Make Your Own Fabric Boxes

The most expensive thing (non-living things!) I wish to have is probably a house. I do not really keen on gold, diamonds or cars. Unfortunately, last year we found that we cannot buy a house in near future, and still uncertain about in faaarrrr future either. It shocked me at first, but eventually I can accept that. It's about following what Allah's command. Eventually I believe that if we follow Him, He must have something better for us, more than what we could ever think of. Could it be house in Jannah? Inshaa Allah.

So, back to mortal world :) If we still cannot have our own house, it does not mean we could not create home, right? I told this to myself actually. Our house is a mess. With two boys hanging around and never stop moving, it's not easy to keep the house tidy and clean. I rrrrreallly need to organize this house. Maybe I need a system, I thought. I don't know, something!

Google is my clever friend. I started to google about how to organizing house...with limited budget, of course. I do not know where to start, so I start anywhere :D Well, first, I sorted unused stuffs by throw them away or donate them. Then I made 'sketches' of what things need to be organized. I'm probably not a perect planner, so my plan and sketches are quite a mess too. I do not have time limit, which probably a wrong move.

Anyway!
My sons' bedroom have quite limited clothes storage. Everytime they pull clothes, it usually cause some mess. So, I thought I need boxes and try to fold clothes differently. I got cardboard boxes freely from Pak'n'Save and with some fabric and old bedsheet I made some boxes. I made them only with glue gun and scissor, and hope it stay firm quite long. I planned to make some more boxes for our clothes and some other stuffs. However, until I type this post I still haven make another single box yet.

Oh, this organizing thing probably need more (and more) time. If possible, I hope I can finish it before October. Why October? Just because I need this house well-organized, pronto!

I thought I was going to give you the 'how to' to make the boxes, but there are a lot of great 'how to'-videos you can check out. So I will just give you before and after the cardboard boxes got makeover.

Here is the 'before'

And here is 'almost-after'. Ha ha, I know, just a little bit better. At least I feel better :)

Well, I hope this post usefull or inspiring. Otherwise, oh what a heck :D !

Simplicity in Eid

Assalaammualikum warrahmatullahi wabarakatuh sisters and brothers in Islam,

I know it is weeks after Eid Fitr day, but this posting is especially to say Eid Mubarak to you all. Taqaballahu minna wa minkum, may Allah Ta’ala accept our and your efforts and good deeds.

In the place where we far away from big family, my little family of me, hubby, and two sons had celebrate Eid very moderately. As our second Eid Fitr in NZ, these Eid days were very quiet compare to previous ones. No big family, no big bunch of friends :)
Last year was even more quiet. I didn't bake any cookies, as the tradition food in Indonesia. Last year we just went to Eid prayer, ate at home, and off we went for vacation out of town.

However, I realize my kids grown bigger and as we live as minority here, there are lots of celebrations that we have to meet with, which is not related to our faith. By that, my kids so close to influences that can pull them away from our faith, Islam. As parents, especially as a mum, I realize how huge my responsibility to keep my sons in track in our faith, especially in this non muslim country.

I realized I have to make our sons recognize that Eid days are more important than any other celebration days that they could meet here. The Eid day have to be special, therefore I could not let Ramadhan month and Eid days passing by without our sons missing them after.

This year, my sons tried to fast a few days in Ramadhan. They woke for sahoor for a few days. They recognize Eid day. I made more effort to make cookies and meals. I made a little decoration and tidy up our home a bit. We gave the boys some gifts because they have tried fasting. We went to Eid prayer in ASB Showground, where a lot of muslims from all over the world, so our son can see that they're not the only muslim here in Auckland, and muslims are not only from Indonesia. In that place, there are festive of food stalls and children's play area. I hope, I really hope, that they remember that day, and wanting it some more. This might be a small clue, but when my youngest son said to me, "Bunda, I want to go there again", I feel cool water flow in my chest, feeling that we've probably started something good here.

We probably away from the very merry Eid day that we used to have, but a little simplicity is better than none. It's just a little effort, I know, but it's one pavement of a good path, inshaaAllah.

Chocolate Fudge Cake

We all love moist cake. I always imagine that fudge cake is moist and chocolaty. I never had chance to eat the store-bought one though. However, moist cake might involve too much butter sometimes.

Few weeks ago I found this recipe that use cocoa instead of chocolate, and oil instead of butter. Sounds better, I thought. So I made it, with a little bit my own way, which is skipping out the baking soda and baking powder, cut off sugar a bit, replace half of oil with yogurt. Unfortunately, by skipped out the food additives, I need something to rise the cake, which is egg. Yea, I know, not totally fat free. At least egg is a natural ingredient :p I also took the long way by whipping up eggs and sugar first until fluffy, rather than just stir and stir.

The original recipe has a very interesting icing that made of coconut cream instead of regular cream. I really, really wanted to make the icing, really. It didn't happen. Two reasons, my boys wouldn't be patient enough to wait for icing, and I was happy enough to have it without icing. Maybe someday, someday, I will ice a cake. Someday. Yup.

This cake satisfied me, my hubby and our two boys. It is moist, that you can eat it straight away after you put in the fridge. Yes, it didn't get dry after I put it in the fridge over night. I will definitely make it again, and again.

So here it is, if you like to try, our humble, moist Chocolate Fudge Cake.

Chocolate Fudge Cake

Ingredients:
1 cup of plain flour
¼ cup of cocoa
3/4 cup of sugar
3 eggs
½ teaspoon of salt
1/4 cup of oil (I used sunflower oil)
1/2 cup of yogurt
1/4 cup chocolate chip (optional)
1/4 cup coarsely chopped roasted cashew (optional)

Directions:
- Preheat your oven to 180C.
- Line a 20x20cm cake tin with baking paper.
- Sift flour and cocoa in a bowl and stir to combine.
- Stir together in other bowl salt, oil and yogurt until blend.
- Whisk eggs and sugar with electric mixer until fluffy.
- Fold in the flour mixture and the yogurt mixture alternately with spatula until well combined.
- Put in the oven and bake for about 20-30 minutes. The time will vary depending on your oven.
- Cook until bamboo skewer comes out clean.
- Once cooked, remove from the oven and allow to cool.
- Get a fork! :)

Oseng-oseng Daun Silverbeet

Oseng-oseng=tumis=stir fy.
I've always seen silverbeet in the grocery stores, but I never eat or cook them before. The leaves are big-thick dark green with white stalk. I was curious about it, but never bought it until one day, one good friend mbak Jeanne posted a picture of Silverbeet dan Udang Masak Santan (silverbeet and shrimp in coconut milk) in facebook. So I asked her about the leaves' taste and how to cook it. It seemed this leaf is just like I thought it was, reminds me of papaya leaves when it cooked.

I finally bought just a bunch, to see how it goes. I was about to cook just like mbak Jeanne did with coconut milk, but I just cooked Opor Ayam (with coconut milk too) a day before. I thought, this could be too much coconut milk in 2 days. So I decided to make something easy, stir fry, as my grandma and my mum used to make. As their old way, I also added fried white bait. Their crunchiness just make it more complete. If you are not familiar with silver beet and white bait(Teri in Indonesian, and I think other part of the world call it anchovy?), I'll post photos of them when I buy them again. Otherwise, just google it please :P

It turn up lovely, almost like papaya leaves but without the bitter taste. Even better, right? My husband ate it too! The best way to eat it is with warm white rice and Sambal Terasi. Sambal is Indonesian condiment made of chilli and it's hoottt!

The recipe I wrote bellow is a very small portion, maybe enough for one or two adult.

Oseng-oseng Daun Silverbeet

Ingredients:
1 bunch silverbeet, leave out the white stalk
1 salam leaf (Indonesian bayleaf)
1 small package of white bait, fried and drained
salt

Spices, chopped:
1 big clove garlic
3 shallot
1 big red chilli (take out the seeds if you don't want it hot)
optionally, some cabe rawit (bird's eye chilli) cut in two

Directions:
- Cut the silverbeet into chunk pieces
- Heat some oil (about 2 tablespoon) in a pan over medium heat.
- Stir in garlic, shallot and chilli until golden.
- Stir in the silverbeat.
- Add some salt
- Add a little water if necessary. Cook until done but not too tender or mushy.
- Turn off the heat off.
- Sprinkle and stir the fried white bait when it's time to eat, to keep the white bait still crunchy.
- Enjoy with white rice and sambal is the best :D

Avocado Juice

Tooooo simple.
Indonesian who read this post will be like, 'What? Just avocado juice and you need to post it in a blog??'.
Ha ha... Why not?
It is because of how simple it is, I want to share it. In most part of the world, avocado has consumed as savoury food. Some people even confuse it whether it is vegetable or fruit.
However, in Indonesia, when we think avocado, most of us probably think about juice, or other beverages. It usually consumed as a sweet drink, with addition of some sugar, syrups or condensed milk(which of course lots of sugar in it).

The avocado juice is usually just a juiced or blended avocado with some water or milk, simple syrup or sugar and ice, pour in a tall glass. Then we add condensed chocolate milk just a bit. It's smooth and creamy, and just... nom nom!

Simple.

However, I think it involve toooo much sugar in it. I want something healthier, so I simply substitute sugar/syrup to honey. I also dilute unsweetened drinking cocoa with a little hot water to substitute the condensed chocolate milk. My kids love it, and I can drink with them, no worries :)

The fun of this avocado juice is, you can have that simple juice with or without chocolate taste. Then, if you substitute honey to banana, you will have a smoothie. Then, after become smoothie, you can freeze the into ice cream! As a matter of fact, at this moment I got my smoothie in the freezer as my first attempt to make ice cream from it!

Anyway, here is the simple avocado juice :)

Avocado Juice

Ingredients:
1 ripe avocado, scoop the flesh out
1 tbsp honey
2-3 ice cubes
water or milk
1 tsp unsweetened drinking cocoa
1 tbsp hot water


Directions:
- Blend ice cubes, avocado flesh, honey until all crush.
- Start to add water or milk little by little until you got the density that you prefer. If it's very liquid it will be like juice. If you keep it a little dense it will be like smoothie (my preference).
- Pour in a tall glass.
- Dilute the cocoa with hot water until smooth. Drizzle it on the avocado juice. Add a straw and enjoy.
- Optionally, you can omit the honey and switch to one banana.
- Optionally again, you can freeze it into ice cream like this lovely blog I found: thriftydecorchick.
- Simply enjoy! :)

Sage and Onion Roasted Chicken

It started when we bought frozen ready to cook Sage and Onion Roast Chicken. It's just a package of frozen marinated and stuffed chicken that we bought from supermarket one day. It is easy because all we need is just put the chicken in oven for 1 hour and, voila! No preparation needed. My hubby love it, and would be happy if we buy it again. My kids ate it. And I...well, I think I just have to find the recipe by Google, ha ha ha! It's just curiosity. I thought, the name is sage & onion....could the ingredients be not more than sage and onion? :D

So, I found these two recipes. It's like a little bit habit of mine, that when I googled, I compare some of recipes I found, and pick up 2-3 recipes that I like. At the end, I might fuse 2 or 3 recipes, or feel happy enough with just one. This time I fuse 2 recipes. One recipe is from the Hairy Bikers, while the other one is from Lala's kitchen blog.

It's quite easy, only a little messy when stuffing and rubbing the chicken, but it's alright. It's simple, yet yummy. Most of all, cooking from the scratch is fresher, cheaper and heart pleasing :)


Here is my Sage and Onion Roasted Chicken

The chick, ready to roast

Ingredients:
1 medium whole chicken
1 egg yolk
1 slice of bread or 1/2 cup of bread crumbs
2 onion
1 clove garlic
2-3 tbsp dried sage or 4 fresh ones
salt
pepper
a pinch of freshly ground nutmeg
1 heap tbsp butter
lemon
olive oil


Directions:
- Boil onions in water just enough to cover them for about 5 minutes. Drain them. (I usually keep the water to boil potatoes that accompanied the chicken later).
- Smear chicken with lemon zest. Set aside.
- Heat up oven to 180 degree celcius.
- Process boiled onion, garlic, bread, egg yolk, butter, sage, nutmeg, salt, pepper and butter in blender or food processor until it looks like coarse mixture (not until it become paste-like).
- Stuff the stuffing inside the chicken and massage some of the stuffing on the chicken's skin.
- Rub a little oline oil on the skin.
- I sew up the opening part of the chicken to keep the stuffing in, but it's up to you.
- I usually put it in oven plastic bag before put into the oven, but it's up to you.
- Cook about 1 1/2-2 hours. I'm usually happy with 1 1/2 hours.
- Since I usually use oven plastic bag, I usually make few holes on the plastic. When the chicken almost done, I take the chicken out, take the plastic away (caution: Hot!), and roast again about 10 minutes to get the skin brownish.
- Serve with potatoes and vegetables, anyway you like.

Serve: 2 adults and 2 toddlers :)

What's Your Food Resolution?

Hi,
I know,I know that I haven't post anything for so long. I don't have any reason but...laziness.
It's December now, and I just realized that it's almost a year since we moved here. In a few weeks will be 2013.
So, what is your resolution for 2013? I don't really in to resolution thing too myself actually (and I never really keep my resolution, or remember the resolutions I've made before, ha ha!). However,resolution is a good thing to keep you in spirit in improving ourselves.
Anyway, I came across this site feedingourfamilies.org.nz and saw that they suggest us to consume meals with at least half vegetables the whole family will benefit, as the picture bellow that I took from their site.

It has 'wow'-ed me, and I think it probably good idea to implement a good portion of veggies every day. I admitted I hadn't give my family enough veggies. There's almost-always some portion of veggies on our table, but probably not good enough. Oh, and I love veggies, but I don't eat fruit well. I don't know why.

I think this portion of veggies suggestion gave me ideas of resolution: Next year I will serve more veggies and more fruits for my family, insyaAllah. I don't know how yet, but I will find a way. One of the way is probably getting the right tools.

I always thought that beee-a-tiful stand mixer like this..

or this..

(pics from here)
~ooh look at their colours *gulp*~

...is a dream kitchen utensil that I could always dreamed of, but probably will never buy it. It's really expensive!!
Now after thinking of my resolution, I don't really want those mixers anymore. I mean, I don't bake cake a lot, and I start begin to think that cakes made from too much flour, and too much sugar, and too much fat... too much whatever. I made cake mostly for my sons, and sometimes for myself. Now my dream is shifted to....JUICE EXTRACTOR! That will be great to consume fruits, don't you think? But I don't know which juice extractor to dream of. Any suggestion?

Anyway, let's hope that my resolution here become reality (amiiiiin!).

So, what is your food resolution? :)