Old Style Christmas Card

Well, I realize that tomorrow is our last day with wonderful 2013. Time really goes by. Chrismas is over but I can still feel and enjoy the joyful moment until today. This year, we received quite few Christmas presents from family and relatives, including FIVE CHRISTMAS CARD! I was so excited to read them. Well, don't you? LOL

I mean, its been a long time a go since people started to replace the old style Christmas card with new method such as: text messages or emails which seems to be more effective and time saver. Your friends and relatives will receive your Christmas greeting in just a second after you send it. Even these days, in social media era when every places seems to get closer and closer, we can send Christmas greetings through various ways such as: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Path or Blackberry Messenger. And the fun fact is that you can add pictures of you and your family (in colour!) then send them along together with your Christmas greeting. Your friends and relative will receive it in just a second! How awesome is that! And as we all can see, Christmas cards have been forgotten.

Like it or not, Christmas cards do take time and efforts, just like. I describe above. But actually I miss them now. I miss the colourful card (sometimes you can find one with musical instrument attached and play Christmas songs while opened), I miss the beautiful words of Christmas inside. I think Christmas cards are personal compare to short messages we used on Twitter. We may call it old style but Christmas card will never be totally forgotten. Somehow I feel that someday people will get bored of all these social media phobia and return to use the old style Christmas card again. 

Anyway, I still want to give you my own Christmas greeting here my fellow readers. I hope your Christmas there as merry as ours here. Merry Christmas and Happy Welcoming New Year 2014

Fish with Salty Soybean Paste

Soybean is commonly found on Asian cuisine. Its made of soybean (obviously) and has been preserved with salt and other ingredients so that it can be keep for longer time without being rotten. The taste is salty with dark brown colour and you can still see the soybean inside. This time, I want to share a recipe using this soybean paste.

Basically you can always use anything other than fish to cook with soybean paste, such as: shrimps, squids or eggs. This time I choose fish instead.

Fish with Salty Soybean Paste

Ingredients:

1/2 kilos fresh fishes, wash and cut into half. Sprinkle with salt and lemon, leave it about 15 minutes. Then deep fried the fishes until golden brown.

10 pcs of green beans, sliced

10 pcs green pepper

2 cm ginger, smashed

1 dried tamarind

1 lemongrass

1 bayleaf

Half tomato, sliced

1 tsp of Oyster sauce

Blended ingredients:

10 pcs shallots

5 pcs garlics

1 cm ginger

A spoon of of dried prawn

Shrimp paste

How to cook:

Add oil into medium size pan and heat it

Add smashed ginger and fried for 2 minutes, then add all the blended ingredients, stir for 2 minutes

Add tamarind, lemongrass, bayleaf and the green pepper and sliced tomato, stir well

Add the sliced grean beans and oyster sauce, then let all cook for about 5 minutes, then add 1 cup of water to blend all the ingredients. Cook until the green beans become soft.

Add the fried fishes into the pan and stir well so they covered completely inside the sauce, leave it for 5 minutes for to fishes to absorb the sauce.

Ready to serve ^^

Note: since I have already use enough salty ingredients such as soybean paste, shrimp paste and oyster sauce on this, I do not add anymore salt into the recipe but you can always add salt anytime you like :)

Spicy Sausages Fried Rice

My last post about Crab Soup with Corn here  is an usual menu for main course. Now, I want to share another favorite menu for my family, this time for breakfast. It Spicy Sausages Fried Rice. We all love fried rice for breakfast and I usually combine it with other type of additional and not just sausages. I love to combine it with scrambled eggs, pepperoni, mushroom, salted-fishes, etc. So, basically, you can always replace the sausages with other additional dish you like. 

Spicy Sausages Fried Rice

Ingredients:

- Two plates of rice (I usually keep the rice inside the freezer over night to get rid of the moist we usually  find in hot rice. Cold rice will taste crispy when used as fried rice. But its your choice :) )

- 2 garlics, finely chopped

- Chicken breasts (as many as you like), thinly sliced

- Sausages (as many as you like), sliced

- 6 onions, thinly sliced, fried

- 2 eggs, scrambled

- Sweet soy sauce

- Oyster sauce

- Spring Onions and Parsley, finely chopped

- Salt and pepper

Ingredients to blend using a blender:

- 10 onions

- 3 chillis (add more if you want)

- 1 ounce of dried shrimp

- 1cm of ginger

How to cook:

Add butter or cooking oil into medium size fried pan and heat it.

Add chopped garlics and stir for a while

Add all the blended ingredients, stir for about 2 minutes.

Add chicken breasts, oyster sauce, sweet soy sauce and stir well

Add sliced sausages and scrambled eggs. Stir well altogether.

Add cold rice into the pan, stir well for a few minutes until all the ingredients mixed well and the white rice turn into brown colour.

Add salt and pepper then sprinkled with fried sliced onion.

Sprinkle with finely chopped spring onions and parsleys.

Ready to serve :)

Happy breakfast...

Crab Soup with Corn

It's been raining a lot in here recently. Usually, we have rainy season in Medan starts from October to December. It's not like all day long kind of type rain of course. Only few hours daily. I especially call this as Christmas season. Yay! Christmas is almost here....

Anyway, any kind of hot soup will be suitable during this season. A kind of food we usually enjoy together. This recipe is one of our favorite meal that I'd love to share with you. The recipe is very simple and  can be served within an hour.

Crab Soup with Corn

Ingredients:
1kg of crabs, cut half
3 medium caroot, peeled and slice diagonally
1 potato, cut into 8
1 medium corn, cut into 10 part
2 spring onions, thin sliced
1 parsley, finely chopped
1 tometo, cut into 4
Salt and pepper
Onions, sliced and fried until golden brown

Blend these ingredients:
10 onions
5 garlic
Ginger 3cm

How to cook:
Boil water in a pot.
Cut 3cm of ginger and smashed but not broken. Put inside the water.
After the water boiled, add sliced carrots, potatoes and corns and let them boiled for half an hour.
(Since I have toddler, I want the carrots and potatoes softer and I will boil them longer)
Then crabs and let them boiled for another half and hour than add sliced tomato.

Add the blended ingredients into the pot, stir in and season with salt and pepper.
Add half amount of the spring onions and parsley, stir for a few minutes more.

How to serve:
Add the crabs in a bowl, add carrots, potatoes and corns.
Pour the broth.
Add the rest of the spring onions and parsley.
Last one, sprinkle with fried onions..

Bon appetite....Selamat makan ^^

You can always make new friends, dear

My 6,5y old daughter is now a 1st grade student. She always loves school and she enjoys almost all activities she has in school everyday :) Sometimes I pretend about not taking her to school one day with many reasonable reasons, she always refused and said she need to go to school to study and meet her friends no matter what! LoL. That's how she loves school.

One day, when I picked her up after school, she entered the car silently and with no smile at all. Well, this is not her very much. She always enter the car in smile and can not stop talking about what happened in school that day. But on that particular day, she act different. I asked why she looks like having a bad mood. I wonder whether she's sick or something. But she said, No. 

"Angeline, my classmate, doesn't want to play with me. And she asked my other girl classmates to stop playing with me too. So I have no friends to play with, while I'm waiting for you to come and pick me up."

She told me about that in a very sad voice and face. I thought: oooh geeezz, this kind of bully has already started among a very young children nowaday. I remember back in my time, almost every 1st grade students get along with their classmates well and play together everyday. And bullies began to start when they grow older such as 5th or 6th grade after they meet more kids in school and trying to make new friends. But now, it seems that it starts early enough among the 1st grade students.

To be honest, this is the first time for me to deal with this. I read a lot and learn from other parents about how to deal with this kind of problem. The conclusion that I got is that we need to teach our kids about self-confidence first. To teach them that they are equal with their other friends, so there's no need to be afraid and you can make friends with everyone. In my daughter's case, I think she's dissapointed to see one of her friends has managed to push other kids to stop playing with her and how they listen to her. She was afraid that this means she will be alone all the time and no one will play with her again unless she follows the rules made up by this Angeline. She thought about what will going to happen with her in school without any friends to play with. School will be fun no more.

I don't want to add more negativities to this anymore. I don't want her to pay hatred with hatred since that will never solve the problems. Instead it will add bitterness into her heart in the future. So I told her that she does not need to feel sad about it all. There will a way out of every problem she has in school and she needs to keep that in mind. In this case, if Angeline stop playing with her and order her other classmates to stop playing with her either, she can always find other friends in school to play with. If she can not play with her classmates, she can always go and meet friends from other classes. In there school, there are five classess for 1st grade students and many of them are her former kindergarten's classmates also. She can go and play with them instead.

She looked surprised with my opinion and started to smile.
"How can I not think of that before?" She said excitedly. "I still can play with Ayumi, Anastasia or Zsezse in Rainbow Class (name of other 1st grader class room). And she said she will absolutely visit them tomorrow. I was happy to see her smile back again. And to add a little relief to her dissapointment before, I asked her to tell this Angeline:

"Hi, Angeline. If you refused to play with me, that is fine. I still have so many friends out there who willing to play with me. You are not my only friend. So, please be nice with your friends."

After that day, she realizes that she still have so many friends outside her class room to be friends with. And teach her how to make new friends too by saying 'hi' first to other kids and introduce herself first and remember to be nice to them. She makes more and more friends right now and knowing that so many new friends to come in the future. So no need to be worry about not having friends in the future anymore.

Good job, my daughter. I love you :)