Rainbow Fried Rice

One of my morning routine is to prepare breakfast for my mom and myself. Just like usual, I like to cook from what I have in my fridge. So, this morning I made fried rice because I have some left-over steamed rice in the fridge plus other ingredients I just bought the other day. So here it is the Rainbow Fried Rice!

 And here is the ingredients:
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 2 cloves of onion, sliced
- a handful of sugar pod peas, halved
- a handful of Iceberg lettuce, chopped
- a handful of cilantro leaves, coarsely minced
- Some bell-pepper, chopped (mix color of green, yellow, orange and red)
- 5 hot chilli pepper, diced (optional)
- 2 eggs
- a piece of Bakwa (Chinese sweet & salty pork jerky), diced 
- 3 plates of steamed rice (it's best if refrigerated overnight)
- 3-4 Tbs salted soya sauce
- 2-3 Tbs sweet soya sauce 
- salt
- 3 Tbs vegetable oil

Local Indonesian Salty and Sweet Soya Sauce

How to :

1) Heat the oil in the skillet and sauté the garlic until fragrant, stir in the onion and chilli pepper, stir until brown and to be followed by the eggs.

2) Then, stir in the Bakwa (pork jerky), add about 2 Tbs of salty soya sauce, stir until it's fragrant and the eggs cooked. (I happened to have some Bakwa left in my freezer, my sister bought them from Singapore about 3 weeks ago. I like it because the flavor and the sweet taste of it enrich the taste and flavor of the fried rice, but certainly you can substitute it with other meats, sausages or even shrimps.)

3) Add Bell Pepper, stir until it's cooked.

4) I also added some leftover fresh-Iceberg lettuce from the other day. Stir well.

5) Now, you can add the rice in. Using a stainless frying spoon, try to break all the lumps of  rice by pressing the spoon onto the rice until it blends with all the ingredients. 

6) Stir in cilantro leaves and add more salted soya sauce and salt.

7) Last but not the least, add the sweet soya sauce, stir well for another minute. And there you go, the Rainbow Fried Rice is ready to be served! Put some cilantro leaves as garnish.

Propagating Cilantro from the roots

Since I started gardening a month ago, I learned a lot from other fellow gardeners and my own experience; mostly from my ignorance. It's like the shout-out "Welcome to the real world!" There's some successes and also failures in both germinating and propagating seeds. I have even started to experience and handled my mango plant which is infested with anthracnose and mealy bugs. There's excitement, hope and frustration at one or the other time, but most of all it has been a positive experience for me. I am glad to have failed, thus I can learn from my mistakes.

Last week, I bought some fresh cilantro from a wet market on my way home from sending-off my niece to her school. Upon arriving home, I chopped the leaves off and kept them in a box in the fridge, and I took the roots and put them in a cup of tap water overnight in an effort to extend it before I had time to plant it in the soil. The next day they started to grow new leaves, and after 3 days the new leaves had grown to approximately 2 cm, but then I noticed that the roots were getting flaccid and the water got a little forthy. I was very intriqued of what had caused it. Was it the rainwater I added to the tap water after 2 days? Well, just like what I did to save my tomato plants, I decided to go ahead and transfered them into the soil and placed the container at the rooftop along with my other plants. I thought, in this way it will save the roots... and they would start to grow... but I learned another lesson...

The next day, I noticed that it's not growing as I had expected, but the leaves were starting to wither and turned flabby. At first I thought it was probably the Sun being too scorching during daytime, so I decided to move it inside in the evening. Later that night, out of curiosity, I dug out the roots and sure enough the roots began to rot and turned to mush.

5th Grade Science : Roots are very important as it is the mouth of the plant and it also anchor the plant in place. Thus, the existing symptoms showed that there's something wrong with the roots that made it slowly dying off. I wasn't sure of what had caused it. I thought it was the chlorinated and fluoridated tap water, which is usually avoided by most organic gardeners. But then I found that Cilantro roots can rot if it is over-watered.  So it must be because  I transitioned it in the water for several days, which had apparently caused the roots to rot.

Whatever it is, I am not going to let it happen anymore. Yesterday, I bought some fresh cilantro, so I could propagate the roots again. And this time I replanted them in the pots right away! They started to grow!

Learning from mistake

These several days I've been preoccupied with the attempts to save the lives of my tomato seedlings! Since my last blogging I noticed that some of the cotyledon of my nearly-4-week tomato seedlings were turning yellowish. I was frantic but at the same time feeling perplexed. What had I done that was wrong? 

After some assessment I was convinced that it's overwatering. I was inexperienced and had no idea of how much water is enough for my seedlings, so all I tried to do was keeping the vermiculite moist but I might have watered it too often that one time I noticed that the water in the container was brimming over since my container doesn't have holes at the bottom, so I had to pour the water excess out.

At the beginning, it was only started with one or two leaves turning yellow but then I noticed that more leaves were affected. The first thought that crossed my mind was they were going to die! And honestly that made me grief! My love has grown for them and that thinking had really made my heart sunk. 

The other possible factor was because they grew too close to each other. I was a novice gardener, so I impulsively emptied the whole packet of seeds into one container! I had no idea that all of the seeds had decided to germinate altogether! So, crowding they were in that little container. 

I'd been impatient to move them into bigger or perhaps individual containers but the instruction said I have to wait until at least they had reached 10 cm tall, but upon encountering this I had decided it was my only way and chance to give them an emergency CPR! So I rushed and mixed the soil with some compost and replanted them. I had also decided to place them out in the open space of my rooftop against the wall facing the west, and above it there's a small-rectangular iron-sheeting shade, so they won't be directly under the scorching tropical sun at noon. Well, honestly I wasn't thinking of how direct exposure to sunlight might affect them or whether it would stress the plants out. I simply hoped that with the new soil, access to sunlight and wise watering they would have a second chance to live. 

I waited restlessly, and observed if they managed to survive. And though the yellowish cotyledon stayed the same, I began to see new life thriving! I started to see that new shoots were coming and branching out! Hallelujah!! 

It's been four or five days, and they are growing healthier now, though size-wise I think they're pretty small or growing slowly, but I am very happy with their condition now. It's as if that they have managed to pass their critical moment and I am wishing that they will continue growing into big and healthy tomato plants that will bear multiple fruit in the near future! Amen to that! Ha...

Meanwhile, my Basil seedlings continues growing healthily.

Vegetable Cream Soup

Ingredients:

1 Tbs butter

1 Tbs wheat flour (if you like thick soup, you may add another 1Tbs of flour)

3 cups of milk 

1 cup of mixed frozen/fresh veggies (carrot, corn, green bean, broccoli) 

1/3 cup of canned mushroom, sliced

1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

a pinch of salt

a pinch of black pepper

How to:

1. Melt the butter in the pan, stir in the wheat flour. 

2. Pour in milk. Stir until you get the consistency you want. You may add more milk.

3. Stir in mixed veggies and mushroom. If you're using fresh veggies make sure to boil them until tender.

4. Add shredded cheese, stir until it blends with the soup 

5. Add salt and black pepper.

6. Serve with plain or garlic butter french bread.

DIY Multi-purpose Cleaner

On last October 15th, I harvested a pint of DIY citrus multi-purpose cleaner. And I have tried it for mopping the floor. I mixed the citrus vinegar with water with 50:50 proportion. And for a small bucket of water I add about 5-6 caps of the cleaner (the cap is the size of a mineral water's lid). I could still smell the vinegar's tangy stench but with fresh orange scent overtone. The floor is very clean and smell good, comercial cleaner is absolutely beaten but I got one lesson: Make sure to clean/wash the mopper after mopping! Getting ready to harvest another pint and produce more!

Basil & Lemon

Yesterday, I noticed some Basil seedlings sprouting out and within hours they grew bigger! 

And also the lemon seedling...

However, I haven't seen any sign of germination from the orange bell pepper and lime... 

Oh well, I'll wait a little longer...

Btw, it's over 3 weeks now and the tomatoes seedlings are growing taller and those new shoots are getting bigger and cuter too. I can hardly wait to move them into bigger pots as it is getting crowded in the germination pot. 

Cumin Fried Spaghetti

I am a fan of cumin and love to experiment with it in my cooking. I was first fallen with cumin when my best friend's helper cooked "Gulai Aceh" (a special fish curry from Aceh); I experimented with my own recipes ever since. So, one day I made this cumin spaghetti and my family loved it, it has become one of my signature dish so far! 

Ingredients :
1 medium ripe tomato, diced
1 orange/red/green bell pepper (or combination of three for more color, I happened to have the orange color one only in my fridge), diced
1 packet (500 gr) of spaghetti
300 gr chicken breast, minced (I like to use shrimp too but you can of course subsitute it with ground beef)
salt

Condiment, finely ground using blender or stone mortar and pestle:
2 cloves of garlic
3 cloves of onion
5-7 red pepper
1 cm of fresh tumeric
1 Tbs of ground cumin
3-4 Tbs of olive oil

How to:
1. Boil the spaghetti until al dente.

2. Sauté the condiment with olive oil til fragrant, add  bell pepper and tomato, and stir in minced chicken breast until well cooked. You may add more oil if it's getting dried up (adjust it to your preference, especially if you like more olive oil with your spaghetti).

3. Finally, add boiled spaghetti and stir well and add salt (adjust it to your taste). Serve.

Spicy Steamed Fish Head

The weather had been bleak for days and the sky had been gray and foggy the whole morning. It made me hesitant to go out, though I had wanted to shop for several run out items like vinegar and butter. In rainy season like this, I usually consume a lot of ginger tea or more spicy food to warm up my body. Since Indonesian is an archipelagic country surrounded by the sea, thus, Indonesian diet consists of a lot of seafood, mostly fish. We do have abundance of fish - many kinds, which we are very grateful for 'cause we have such immense source of protein from the sea.

So, I decided to cook spicy steamed fish head (Chinese style) and here is the recipe:

2 big red snapper fish heads (halved)

2 cloves of garlic (minced)

5 cm of young ginger (julienned) (add more as you like) 

10 hot Thai chayenne pepper (diced, if you don't like spicy leave the pepper undiced) - you can use any paddy chilli too (green ones)

2-3 small calamansi citrus to marinate the fish heads (you can subsitute it with lime or lemon juice just enough to season the fish head in order to eliminate the fishy smell) 

2 Tbs of vegetable oil for sautéing

2 Tbs of sesame oil

3-5 Tbs of salted soya sauce (adjust it according to your taste, I usually don't use anymore salt so I just add more to reach the salty taste).

1 Tbs of salted soya bean (optional) - if you use salted soya bean, you may want to lessen the salted soya sauce.

11/2 tsp of sugar

1 - 1 1/2 cup of water

2 sprigs of scallion, sliced

How to:
1. Marinate the fish heads with the lime juice for 5-10 mins, drained. Place the fish heads in a tin plate. 

2. Pre-heat the steamer and sauté garlic with vegetable oil until fragrant, add diced chilli, ginger, salted soya sauce, sesame oil and salted soya bean(optional). Keep sautéing until it turns brown. 

3.Transfer the sautéd ingredients over the fish heads, sprinkle sugar on top of it, add water.

4. Place the the tin plate in the steamer when the steamer is boiling or ready. Steam for 15 mins.

5.Remove the plate from the steamer when it's done and sprinkle with sliced scallion. Serve with steamed rice.

Sometimes I use dehydrated red pepper though fresh paddy chilli/hot pepper is best

New Recipe To Try - Amish Cinnamon Bread

The productivity continued on till the evening, where I decided to try on the recipe of Amish Cinnamon Bread from Redfly Creations 

This gave me the opportunity to run my still brand new mixer I got from my best friend on one of my birthday several years ago! It hasn't been used at all for at least 6 or 7 years! Amazing that it still works perfectly! I am so grateful for it, since it eased my work very much!

I was actually thinking about baking some banana bread, but then I stumbled upon this recipe and since I have all the ingredients I gave it a go.  As usual, I cut the amount of sugar because I don't have a sweet tooth, so I cut the sugar from 2 cups to 1 1/4 cups only, given that the topping will use another 2/3 cups of cinnamon sugar. And it proved to be perfect for me!

Look at the crumbly and soft texture, it's yummy!

Potted Garden Apprentice

Today has been a great and productive day! I moved my mango tree to a new pot this morning. I am happy to see it sit comfortably in its new dwelling. I also started to germinate some seeds in mostly recycled containers: Basil which I bought from a nearby Ace Hardware store, Lemon, Lime and Orange Bell-Pepper which I saved myself. To make it easier for me to remember the date and check up on the germination, I put a label on each container.



And then, I organized my remaining seeds in small zip-lock plastic bags. Well, talking about seeds, I am so glad to have been informed that a dear friend from the States is coming to Indonesia this coming November, because that means she can bring me some seeds I am going to order from an organic source in America! Well, I'm not really sure if the seeds will be able to grow in the tropical weather of Indonesia, but I will try anyway. I have made a list and so far there have been 67 types of vegetables and fruit seeds in it! Gosh! I can't help it, I want to plant them all! 

Seeds Saving

Since last week, I have started my Project # 3  - Seeds Saving! Thanks to Hickery Holler I have started to save some seeds of Lemon, Orange-Color Bell Pepper (Paprika) and a handful of Pumpkin seeds! However, it has some weaknesses as I don't have any idea if the fresh produce I saved the seed from were hybrid or heirloom, let alone organic or pesticides-ladden! :-(  As far as I know that most of the vegetables we consume, those we buy from the wet market or supermarket, are traditionally grown - meaning: grown using pesticides and inorganic fertilizers. But, this is such a fun project for me, a way to learn and experiment. 

My indoor plants

Last Sunday, I bought a 15 kgs bag of organic compost which is made of organic waste and a packet of lemongrass seeds, and yesterday I scored 2 bags of soil. With these I think I can sufficiently start germinating the paprika, lemon and lemongrass, and will have enough soil for the tomatoes bedding. I only need to wait till they are 10 cm high before I can move them to a bigger pot. I plan to utilize an old bathing plastic pail for the tomatoes bedding. A frugal choice and it's also recycled! Yeeei!