Changing Sky & Yummy Breakfast, Lunch And Home Cooked Dinner

On this particular morning, we didn't go for our morning walk because when I woke up it was drizzling. We waited for the drizzling to stop before we went out for our breakfast.

 Morning sun peeping through the dark cloud - 7: 20 am.

When the drizzling stopped, I went out to open the gate.

 A few minutes later (7:25 am) the sky brightened up and surprised us with this rainbow.

 My Bauhinia Kockiana orange blooms and papaya tree on the left.

The papaya tree is no longer there now.

 After a short display of the rainbow, the sky darkened - 7:31 am.

 The dark clouds appeared and disappeared within a few minutes.

Time to go looking for our breakfast.

 We decided to have breakfast nearer to home. We ordered this yummy-licious fish noodles. So far, this is the best fish noodle I have tasted so far. I am sure, those who have tasted this will agree with me. You can't get the same taste elsewhere.

 Came back from breakfast and quickly harvested the above from my garden.

 Once the bitter gourd or melon turns white from light green, it is time to harvest before it starts to ripen. This white melon is more crunchy and has only a slight taste of bitterness compared to the common green ones.

For lunch, I ordered this baked egg custard for my myself. It was served with a glass of ice water.

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I cooked the following dishes for dinner that evening.

 Our favourite stinky beans with sambal dried prawns. Actually, this alone will be enough for us but I just want to taste my freshly harvested angled luffa.

I cooked the angled luffa with the following ingredients: garlic, dried prawns, carrot, black fungus or cloud ear fungus, egg, and etc.

So happy to see the bigger than palm size single petal yellow hibiscus blooming in my garden.

Linking to Friday Bliss & Skywatch Friday.

A happy face means a glad heart;

a sad face means a breaking heart.

(Proverbs 15:13, The Living Bible-TLB)

Home Cooked Meals With Winged Beans & Red Okra.

When I first planted winged beans or the four angled beans in my garden, it took quite a while for the plants to produce beans. They started blooming flowers but most of the flowers dropped off probably due to the heavy downpour. After a while, the beans started to appear and every morning I get to harvest a handful of beans. The freshly plucked tender beans taste good and they can be raw as salad (ulam) eaten with spicy prawn paste (sambal belacan).

I missed the rendang dish which I used to enjoy eating before my retirement. So one day, I decided to cook my own beef rendang dish. A rendang dish is meat cooked in coconut milk and spices. It is a dry curried meat dish cooked until the meat is tender and have absorbed all the flavour of the spices. 

Yummy beef rendang dish and blanched winged beans.

My beef rendang dish recipe is a very simple one. If you are interested, there are many simple rendang recipes on youtube, Rendang can be eaten with bread, plain white rice or rice cooked in coconut milk (nasi lemak), etc.

Winged beans can be eaten raw (ulam) but hubby prefer cooked beans. These beans were blanched in hot boiling water with salt added and eaten plain with the rendang dish.

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We couldn't finish the rendang dish and the left over was kept for the next day's dinner. Left over rendang taste better than freshly cooked rendang.

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Freshly harvested tender and crunchy winged beans and red okra, ready for another day's dinner.

Winged beans and red okra from my garden.

Blanched winged beans and red okra (turned pale green when cooked). This dish was served with crunchy fried garlic and garlic oil and oyster sauce drizzled over the dish.

Fried a few fishes for dinner.

My son brought back a whole tub of fresh fishes from his fishing trip.

One morning we saw black chicken sold in the mini market. I haven't cooked black chicken soup for a long, long time. I bought one black chicken to boil a simple soup with goji berries (kei chee) and red dates.

This morning I managed to snap some clear pictures of the winged bean flowers.

Once the sun is up, the pictures won't turn out nicely.

If we take time to notice, every flower has its own beauty.

Linking to Wednesday Around The World (WATW) & Wordless Wednesday.

Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation:

seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it,

according to their various kinds."

And it was so. The land produced vegetation:

plants bearing seed according to their kinds and

trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds.

And God saw that it was good.

(Genesis 1:11-12, New International Version-NIV)

From The Garden To My Dining Table

All my edible plants are grown in pots because I do not have much space in my garden. The most I grow is 2 to 3 pots of each type of edibles. Since they are grown in pots, they cannot produce much. Sometimes a single harvest is enough for a plate of vegetable for our dinner. Sometimes, I will accumulate 1 or 2 days of harvest to cook a plate or I will mix together whatever I can harvest from the garden. Below is one example of my home cooked dinners using whatever greens I have harvested for that day.

 2 pieces of fried fish, fried fish paste, and blanched home grown vegetables.

 I grow potato leaves in 2 small pots.

 I used the cut stems from each harvest to regrow the potato leaves.

Just loosen the the soil and stick the cut stems into the soil. New leaves will grow from the stems and very soon a new batch of tender leaves can be harvested for dinner.

 That morning, I also havested these winged beans and red okras. I added these to the potato leaves to get a plate of blanched greens.

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What I cooked for one of my dinner.

2 pieces of fried fish with some home made spicy sambal paste added on to the fish. The spicy sambal paste consists of fresh chilies and curry leaves from my garden.

 Home fried fish paste. Paste bought from the mini market.

These were eaten with sweet sour Thai chili sauce.

Blanched home grown vegetables consisting of sweet potato leaves, winged beans and red okras. When cooked the red okra turned pale green. When tender, there is no need to peel the leaves stalks. For this dish, I sprinkled some fried spicy sambal (dry version given by a friend) on to the vegetables.

Some mornings, the harvest is small just like the above.

The black seed pod will yield seeds for future planting.

A timely Bible verse to remind myself:

The person who does the planting or watering isn't very important,

but God is important because He is the One who makes things grow.

(1 Corinthians 3:7, The Living Bible-TLB)

Grow, Harvest & Home Cooked Red Okra Or Red Ladies Fingers.

On my previous trip to Cameron Highlands I bought a packet of red okra or red ladies fingers seeds. I have not seen the seeds being sold in the lowland. I have grown ornamental okra, the long okra, the normal size okra, and now red okra plants.

Red okra seedlings on the left and cucumber seedlings on the right.

I transferred the seedlings into bigger pots.

 For bigger pots, I grow 2 okra plants.

 For red okras, the leaves have red veins, the stems and stalks are also red.

 Red buds appearing on the plants.

 The first flower

 Now waiting for the first okra to form after the bud has flowered.

Red okra buds

Red Okra flowers

 The first okra and more bud are flowering.

Red okras

Found these raindrops hanging on an okra stalk one morning.

 Waiting to harvest these red okras.

 Top left - harvested my first okra together with the winged beans.

Bottom right - harvest 1 purple brinjal, 1 red okra and 2 winged beans

The black winged bean is for seeds.

 More red okras harvest together with 1 French bean.

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One of my home cooked dinner using my red okras.

 Deep fried a piece of fish with spicy curry batter.

 Cooked a plate of mixed vegetables consisting of  fresh mushrooms, prawns, home grown French bean, home grown chilies, and home grown red okras. The red okras turned to light green when cooked as you can see in the above picture.

 Then he prayed again, this time that it would rain,

and down it poured, and the grass turned green

and the gardens began to grow again.

(James 5:18, The Living Bible-TLB)