Blessed Ramadan

Have a blessed Fasting month!

Ramadan 2015

I feel like I have not been writing for so long. It has been hectic at work as well as on my personal life. Being a care provider was a challenge and I am glad my one demanding and fussy patient is recovering well. However, it feels like the job to care for the patient’s need is never ending. There are times I just wanted to scream out loud or to just drop everything that I was doing. Luckily, I have faith and patience and just moved on. Every day I have to make sure that my patient take his medications. I have to make sure the food I serve has the fibers and nutrients my patient needed.

I am fasting during the holy month in Islamic calendar, Ramadan starting on June 18th. The hours to fast this time are very long. In my neighborhood, it starts from 4 am and end around 8:40pm. By 6:30 pm I started to feel weak. I can handle not eating any solid food for a day but not without drinking any water. I keep reminding myself how the poor feel when they do not have any food to eat. Life is hard. I am very grateful with what I have.

The best part of observing Ramadan is the celebration at the end of the Ramadan month, Syawal. I can eat lots of good food. It was a victory after a hardship during the fasting month.

 

The vegetables in the garden are growing well. They have been getting a lot of rain water. I could not go to the garden today since it was raining from morning. Working in the garden with wet soil is never fun. I hope tomorrow's weather will be better.

 

My friends invite me to their house for breaking fast dinner. I try my best to go. It was fun to meet them and enjoy lots of Asian food. Unfortunately, I cannot stay for terawih prayer since dinner start around 9 pm.

 

Yesterday, I went to the departmental store looking for a nice dress. But I did not find any that I like. Today, I decided to cut and sewn my dress. I have a few fabric that I could use. It will be fun to use the sewing machine this weekend. The weather is not as hot as in the past. I can stay in the house without air conditioner and work on my sewing.

 

Happy weekend!

 

 

Fun around the family

 My sister and her family.

 This girl is the sweetest...

 Lovely dress...

 SPM this year...could she made it?

 Nieces and Nephew...

 They are cousins...

 Sleepy Adam missing the fun...

Priceless...

 This had to be abandoned for a few weeks.

Bountiful crops

I have been picking lots of beans, peas, lettuces, turnip greens, brussel sprout leaves, green tomatoes, malabar spinach and zuchinnis. They are so delicious when cooked in some butter, salt and ground black pepper. The weather is getting hot and some of these plants are loving the heat. The tomatoes are fruiting like crazy. I am also growing egg plants and roselle. I am very excited. After the rain, I will go to the garden and start inspecting each plant for any sign of disease or, bug eggs. I squeezed them if I see any. I decided not to let the bad bugs eat my vegetables.

Tomorrow is the first day of Ramadan, fasting month for the muslims. I am wishing happy fasting to all my muslim readers. May God gave you jannah.

Clean up in the garden

Finally, the heat wave had passed. I was able to clean up the garden today. However, I did start as early as  at 6 am. By 10 am I had to stop. The sun started to hurt me. Ramadan is here this month and today is Day 12. I thought I will not be able to fast due to long hours this summer. But my body says otherwise. Fasting all day has been very smooth. I ate oat meal for early breakfast and so far that is the only food soothing to my tummy.

I am so happy that the cucumber I am growing is not bitter. They are sweet. I surely do not remember the type of these cucumbers. The round ball zucchini is delicious. Each plant do not seems to produce a lot of zucchini. But I surely will grow this zucchini again next year. The big yellow tomato has only one that is ripe. The rest are still green.

 I love home grown cooked edamame. Some people call it soy bean. All I did was just boiled them in salt water. They are delicious!

 I have harvested and removed the plant of my edamame. I have about one full of the grocery plastic bag.

 I also harvested some red onion. I love pickled red onion. They are delicious when eat with murtabak. I also harvested the rest of the beans. I will use this beans in my soup. The pea plants are done too. I removed the fences and pulled out the plants. It was really a lot of work to finish before the sun started to heat the earth. In the picture above is also the ground cherry. They are growing like crazy. I picked all of the fruits that are ripe and fell on the ground. They are very sweet. I could eat them all. But I thought I should share them with one of my co worker since I know that she loves this cherries.

 Above is a picture of the cooked edamame/soy bean. The beans are very sweet and buttery. I seasoned the boiling water with some salt. This will enhanced the flavor of the edamame.

 I have packed the sweet 100 and the yellow cherry tomato mixed in a smaller zip loc bag. I will share these tomato with my co workers.

Harvesting the tomato was the toughest job ever. I am growing about 10 plants and most of the tomato ripe almost at the same time. These past few weeks I could not go to the garden at all due to heat wave. Until yesterday, when we received a good quick splash of rain water, I am able to clean up and pulled out the weeds easily from the wet ground today. Before working on the peas, I started with this cherry tomato. I used shear to cut the branches off. This way, the trimming will allow me to move around the plants easily.

After cleaning all of the harvest and keeping them in the refrigerator, I am going to continue working on my second raya dress...

Selamat Hari Raya | Eid Mubarak

Hari raya will be tomorrow on Sunday, August the 19th.

I am celebrating Raya with my cooking. I have agar agar santan with cherries as shown in the picture above. I was using pandan paste for the green color and the pandan flavor mix with coconut cream. The coconut cream is not the same as the coconut milk. Most people use the coconut cream in pina colada.

The big meal are the beef rendang, vegetables cooked in coconut milk (lodeh), rice cake (ketupat Nona) and peanut sauce. My beef rendang is super spicy and hot this time. I am using hot red peppers with the seeds. I just need 2 tablespoons of the chili blend for this rendang.

Baju Kurung is done

Finally, my dress for the Syawal/Eid is ready. Mupi bought this fabric about 5 years ago maybe and I never really care for the pattern he chose. When I showed the dress to him, his remark was..."It is about time..."
I was frankly to him and told him why I didn't care. I do like the color but not the design of the embroidery. I find it too wild. But I guess, I should just be thankful. I haven't decide the stone I want to add to the collar of this dress. I do like to google for some design. It is fun to go through the thousands images in the internet for the pattern. I have just recently found some youtube on sewing clothes. I do smile to myself when I see home made video where the mother was cutting the fabric and the baby who is in his diaper sit on the fabric. And of course the baby was trying to get the scissor. The mother hide the scissor under her lap and continue the video. I can also hear the cameraman, could be the father told the baby to step away.

This dress doesn't come with extra fabric for the veil. I guess I could use my old scarf to go with this dress. 

Baju Raya

I know it is too early to talk about Baju Raya. I woke this morning feeling really excited to start my Baju Raya project. Remember while back, I mean many years before when I had the luxury of buying tons of Indian fabric in London? Well, I still have two more beautiful fabric that I can make baju kurung (dress) for Raya.

My Avon meeting is not going to start until 2 PM today. I am signing another 2 ladies as my downline. No, this is not a pyramid or a quick rich scheme. Every rep must have a mentor or a leader. So, I will be their leader until they are comfortable to be on their own feet.
Back to the fabric above, I managed to cut one of the fabric and half hemmed the selendang (scarf). It took me more than an hour to cut the fabric. It was really hard to decide where to cut on the fabric for kurung moden. The fabric was already syled for indian dress.  And so I decided to create my own style. It will be a short sleve on the outside and inner long sleve.

Stay tuned for the finish product.

Happy Ramadan!