinking out-of-the-box is rewarded and not labelled stupid. Where information need not be cut into minute-bite-sizes to be fed into each individual for fear of them choking if fed with large chunks. Where each student's creativity is rewarded and not doused with water-of-discouragement. Where whatever they learn is relevant for their future lives and not redundant material which is to be regurgitated out during exams to be translated into As.

Safety has the Right to be Alive. Where else crime deserves a big kick in its ass rather than being labelled as a 'perception'.  We should not be living our lives peering over our shoulders all the time for fear of being mugged, raped or kidnapped. We should not be afraid of walking out of our houses, sleeping at night or even parking our cars in mall carparks or even outside of our houses for fear of being robbed. We have a right to live our lives in peace!

Unity has The Right to be Alive. So do Peace, Harmony, Tolerance, Respect, and Understanding.

So we are asked what more do we want??!

We want 'The Right to be Alive!!'

Malaysia's 13th GE!

Today is our 13th general election and the results will soon be out. To follow click on these both links:

Malaysiakini

Malaysian Insider

The Glorious Heavens - Part 19

Sunset!

'Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out form behind the clouds! Shine.' - Buddha

'Sometimes I go about pitying myself, and all the while I am being carried across the sky by beautiful clouds.' - Ojibwe Proverb

A 'stingray' in the sky!