Celebrating Christmas - 2011

My mom decided to have a little party in her house this Christmas. We decided on simple food but guess what when I reached her house that evening???

Food was in abundance!! We even had 2 turkeys. I made some of the desserts and we ordered some noodles. My mom must have felt that there wasn't enough food for our guests and so she cooked a few more dishes.

The carollers from my church came and sang some meaningful Christmas songs.

Eh, I had tong yin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangyuan_(food)) too. I think my Auntie Terry made it. :) 

My mom's main Christmas tree, standing 8 feet tall.

This is the dining hall's Christmas tree. Not that tall, probably 5 feet.

And this tree was placed outside the house at the garden area.

My mom loves to decorate her house. She enjoys taking out the Christmas decorations from the storeroom every year, choosing which decor to take out & putting them on at the appropriate places. I, on the other hand, do not have the patience for it. :)

Dumpling Day

I was in my mom's house when Auntie Annie came with 2 packs of dried bamboo leaves, 1.5kg of glutinous rice, some uncooked meat and a pressure cooker.

I was surprised to see Aunt Annie at that hour (it was about 5pm). It seems today was "dumpling day" and Auntie Annie came to to make the dumplings (nyonya style) in my mother's house.

We washed the leaves first.. not sure why we had to do that because we were going to boil them anyway...

Since we had limited time, Auntie Annie suggested boiling the leaves to make them soft pliable.

Next she cooked the meat and boiled the rice.

Then she taught us how to fold into a triangular-like shape and fill it with glutinous rice, meat and a small piece of pandan (screwpine) leaf.

Then we hung the dumplings.. not sure why we had to do this too since the next step was to place them into the pressure cooker.

My mom brought out her pressure cooker so that she could cook more dumplings at the same time. With 1.5kg of glutinous rice, we could only make 40 dumplings.

Ahh... this is how the dumpling looked like after being in the pressure cooker for more than 1/2 hour. It tasted so delicious. yum-yum..

More Christmas Decos

Yup! The 2nd tree is up. My mother is really into setting up her house for Christmas. Thank God I'm not living next door, otherwise I would have to help.. hehe.

The Main Tree is Up

My parent's main christmas tree is up. They usually put 4 trees up, and will decorate the main tree first. The colour scheme is almost similar to last year's - white and gold. Aunty Chris said there is to any lights on the tree this year and the trimmings can only be seen without the lights on. What do you think?

The whole house is in a mess now. They have set up the 2nd tree and about to start on the 3rd one. See now why you know I don't have to put up a tree in my house. I can just call all my friends over to mom's house and have my do there. :)

2nd Day of Raya

This morning I woke up, remembering that I had a Raya invitation to a friend's house. I was looking forward to it because I heard so much about her beautiful house. She custom made it to her liking.

These pictures are taken in front of her house. It look like a cottage, a mixture of wood, bricks and stones complete with a chimney and a rose garden. The internal is just a nice. The floors are all solid wood and even their ceilings have solid planks fitted into the beams. I so wanted very much to take pictures, but there were some high profile guests around, most of whom I don't know, so no pictures this time. I told my friend that I will come one day to admire her house (and also to take pictures lah).

She had a good spread of food.. all those yummy Hari Raya food. She even made her own ketupat.

Later I went to my mother's house. Aunty Chris and Aunty Annie came a few minutes later to play mah jong with my parents. I was waiting for Esther (who was at the hair saloon), so I asked Aunty Chris if she wanted brownies. She said ok, so I made the cake immediately. (The cake came out too sweet..)

After some time, Aunty Annie asked me to put some of her friend's contacts into Uncle Guru's handphone because she wanted to call out using Uncle Guru's phone. It seems Uncle Guru's phone had a lot of credit since he was away visiting his daughter in Canada for a few months, she thought she should use his instead of her own phone.

So while I inserted the numbers in Uncle Guru's phone, Aunty Chris wanted me to help her with her speed dial function. So I did it for her.

I'm not really an expert on phone functions but I usually do all these things for my uncles and aunties. They will never ask this of my sisters or their children. Not that I'm complaining (I don't mind actually) but I do wonder why I was pick to help them with their handphones. :)

1st Day of Raya

No, I didn't sleep in. I woke up at 6AM for my morning walk at Bukit Kepayang. It's been a month since I was there and my calves were moaning and groaning as if they were saying.. "why must you torture us??!!"

Bukit Kepayang seems so different now. They (the developers) have begun to cut up some of the hill. It's seems that part of the hill belongs to them. The Hindu devotees will have to find alternative route to get to the temple which is at the top of the hill.

Not many people this time... let's see.. there's Esther, Rachel, Eunice, Aaron, Azreel, JoelC and Chee Yong. It's Chee Yong's first time to Bkt K and yes, he made it!

We met Peter and KG there too and when we reached the top, Peter suggested going down half way and coming back up again via the jungle trail. Rachel and I were game and it was slightly tougher than the normal route. Maybe we weren't used to it.

After our morning walk, we went to FS (a foodcourt called FS). I just had a bite of toasted wholemeal bread and my usual teh-C. (tea with evaporated milk and sugar). I had invitations to 2 houses for the Hari Raya celebration and didn't want to spoil my appetite.

So at 11.45am, I went over to my opposite neighbour's house. Their relatives came and the house was full of people but only for a while then they left. We had some ketupat with kuah kacang (peanut sauce). I didn't want to eat so much because we had to be in my aunt's place by 1pm for lunch.

This is my aunt's place. She will have this do every year. We really look forward to her cooking.

She had ketupat, nasi kunyit (turmeric rice), rendang, mee soto, chicken curry, lemang, a vegetable dish, nasi minyak (oiled rice) and one or two more dishes I may have left out.

The kids (2nd cousins) were all playing with some form of technical games. No more those old fashion games like champions, catching, hide and seek. The adults had a good time catching up on recent news (we meet almost every month) and we were there till after 4pm. The weather was cool-ish, and it was very rare of us to go back after 4pm. Usually by 3pm, most of us would want to go home.

So there you go.. my first day of Raya 2008. Tomorrow I'll be visiting another Muslim friend. :)

Thanksgiving Party

I was at a thanksgiving party today. Pastor Sally HAD cancer. She went for chemo the last 6 months and wanted to thank those who helped and encouraged her during her "down" time.

It was also the actual day for the Lantern Festival (also know as the Mid Autumn Festival or Mooncake festival). The FAMILY (uncles aunties, cousins, nephews, nieces) was also invited.

Most of the main dishes were catered.

The desserts were made by different people.

The day before, I was on MSN with Aunty Chris. She told Pastor Sally, she wanted to make/bake something. Then on MSN, Aunty Chris asked if I'm making anything for the party. I told her that I planned to make chocolate brownies. Then she said... okay lah... then she will make jelly. Then I skyped Rachel and told her what Aunty Chris and I wanted to make. Rachel also thought of making something, so I suggested her to make jelly, then Aunty Chris can relax. So Rachel agreed and I MSNed Aunty Chris to tell her that we would do the desserts for her. Rachel also thought of making cutlets. She was longing to eat one that day.

So today at 2pm, I went to my mother's house with my baking stuff. I started on the chocolate brownies while Rachel asked Tusi (my mother's domestic helper) to prepare the cutlets. Then she went home to make caramel.

After the putting the chocolate brownies into the oven, I started on a new recipe - Chunky Apple Molasses Muffins. I always wanted to master making good muffins. So far, I haven't succeeded YET. :(

So while I was making the dough for the muffins, Rachel came and started making jelly.. well, Tusi did most of the work, because Rachel also wanted to make Lemon Tart. My mother came into the kitchen later to help with the cleaning up and washing.

My muffins were all ready, waiting for the chocolate brownies to come out of the oven, when suddenly I spotted a cup of sugar... gosh... I forgot to put sugar into the muffins!! No wonder it didn't taste sweet when I tested the uncooked dough. I was too lazy to take them out from the mould, so for the first round, I poured some sugar over each mould and slowly stir them into the dough. The second round, I just left the sugar on top of the muffins and baked them.

The muffins didn't turn out as good. If you like Apple Pie, well, that's how it taste like, but the texture is like a sticky cake.

So all in all, we did 6 desserts in 3 hours. And no, of course I didn't bring out my not so good muffins.

Rachel's lemon tart and cutlets turned out very well. My chocolate brownies were also very good (I think).

2008-Lantern Festival

This year's Lantern Festival (also known as the Mid Autumn Festival) falls on the 14th of September 2008. We celebrated it today.. well, we don't really celebrate the festival (what does one do during this festival??!!) but the children were very excited because they get to play with fire. Well, lanterns actually. :) The adults get to eat sumptuous meal prepared mainly by my mom. Aunty Chris cooked her famous prawn sambal and Aunt Annie cooked chicken curry.

The food was delicious, as usual. The kids however weren't too keen on eating. Sze-En only had her rice soaked in black sauce and Mae-Z had hers with curry and a couple of potatoes. Kids nowadays are so particular about food.

Sze-En's and Mae-Z's plates. So unappetizing. They don't know what they are missing. :)

The adults were having fun talking and exchanging stories over the dining table. The kids had their eyes glued to the television.

After dinner, we had watermelons for dessert, cakes, ice-cream and Tusi fried some cempedak (what's cempedak in english?) and bananas. For drinks,we were given a choice of sugar cane juice (air tebu in Malay), chinese tea or coffee. The children had cold fizzy drinks.

After dinner, the children played outside, having fun with the lanterns. Sze-En being the hostess, served her cousins with ice-cream and drinks.

Last year, we had Ruth and family & Christine Kok and family over to "celebrate" this festival with us.

Dumplings

Yesterday was dumpling day. Exactly was it is all about I don't know. I only know that's when so many "congs" would be made and sold at the shops/street. I asked Min Chee and Rachel Wong what was the significant of this celebration. They also don't know.

Wikipedia shows me something else. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I just love eating them.

I'm adding a little note here. For some of you who don't know what "cong " is, It's also called "Bak Chang" (Saw it in the newspaper). It's made of glutinous rice, pork, dried mushroom, chestnut,salted egg yolk, dried prawns ad green pea. I found a recipe online. You can try it. Just click -here

It's celebrated on the 5th day of the 5th month in the lunar calendar.

2008 Chinese New Year-2nd Day

2nd Day of Chinese New Year. We all met at Uncle Allan's house for lunch. Aunty Alice cooked all the dishes. We had loh sang before the lunch. Compare the before and after "loh sanging" the dish.

Chinese New Year 2008

This year, the year of the rat, the first day of the Lunar calendar falls on the 7th of February. Hence all the emails and smses on Mickey Mouse, Ratatouille and one more... I cannot remember. The tele-comunication companies make their money and we have fun receiving smses.

Every year, like always, we (the twin and I) prepare breakfast for the family - continental style - eggs, sausages, luncheon meat and baked red beans. As usual, Sze-En's job is to set the table, a task which she enjoys very much.

Sze-En receiving angpow from her grandmother.

We celebrated David's birthday too. His birthday falls on the 8th of February. My mom and Tusi cook so many dishes. Yummy, it's so delicious. We had loh sang too. Later the older generation people played mah jong while we younger folks chit-chatted and exchanged news.

2007 Christmas at Mom's

Esther and my mom had an open house this year on the 24th December. The main dishes were over at Esther's and the coffee and snacks were at my mom's. It was a wet evening and parking was a hassle. They invited more that 300 over friends.

Chinese New Year 2007

Mom & Dad's new house.... all dressed up for Chinese New Year.

Christmas 2006

My first gingerbread house. I made the walls and Rachel and Sze-En stick the walls and roof together with icing. Then they decorated it. I was so busy at that time with the Christmas Sharing Program. I made the cakes too. If I remember correctly, 7 cakes.

We had this celebration on the 16th December 2006. It was our birthday, and Voon Fui's (one day earlier). Rajen provided the lamb. The rest are all catered.

My mother had a good time decorating the house. She shifted into this new house on the 18 Nov. What she did was not to put away all the christmas decorations into the store room.