Passion Fruits

The leaves of passion fruits are very green and lively. There are two vines here. Two different species. I grew from seeds. They are starting to flower after a year.

A passion fruit flower bud.

The flowers bloom mid-day. After noon.  

The flowers are many, but only two fruits are formed. Probably there were no bees and the days have been quite still. No wind. Once when there were many flowers, it started to rain, didn't give any chance for the pollen to reach pistil, I think.

The flowers are beautiful.

 They drop the next day if no fruit is formed.

Lots of pollen on the stamen.

 I decided to do self pollination. 

Plenty of pollen.

Hello! Baby coming out from womb! :-)

How nice to see shiny skin passion fruit!

Vietnam Trip

I finally went for a holiday with HM. This time HM promised me to leave his laptop behind on this Vietnam trip. Why Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam?  Because we didn't know where to go, and my brother-in-law just went to Ho Chi Minh City for family holiday in September. Elly was very kind to share with me their trip itinerary. We just copycatted their itinerary, with some changes.

We took Air Asia from BKI to Tan Son Nhat International Airport. Stopover in KL. 2 hours from KL to HCM only.  Malaysia time is an hour ahead of Vietnam.

I booked into Duc Vuong Hotel. This hotel is located in Tham Ngu Lao Street, convenient for us to go around. The hotel staff were very friendly and helpful. Every staff speaks English. The room was clean. Breakfast was very good with Vietnamese bread, hot coffee, fried eggs of your choice with other few different dishes and fresh fruits. The 4 nights stays were really value for money.

Taken from hotel rooftop

Day 1

After checking in to Duc Vuong Hotel, the hotel receptionist lady pointed us to a nearby shop to eat Vietnamese noodle. 越南河粉。The beef noodle was served with a plate of herbs 九層塔，bean sprout, lettuce and one other vegetable which I am not sure of name. In fact, the Vietnamese eat a lot of such herb, bean sprout and fresh vegetables.

Elly said we should not miss the AO show perform at Saigon Opera House. In fact there are 3 other shows at the Opera House performing on different days. We watched the AO show. I didn't quite understand the stories but the show was performed professionally with music, dancing, acrobatics and cute and funny moments. It is indeed a show not to be missed in HCM. I purchased the tickets online 3 weeks before the trip via KKDay.com. Check out "Teh Dar Tribal Show at Saigon Opera House". There are 3 different zones. You get better viewing zone for paying more. Anyway, I purchased the cheapest and had no complaint about the view.

兩個女人可以頂天立地？

Outside the Opera House

Inside the Opera House

The Performers

Day 2

Again, I purchased a trip from KKDay Tour to go to My Tho, Ben Tre and the Mekong Delta.  We took Uber to go to the meeting point at the Sinh Tourist Office. The tour guide could speak fairly well English. I learnt about the Mekong Delta in Geography 40+ years ago. It was nice to see the rivers flow and the fertile soil in the Delta. On our way to Mekong Delta in the tour bus, we saw many padi fields.  It was fascinating to see tombs in the padi fields. Are the tombs there to protect their harvest? We got to take a river cruise to a village to see a number of activities by the villagers.

Grinding rice

Making rice paper

Fish from Mekong River

Rice Paper wrap

Cruising through swampy area. Attap.

Attap fruits. 海底椰

Making of coconut candies

In the evening, we enjoyed our dinner in a Vietnam food restaurant right in front of the hotel. Then walked along Tham Ngu Lao Street, a crowded tourist street at night.

Day 3

We started our morning trip to Cu Chi Tunnel, trip purchased from Klook.com.  I should say that this is also a trip not to be missed. The Cu Chi Tunnel was an underground city, built during the Vietnam War. We got to crawl in a 60m tunnel, which has been enlarged for tourists to get some hang of moving in tunnels. By the way, if you are not fit, it is better not to join in the tunnel crawling. I felt so tiring inside the tunnel. THERE IS NO WAY TO TURN BACK. YOU JUST HAVE TO MOVE FORWARD. In fact, I was a bit panic when we came to a junction of which we were not sure of the way. The tour guide wasn't with us. I was afraid that I might faint due to lack of oxygen as both my hand had started to feel a bit numb. Anyway, we came out safely, but inwardly, wasn't too pleased. 

One interesting observation. I noted that we could hear people talking outside the tunnels, but those outside couldn't hear us in the tunnels.

Can you easily notice the entrance to the tunnel? 

Tiger Trap

Superfood - 18grains

I have recently heard a lot of advertisement on Superfood over the radio, tv, direct sales, friends....

1kg of Good Morning 18 grains costs RM70+ in Kota Kinabalu, displayed in the supermarket. Last night while watching Astro 经典名曲歌唱大赛2017， I continuously saw the advertisements over and over again. 

This powdery drink is portrayed as a healthy drink, meant for all ages.  I don't understand why purple sweet potatoes only costs around RM5 to RM8 per kg, depending on where you buy, end up RM70+ in powdery form in a tin.  

I couldn't help but to find out the ingredients in this tin.

When I added up the ingredients of the 18grains, they only consist of 30% of the whole tin. I feel distasteful to find non-dairy milk and fructose to be the ingredients in a tin too. I believe these two would be more than 50% of the whole tin. 

How harmful is non-dairy milk and fructose to the body can be easily found on the website.  This is as bad as Malaysia popular 3-in-1 coffee.

The nutrition facts do not reflect the ingredients listed.

I believe in real food, if we can buy fresh purple sweet potatoes and other ingredients from the stores, why go for the processed food? And pay so much more for what meant to be harmful to your health? 

Malaysia Coffee

I develop coffee drinking habit from my father.  When I was young, my mother used to make one pot of coffee and one smaller pot of Chinese tea every morning. As like most mothers, one of the first thing to do in the morning is to boil a pot of water.  The hot water was poured over the local coffee powder in the pot and over the Chinese Tea（ 铁观音）. Then a few spoonfuls of sugar were stirred into the coffee. 10 of us in the family would either drink coffee, tea or plain water. This is my memory of local coffee. And thus naturally deem morning drink with breakfast.

Then, came instant coffee and coffeemate. Seemed to taste very well to replace local coffee. A cup of Nescafe+coffeemate+sugar became a finale for every meal. The clever selling skill of Nestle introduced 3 in 1 small packages. I couldn't part with it. I don't know how many years I drank Nestle 3-in-1. Over 20+ years! Oh! Gosh! How much sugar and hydrogenated oil had I unknowingly consumed to raise the cholesterol and sugar level in my body?! How much fat have I developed due to that?

When my husband started taking metformin, I started to take an interest in nutrition. I observed the food he ate, and I ate. And to work out what to omit, and how to balance our food intake. My husband used to be constantly drinking coffee, so much so that I thought he has made a habit of drinking coffee, like naturally forcing himself down with coffee, instead of enjoying it.

Tomato Plant

I decided to grow cherry tomato, and here is my tomato plant. I don't put much effort. Just plotted with two seeds, and kept the stronger seedling. The fruits are plenty. They are so heavy until they pull the stem down and some tomatoes are touching the ground.

The fruits have started to get ripe. The weather has been very hot. I water twice a day, and perhaps the soil was not wet enough, the tomato skin is quite thick. They don't taste very good, but I just eat them raw.

Soy Sauce-traditional and Instant version

All these while I have been wondering how the soy sauce factories are able to produce so much soy sauce because my understanding about soy sauce production is through slow fermentation processes. It takes months, and you need many big urns for soy sauce fermentation. I think I got my assumption from the old Chinese movies, where households put the urns at their backyard.

In fact, there are traditional method of producing soy sauce in China and Taiwan. I am not so certain about Malaysia. I have been naive. Now, I can only jump into conclusion that for any soy sauce that I can easily buy from the stores be it in sundry shops or supermarket or hypermarket, they must be instant version so that mass production is possible.

Time to make a change in my choice for soy sauce as it is one of the main ingredient in my kitchen, and it is not supposed to cause any harm to my health, because it is fermented.

Chinese Soy Sauce-Flavor Enhancer & Preservatives

I did not expect to see so much additives in the soy sauce I am using!

Camel brand-thick soy sauce
E200(Preservative)
E621(Monosodium Glutamate or Ajinomoto)

Camel brand-light soy sauce
Sodium Benzoate E211(Preservative)

Lee Kum Kee-first draw soy sauce
Disodium 5-Inosinate(Flavor Enhancer), 
Disodium 5-Guanylate(Flavor Enhancer)

汾阳桥-Superior Light soy sauce
Color(E150a)
E621,E631,E627(Flavor Enhancer), 
E202, E211(Preservative)

Maggi-Seasoning
Don't even list the ingredients used!

Soy Sauce and Salt in Chinese Cooking

How much salt am I consuming everyday? 

The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council has set a stringent recommended intake of 460-920mg of sodium per day. This corresponds to 1.15-2.3g of salt.

For easier mental calculation,

• 1/4 teaspoon salt = 575 mg sodium
• 1/2 teaspoon salt = 1,150 mg sodium
• 3/4 teaspoon salt = 1,725 mg sodium
• 1 teaspoon salt = 2,300 mg sodium

Based on the recommendation, we should not take more than 1/2 teaspoon of salt daily.

If I only eat 3 meals per day, each meal should not be more than a pinch of salt!

However, I may not touched the salt shaker, but in my cooking, I am using a lot of soy sauce! 

Altogether I have 6 bottles of soy sauce for different purposes. Light soy sauce for marinating meat, a few shake of thick soy sauce to add nice brown colour to the dishes before serving, maggi soy sauce for soft boiled eggs, light and thick soy sauce for fried noodles, first draw soy sauce for stewing chicken, and in fact, every stewed meat calls for soy sauce. 

What are the main ingredients of soy sauce? soy bean, salt, sugar, wheat flour and flavor enhancer and preservatives!

A sodium check on 5g (1 teaspoon) soy sauce

Camel brand-thick soy sauce-187mg

Camel brand-light soy sauce-264 mg

Lee Kum Kee-first draw soy sauce-not available in nutrition fact

汾阳桥-Superior Light soy sauce-393mg

Maggi-Seasoning-Don't even have a label for nutrition fact!

Lea & Perrins-Worcestershire-No nutrition fact label!

No doubt I consume more sodium than I should everyday. How to reduce? This is difficult!

What is the best cooking oil?

I am getting particular about my food nowadays. Solely because age really adds chronic illnesses into my life. By paying extra attention to nutrition, physical activities and lifestyle, I wish these can prolong my functional independence.

In Malaysia, the popular cooking oil would be palm oil. It is the cheapest and easily found in all stores that sell cooking oil. Of course, this is due to the fact that Malaysia produces the most palm oil globally, together with Indonesia.

When I was young, I remember my mother would cook with peanut oil. I could still remember the smell of peanut oil lingering in the air. However, nobody is selling peanut oil nowadays.

A google search shows that palm oil is quite an inferior oil as compared to other oil such as soy bean oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, olive oil, etc. Well, I don't really bother about the comments. Palm oil is cheap as compared to other oil, and as a result, market competitors are many out there to discredit it.

Anyway, here are some general rules for me
1. Use refined oil for cooking as smoke point is higher.  Due to its lower smoke point, unrefined oil becomes unstable at lower temperature.
2. Do not recycle oil. After frying fish, deep fried chicken etc, discard the oil. Oil that has been used will have lower smoke point due to the impurity in it.
3. Extra virgin oil has low smoke point. Use it for dressing only.
4. Use as little oil as possible as. A person's diet should only get about 6% of calorie from fat. Basing on my daily calorie of 1800, 6% is 108 cal. Convert to fat is 12g, this is about 2 tbsp. Calorie from oil must be less than that amount because meat consumed also contains fat.

What is the smoke that comes out of my wok?

I have always wondered what is the smoke when the oil in the wok gets heated up.

Little have I known that it follows the same vaporisation principle that applies to water molecules when heated will have high enough energy to break the bonds of H2O molecules.

As for cooking oil, the much more complicated tryglyceride compounds of oil that made up of 1 molecule of glycerol and 3 molecules of fatty acid when heated will have high enough energy to break down into individual molecules, releasing toxic fumes and free radicals which are harmful to your body.

Thus, if you always cook in a bad-ventilated kitchen, you may want to look into the type of wok and oil used to reduce the kitchen hazard.

I have always been using cast iron Chinese wok. For Chinese wok fried dishes, it is a standard practice (at least for me) to heat the wok until it dries up, then pour oil into the wok, wait for it to smoke before putting in ingredients. I dislike the smoke released from the wok in my small enclosed kitchen with poor functioning cooker hood. Adding to the heat released from the gas stove, I really hate cooking time.

A few months ago, I bought for myself a Buffalo stainless steel wok and an induction cooker.

Stainless steel wok does not release much smoke, and the induction cooker does not release unnecessary heat to the kitchen. I can even turn on the table fan to blow at myself while coloking. This has definitely solve my problems of the smoke emitted from the wok and to reduce kitchen heast.

Myth about losing teeth for older people

I used to believe that as a person gets old, his gum will be like his body muscle that loses its firmness, and causes teeth to losen and eventually, dentures are unavoidable.

I am lucky to have my dentist explaining to me that gum does not behave like body muscle. Provided I maintain my oral hygiene, my gum will continue to be healthy, and I am not going to lose my teeth.

It is a shame that I was not aware of the proper way to maintain oral hygiene until I am half a century old. Thanks to my dentist, who patiently pointed out to me where I always miss in teeth brushing, and taught me how to floss my teeth.

To sum up:

1. Brush teeth after food. Just as food left in the open, food caught in between teeth, etc, will cause cavities as bacteria also finds its ways into our mouths.
2. While brushing teeth, use soft toothbrush and do not forget to brush the gum as well
3. Avoid sweet drinks, avoid soury drinks, avoid carbonated drink especially coke which is equivalent to vinegar + sugar,
4. As we age, our saliva becomes less. Saliva helps to protect our teeth against decay. And thus, drink plain water regularly
5. Visit dentist regularly to have routine checkup and preventive dental treatment like scaling

Without healthy teeth, a person's eating habit will change. It will be harder to chew on solid food. Not having enough sold food intake like meat, vegetable, bean, nuts, a person's health will deteriorate due to insufficient nutrition. Supplements can never replace natural food.

To many, losing teeth is losing of one's dignity. Having dentures is never to be the same as real teeth. Thus, maintaining oral hygiene is an important way of upkeeping our health.

Planting Ladies Fingers/Okra at my backyard

I have recently grown Ladies' Fingers on two pots at my backyard.  It is really easy. Just get a pot, some good soil, and good seeds, sunlight and water

With two plants, I get to harvest everyday, just after one month of growing from seeds.

Sometimes I harvest one, sometimes two, and yesterday three. They can grow long very fast. During the day time, they can grow about one inch!

Because Ladies' Fingers grow very fast, when it is about 5 inches long, just harvest it, or else it will get old, and the fibre becomes too hard to bite on.

Last week I steamed stuffed Ladies' Fingers with minced meat, made some gravy to go with it. 

A few days later, I cooked curried chicken rice with Ladies' Fingers.

Today, I shall steam Ladies' Fingers tops with oyster sauce and fried scallot.