Do you ever have days when you just feel blah? There is nothing really bad going on but you just feel kinda…. lousy? For no reason? Yep, it was one of those days.  Nothing to do with PMS.  And when that happen, I feel so blah to even update my blog.  But it’s a good time to do some quiet reading.  Especially Twilight Fiction.

Till then… have a good weekend and say hi to your Mom for me.  Ciao!

Top to bottom: Onigiri rice, stir fried organic slim lily bud with hae bee (dry prawn), emperor pear & longan, deep fried chicken wings and unagi cawanmushi.

Our fridge is stuffed with so many veges we bought from Cameron!  Time to clear all of them before the once “fresh-vegetables” turned into “no-longer-fresh-vegetables”.

For the soup, we boiled together some anchovies, beetroot and carrot for an hour.

This is how my Son eat his meal.  He discard the carrot and beetroot.  Add in that two pieces of onigiri rice to the soup and finished up the whole thing!  This way, I save my energy forcing them to drink soup.

After a few trip up to Cameron, we started to fall in love with the place especially the weather although at some days it can be hot and some days the wind can be very strong making the weather so pleasant, so suitable for outdoor camping or even rent a rv towing. This time, we plan to let the children explore with nature.  I have been planning this event since 5 years ago but the timing is always not right whenever we are in Cameron Highlands. So I die-die also must go pick my own vegetables. While driving around looking for the vegetable farm, ‘ssssssssssome’ people losses their patient and we get comment like this:

“Aiyah, just buy some carrot and stick them in the ground then ask your kids to pull lor.”

“Veges from the market don’t want to buy. Come and pluck veges and do all the farmer’s work. He must be laughing his way to the bank!”

Thanks to BIL & Daddy. That is such an encouragement. Not!

Lots of pictures of Kharsyn & Carlgene as he enjoy getting himself dirty. Kharlette is ‘allergic’ (*rolling eye) to mud and has been staying at the cemented floor most of the time.

The first one we attack is the carrot patch!

This is the only proper picture of Kharlette at the vegetable farm

My Nephew, Jonathan looks like a dwarf holding a bunch of mini carrots.  Cute!

Raddish

Unearth the potatoes

Beetroot

One can tell that the cabbage is really heavy by looking at Kharsyn’s facial expression!

Cherry tomatoes.  They are so sweet!

Fresh carrot, anyone?

I’m loving this place.  Will be back again next time and many times more!

Short Talk: Yesterday, I bring along my 4 years old to enrolled for ballet lesson.  Told the teacher I am enrolling my 9 and 4 years old daughters.  She look at me and said, “… but you look so young!” I know, dem perasan right?  Make my tail stand and whistle like the Kettlebell.  Woot!

Back to Cameron Highland post.  Last May when we was in Cameron Highlands, we didn’t know strawberry was a seasonal fruits.  Since all the strawberry hasn’t ripe yet, there is none for us to hand pick.  But this time round,  Strawberry was everywhere.  This is how the charges like.  Two person is allocated to one basket and you must pluck at least half kilo of strawberry.  A line was indicated on the basket to roughly tell you the weight.  Half a kilo of strawberry is RM20.00.  I saw somewhere selling pre-packed strawberry at RM12.00. ( >.< Just close one eye).  Prices could varied from farm to farm.  We don’t want to waste time stopping at every farm comparing prices.  Most of all, we was doing this all for blogging fun and experience.

We took 2 baskets.  Dotter and Son one basket and my Sister and me another basket.  I sneaked Little Missy when the guy was not watching.  Sheeshh….

Dotter and Son happily and excitedly dash off harvesting their crops.  I have to remind them to “CUT ONLY THE RED ONES!!!”.  My Sister and Little Missy paired up so that leaves me all the time I have to be a photographer.  The two team was going their separate way so you can imagine how I ran the whole place like a mad girl.  No good.  After a while when I look into their baskets, I goes, “CUT ONLY THE DARK RED ONES! NOT THE LIGHT RED!!!!” LOL

This is my favourite shot.

Next post will have more farming involved.   Stay tune.

Mom was at my Sister’s place.  She rang me the other day asking me to come over as she has something interesting to show.  When I arrived (the next day), she showed me a durian in a durian.

Very interesting but the shocking thing I found out is… she actually stop everyone from further eating the durian just to save them for me to photograph/blog.  I.AM.SO.TOUCH.!!!

Mom even can suggest few angle point to shoot the durian in the durian and she insist that I should lift up the tiny durian and take another shot.  She makes me go, “Ma, why don’t you go get yourself a blog.” Wakakaka!!!

Another shocking thing is, “THEY ATE DURIAN ALSO NEVER CALL ME OVER!!!!”  HOW CAN!!!!

With kids around, we hardly cook spicy food at home.  What’s more with this nice looking squid?  This is what my Mom used to cook for us when we was younger.

Stuff some minced pork (marinate with soy sauce, papper, sesame oil and tapioca or cornflour) into the squid’s cavity, pour oyster sauce on it then steam them till done.

Top row:  Grilled Taiwan sausage, chives omelette (homegrown!), mangosteens.
Bottom row:  Inarizushi (rice stuff in tofu skin) and stuffed squid.

Good thing this is a back dated bento but looking back, I recalled that night I replied Hubby’s sms that read, “Throw away the damn food if you are not coming home to eat.”  That is because Hubby “suddenly” decided to change his plan for not coming home for dinner.  Good thing I’ve never post my bento on date and that way, I don’t put grouges in the blog.

Close up:

Grilled Taiwan sausage and home grown chives omelette

Inarizushi

Squid stuff with minced pork

During our recent 2 days/one night trip to Cameron Highlands, I came home with over 400 shots.  Day by day, my pc memory is running low.  Thanks to the 16gb external hard.  Instead of clogging up my blog with pictures, now I have them uploaded in Facebook.  I will still choose some of my favourite shots to share with those who is not in my Facebook account.

This is my 4 years old Little Missy occasionally aka Little Miss Troublemaker or Baby Princess but today I shall address her as Little Missy.  You will know why after looking at her poses.

Tips:  The thing with .jpeg files.  The more editing (resizing) you do, the quality is reduced by the number of usage.  So each time you resize them, got to sharpen it.  By then, you will get very crappy picture. The lazy me always do this.  Open the original picture (2888px), resized them at 600px for Facebook upload (sharpened it), resized them again at 200px for scrapbooking (sharpened it), finally resized again the scrapbook layout to accommodate my blog. (No more pixel to sharpen)  Crappy isn’t it!  If can, always use original picture and never reuse the resized picture.  Geddit?

Have you guys watch Transformers – Revenge of The Fallen?  If you do, you will notice Sam Witwicky address Bumble Bee as ‘Bee’.  Not sure about you but I think that name is a bit sissy to be used for a robot.  And to make him look more sissy, why on earth does he (Bee) have to weep a bucket (a scene in Sam’s garage).  And that scene of Sam parent’s garden is so beautifully ruin.  Awesome!  I wonder how much does the home insurance quote gonna pay for a new house.

By the way, here is some ‘Bees’ photographs that I took in Bees Farm in Cameron Highlands.  The purple flower is lavendar and they have heaps in the farm!

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We went up to Cameron Highlands over the weekend.  As usual, most car will stop at the waterfall to take a break from motion sickness.  While taking pictures of these wild mushrooms, a local man came over and told me they actually consume them.  Errr… no thanks!

Before we continue our journey up the winding road, Daddy can’t resist buying some golden yellow looking bananas.

My suaku kids is so used to seeing barcode scanner in Hypermarkets.  They was pretending weighing banana on the weighing machine used in pasar malam.

More post on Cameron Highlands after this 😉

The other day my Sister gave me a big plastic bag of her home grown organic Roselle. The buds is so pretty!  So ang-ang (red)!  The best way to bring out the shot is by having a white background.  This is how i do it.

Lay a piece of white paper as the background.  Use a white ceramic bowl.  Switch on your flash and viola!  You get white background and a shadow.  Unlikecropping of the background which will make your subject look so fake.

Now that I’ve got the shot taken, it’s time for cooking.  The taste of Roselle drink is very close to Ribena  minus the colouring and artificial flavouring.

Peel the petals.  Discard the seed. Boiled the petals in water for 30 minutes and sweetened the drink with rock sugar.

This Daddy hor, he is very weird wan.  I asked him to get me a packet of rock sugar.  He always come back with 2 packets of sugar anything!  Now that remaining one packet of rock sugar is taking up space in my fridge. *blueh!*

Chilled Roselle in the fridge.  Do not discard the buds as they are consumable. Another flash photography on the drinks.