Style and Shrimp

Switching blog design frequently, it's totally absurd of me. Personally I have been trying to stick on one template and hopefully it would be last long for months. But it's hard to get persistence of idea or I might be the person who obsessed with different style, design and color. The bottom line is my XL photos size must fit in the column. Anyway that's not the highlight of the issue.


A couple days ago I bought a pack of medium shrimp. Generally seafood is rarely food in our daily menu. We planned to reduce the seafood intake due to healthy matter. Speaking of shrimps, we have different kind of cooking manner. I love when shrimp is cooked with its skin on while he loves it in the other way.

Most stores sell headless shrimp, tail with the shell intact. I cook the whole shrimp directly from the package most time,no waste anything and my  favourite shrimp recipe is to saute them in chili paste. I think it taste good with its skin/shell on but he isn't tempted by that way even it is spicy.

Boneless, skinless and fatless meat (chicken,fish) are part of his meal style so I notice that he likes shrimp as meat does, skinless shrimp. That means I get an extra job to peel off the shell before cooking. Cooking time also concern him. He would say that I murdered it when I cooked meat or seafood longer than he wished. Sometimes he prepares food and I could say he cooks meat better than me. Is that mean men make a better chefs than women?Not at all. In spite of that I am still learning to cook western food. *Noted: No skin, No over cook.

When I think about the shrimp recipe, the Forrest Gump movie had flashed on my memory. If you've seen that movie, you will notice this scene part where  Forrest's best friend named Bubba was talking about shrimp. 
I love this part:

"Shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That- that's about it."

I would love to try all those kind of shrimp recipes that Bubba mentioned. Except the fried one. My tongue has been educated by spicy, oily, soupy,milky since I was a kid. Definitely I would have little odd taste when I try to shift from spicy to mild taste of shrimp. Last weekend, I decided to make two recipes from those list as the beginning of western cooking trend for shrimp.

First recipe was "Shrimp Egg Salad", I found a recipe on the internet from this site and I made some change of ingredient from that actual recipe.

Shrimp Egg Salad recipe :

1 cup of fresh raw shrimp - microwave it almost 2 minutes

2 Hard boiled eggs           - chopped

2 Tbs of Mayonaisse

Salt and Pepper

1 tsp lemon juice

Some fresh onion

**Mix well all ingredients in a bowl and serve on crackers or bread. That's it! 

The shrimp was covered by white mayonnaise. He loved it so I guess I did it good!! 
Shrimp and mayonnaise? Creamy and very mild taste, my tongue should adapt it. I thought I started to like it.

The second recipe was Shrimp Burger or here they called "Shrimp Patty Sandwich". You can refer actual recipe from this site. I made for 4 servings and the ingredient I made it simple:

I cup of  pancake mix

1 egg

1 cup of fresh shrimp

Paprika, Salt, Pepper

Potato flakes (instead of cornmeal)

I used 100% whole wheat Arnold Sandwich Thin bread.

You can see in  the picture below:

We preferred to eat them when it was still warm. Both of us love it and I would make it again some other time.

 Have a good week!!

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Halfway spring

Temperature was changing from sunny into harshly cold, cloudy and raining has been pouring down since Thursday last week. I think everybody was expecting the end of  nasty, cruelty of coldness but no one knows.This weather really got me glum, moody and I can't wait to feel the warm and sunny soon. 

Dear Sun, 

I wish you would appear tomorrow! Warm place just caught in my thought. "Yeah, my home,". My memory had recalled out of  the blue about my  Australians colleagues, Alan and Steve. They were in love with Malaysia and wish never went back to Adelaide, OZ after accomplishment of work. Robert also always getting excited about warm weather and spending hours under the sun never bothering him. Generally the sun really affecting people and making them happier than cold weather.That's some of the reason majority of westeners moving to warm country or different hot places.

***********End of weather issue***************

Last Sunday afternoon, my baby had been doing something in the kitchen for few hours. I noticed that he boiled some eggs  and I thought he cooked it for making salad. He called me to the kitchen after a while, I came and saw 6 red plastic cups in a row and the eggs that he boiled were laying on the table. Each cup has filled up with different water colored,  they were blue, red, green, yellow, purple and orange. Oh! He spent his time preparing and setting up the table to make Easter eggs.  So I thought him wrong!

We had a creative and fun activity on that day. I  started it with dipping each egg in a different color but the color wasn't turn out brightly. They were pastel color. But he did in other way,  he soaked two eggs and let them stayed in that cup almost half an hour. Definitely I followed his method, soaking all those eggs after I saw his egg absorbed the liquid and turned out nicely in solid color. 
We dried them out on the box which already  poked  to make them stand still. I glued some of it with colored sand  as a final touch up. This sand was really messed my work, I accidentally dropped the egg and hit the sand bowl so the sand scattered all over the table, my t-shirt, poor me! I stopped in the halfway of doing it. The final result was in the picture below, tadaaa....

They looked pale when they dried. Maybe water-based color or the old product were part of the reason. Actually that egg dye coloring kit had been staying in a kitchen cabinet about a year ago, nobody use it and we planned to use it instead of throwing it away. 
We thought that would be cute to place them in the basket, but I can't find the basket. Finally we stored in the refrigerator. We ate some of them.

The picture below showing the easter eggs that I made a couple years ago. We boiled so many eggs that time and using vinegar was part of the  color ingredient. The result was so terrific and I love the colors. All those eggs looked amazing when I put them in the basket filled with fake grass.

Another colored eggs

Would you imagine if a hen lays egg like those color?  Huhu...that would be strange, I bet the price of chicken will go up.

Have a good week!!

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Hello Spring, Goodbye Winter

Spring or vernal equinox begin officially in March 20. The winter blues is over. Now it's arrival time for sunny weather, cool breeze. Time for land awakening,  rebirth and regrowth. Everything is changing from the green grass popping to trees blooming. Watching the surrounding yard,  nearby park, along the road in spring time made me thinking the time goes so fast. I love spring. Love to see the beauty of  colourful wild flowers, love to see  bugs and bees flying around, love to see the blossoming of trees.

Most obviously I can see yellow spot growing recklessly on the lawn. That is wild plant called "Dandelion", bright yellow flowers and eventually turning into white, fluffy balls that are actually the seeds of the plant. 

Personally the color of the dandelion brighten the yard and I disagree when some people get rid of  the dandelion with the weed killer. More pictures of Dandelion:

Another wild flower is "Daffodil".  Generally they come in yellow color and white-yellow color which  is symbolize friendship. They often bloom in clusters and look wonderful in the garden.

"Baby's Breath" or "Gypsophila" is a dazzling popcorn like flower. You can cut them and add as a filler to flower bouquets.

They are growing in the bushes and I love the combination of pink and white.

In the early spring, the pear trees start producing buds that progressively burst, cluster and blossom as white flowers. Pear tree blossom, huhu!

The flowers drop their petals after full blooming

I found some large bees working busily around the bulbs and flowers. Busy Bees! Panic?!  Please Don't! Generally Bumble bees are much less aggressive than honey bees and they are not attack human at all unless their life under threat. 

What's this guy doing? He is searching for nectar and pollen and helps pollinating flowers and flourishing the trees. 

Fruit grows by pollination. Pollination happens when the insects land on the flowers looking for nectar, a bit of the pollen from the anthers gets caught on the insect's body. Pollen? Pollen is powdery substance produced by flower that content male reproductive cells. May I called sperm? hehe!

As the insect fly from flower to flower, this pollen gets caught on the stigma(flower's female organ). Once the pollen land on the stigma they travel down to the ovary and the ovules are fertilized. These will become seeds.

Once a pear blossom is fertilized the white petals drop off. The ovary, located at the base of the flower, grows into the pear fruit that contains the seeds.

A color of Ladybug really attracting me especially the  red one. Here they called lady bug in the US but it also known as ladybird (UK, Aus, NZ), I used to call them ladybird. This pretty small creatures is part of beneficial to the garden when they eat the aphids and harmful insects on the pear tree blossom.

How do I welcome spring?

Many  people planning a lot of activities during spring season. Some of them going somewhere for spring breaks or they plan for wardrobe cleaning which they called "spring cleaning", some of them might think about gardening and plant the flowers, vegetables and herbs in their yard. I haven't planned anything yet.  Just packed all my winter clothing and I might be trying to grow some herbs.

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Weekend breakfast

Almost every weekend Robert cooked the breakfast and set the table
for two of us.

So today menu is pancake, scrambled eggs, some chicken hotdog 
and milk, fresh orange juice

Thanks dear..You made my day today!

Hope you all have a good weekend!!!

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