Of Purple Flowers and All in them Pots

One of my all time favourite thing to eat is chicken. My 2nd all time favourite thing to eat is rice. I can eat a lot of rice. One of my sister thinks i am crazy to eat so much rice... and the chicken. I can have chicken rice every other day. Rice is the staple food of most Malaysian folks. We do eat a lot of rice.

As my nephew is home this week for his one week break, i'll have to cook dinner else my dad will give me the stinky eye. Some days i don't cook at all for a whole week because i am lazy because i do not really know what to cook. *LOL* My dad is quite a picky eater. He only eat a little... and if the food is not to his liking, he'll eat less. It doesn't help that my mom was a most wonderful cook.

Sometimes i don't have much time to cook as some of my workmates tend to be more annoying and send work late at about 5pm or 6pm and tells me that she needs it now. Doing those stuffs is not like frying an egg. It takes a while to get it done. My dad also prefers to eat his dinner by 7pm. Which don't really leave me much time to cook.

I rely a lot on my oven and steamer. I have parcel Tuesdays and all-in-the-pot Wednesday.. sometimes we do parcels the whole week. If i pace myself properly, i can get some stuffs ready during my lunch break and dinner can be ready by 6.30pm.

Today i decided to cook salty chicken. Salty chicken is easy to cook as i just have to clean the drumsticks... cut a few lines in the chicken thigh and marinate with salt. Then i'll dump them in a thick based pot and cook it without any oil over low fire. This is like the easiest thing to cook as i don't need to stir it or fry anything.

Then i decided to add mushrooms into the chicken as i still have a bag of fresh shitake mushrooms. These fresh mushrooms don't keep very long. Then i decided to dump some potatoes in... and since i needed some color... i added a whole carrot in.

I had some red spinach which is almost dying and wilted because its really cold in the fridge ^.^. So in goes the red spinach too.

What started as salty chicken became a pot of mismashed stew. *LOL* This is my all-in-the-pot Thursday.

I added some chili flakes and onions in the end. Its is considered a healthy meal as there was no oil involved... and we ate it with rice of course :) I was supposed to stir fry the spinach. But everything ended up in the pot. This happens sometimes. *LOL*

So far my dad hasn't complained much yet. One day he's gonna yell at me and say that he has had enough of the all-in-the-pot meals and parcel food from the oven. I think i might have to learn to refine my cooking and cook like a normal person soon.

Do you all cook like this? Do you follow a certain set of rules/recipes or improvise as you go along? I can't bake very well as i cannot follow the recipe properly. My cakes always end up weird and never quite the same.

I wanna show you what we have in our garden and why them kitteh kats love our garden.

 

This is our row of weeds in pots *LOL* They hold only weeds now. When my beautiful mom was still alive, these pots hold her very treasured bougainvilleas in many colors. Our city here is famed for Bougainvilleas. Ipoh is known as the Bougainvillea City.

This pot of weed flowers. Its a beautiful purple. The birds here do a lot of work transporting the seeds. Sometimes we do get a flower or two among the weeds.

I tried hard to have green fingers but its not happening. *LOL* The only other solution is painting them green with my paints :) When you are not good with planting, you get ready flowered pots of flowers.

do not know her name purple flowers

I got these at Tescos last week for 8 bucks. They are so pretty and still alive :) I got a pot of bird's eye chili plant too. It was full of bird's eye chili. I don't know how long these two will survive under my painted green fingers care. *LOL* Maybe over time, my painted green fingers will become green one day. We can hope :)

bird's eye chili

This is Charlie. He's the only kitteh kat here with a name. He's the one with the big mouth from yesterday's WW post which kinda got some of you spooked. *LOL* He was yawning in that picture. He's really a sweet lil kitteh kat. See.. he has a very small mouth when its closed.

Dommy doesn't have that big a mouth.. hehhehehe.. He still have a beautiful smile even with bad toofies. He had a very long shower today as he's beginning to really stink because of the heat. *LOL* He's not too happy about the long shower and the extra long blow drying thingy. But he's light as a feather now and smelling like a million buckaroos.

My mom loves purple flowers. Her anniversary is coming up next week. Dad's been extremely quiet these few days. Its gonna be five years since my mom left us.

The Kindness Of Strangers

Thank you all for your kind words, thoughts and prayers. Dom and i appreciate all of you. Strangers who are friends.

We had a very long night yesterday. I had my hand on his body almost the whole night. Just wanted to know that he's still with me. Silly me. I was afraid that he'll just drift off.

Both of us just tossed around a lot. A lot of tears. A lot to stomach in a day. The thought of losing a family fellow is just not acceptable at this moment. The crying's all done now. Its no point crying and puffy eyes are horrible in the morning. Even your face gets puffed up. We do not want bags under them eyes to be permanent residents.

We had some rain early in the morning.. some cooler air. Thank you again for all the rain that you guys sent to us. We do know some of you are doing some raindances for us :)

Dom is a fighter. He has always been a tough one. Under the curly shell, he is a tough fella. He doesn't make a fuss even when he's unwell. He'll just hide under the table and sleep it away. As long as he's eating something, i am fine. He's handfed most of the time. If he doesn't eat, his legs will go weak.

He is a bit wobbly today. We went for a carride as the vet has advised me not to stress him with walks. He needed help to get up to the car today. He looked at me with those tired eyes. I just lifted him up. I used to just say UP and he'll be up on the carseat in a jiffy. We sent dad to church and we went to see mom there. We asked mom to help him get better.

Overnight he has become a very tired old dog. He used to be so full of life. The life of the party.

I've got both my siblings very worried with my post yesterday. My apologies to both of them. My youngest sister was the one who rescued Dom from the boarders. We adopted Dom as she kept insisting that we should take him. Dom always have a soft spot for her as he knows that it was my sister that got him a forever home. He love her to bits.

Someone told me that an enlarged heart can be reduced or go back to normal with medications and the water out from the lungs. We are hopeful that Dom will be better soon.

I got all these cookie cutters from one our trips. Some are dog motifs. I got them especially for both Piper and Dom as i wanted to make them cookies. I never got around to making them cookies as i am just very lazy. We'll make some tomorrow.

Currently i am reading The Greatest Miracle in the World by Og Mandino. Yes.. the book which fell into the loo :) The book will help us find some balance.

"I had the blues... because i had no shoes... until upon the street,... I met a man who had no feet."
When you begin feeling sorry for yourself... remember that.

My Precious Cargo

Cobwebs.. hehehehe.. I see cobwebs here. Updating this site seems to have taken a backseat lately :)

I have been

• busy (not quite a good excuse)
• lazy (sounds more like it)

A nomad's life is more apt. Lately we have been travelling up down quite a bit. Just when things are more settled, we have to up and go again. Things won't be much settled anyways. That's the fun part of life. If it gets too settled, i'll probably be bored to death.

In a week or so, Boy is moving to another state to start his studies in a college. Just when he has started making new friends and getting settled in his new surroundings here, he has to change and move to another state again. *LOL* Well.. that is part and parcel of life. Change is always good. We should always embrace change with an open heart.

3 years ago, i uprooted and moved back home to be with dad and Boy. Taking care of them as best i could or know how. It was quite an experience and a teenage kid does teach you loads of things.. hahhahahaa.. I tried to be more of a friend to him than to nag the life out of him. But waking him up in the morning to get to school was a chore. He could probably sleep through the loudest alarm clock. Even with 10 alarm clocks, i doubt he'll even hear one of them ringing.

Both Boy and i plus Dommy went back home last weekend to check on our home in Ipoh. The whole house was still intact. hehehehe The whole garden was quite a disaster.. hahahahhaa Overgrown grass, lot of leaves on the ground and dandelions which was lovely in a way. The rain has kept the garden nicely watered and most of the plants survived.

Short papaya tree. This is a short papaya tree.. which fruits quite fast. We'll have some ripe ones to eat on our next trip home :)

My jatrophas are still thriving. This is a pretty hardy plant. The future of biodiesel production? Maybe... :)

These are supposed to be catnips.. *LOL* But i had some papays seeds in the pots. I guess the papayas override the catnips in the pots. This is what happens when you don't have green fingers.

We went to the church to see mom. Poor mom haven't had a candle lit for her for weeks. The really nice old florist at the church had yellow orchids for us. He only charges peanuts for a bunch. It was nice to be home. To the familiar surroundings. To the quaint life of Ipoh.

On our way back to Kuala Lumpur on Sunday evening, it rained and rained. At one point, it rained so hard that i couldn't very well see the car in front of me. I really hate driving in the rain. Especially when i have precious cargo.

The storms can be pretty vicious. In my heart, i was going.. should i stop or should i go on ahead. With fear (yes.. i am a scardy cat), i moved on. I know my mom will keep me safe and get me to my destination.

In life, we will encounter many storms. Storms as in problems or storms as in the storm itself. If we keep on going and moving ahead, the storm will ease eventually.