Growing garlic

Four days ago, I found some extra garlic lying around and decided to see what would happen if I stuck the bulbs into the ground and watered them each day. I found a little patch (a really little patch) in the garden for my garlic, just next to the little curb and in between some weeds I thought were too pretty to rip out:

I like garlic, and like lots of it in pasta, but I'm not expecting to see bulbs of garlic growing in my garden (wrong climate methinks). I don't remember eating garlic shoots often, and I seem to remember not liking the taste. Why am I growing garlic then?

I guess I'm just excited to see their bright green spear-like leaves pushing through the damp muddy earth, little soldiers in green suits defying gravity, the scorching sun, and hungry earthworms. Although really I could be mistaking garlic shoots for shallot shoots.

Maybe I should try planting some shallots. Just in case.

Fragments

Fragments. Bits and pieces. Random goodness.

Night sky

Hustle bustle 

rush rush rush.

Quickly hurry 

fast fast fast.

But it's best to 

slow and hush.

Don't you let the 

moment pass.

© EScetera 2006 - 2013 

Busy... gardening?

It's been a while since I last blogged, and saying I've been busy might seem like a cliché, but really, I've been busy. With what, you might ask.

Well, with gardening, for one.

I've been in the garden quite a lot lately. Mostly in the evenings. Pulling out weeds is a lot harder than you might imagine. Then there's the pruning and pinching and trimming of leaves and twigs. And I'm trying to propagate the herbs that are already in the garden, so there's the transplanting and rooting and watering. 

I sound like some garden expert, but more often than not, the plants stick out their obstinate little tongues at me and wilt away. Like Pet Potato. Remember him? I kinda neglected forgot about him for a while (especially with the arrival of slow-walking-and-snap-hissing Tortilla the Emo Turtle), and one day I remembered, and I went out into the garden, and he wasn't there anymore. Pet Potato's place in that pot had been taken over by some other plants. I felt quite hostile towards those plants. I still feel quite hostile towards those plants. *heartbreak*

I think herbs are better. More hardy, more fragrant, and more suited to our weather. They grow really fast too, and it's really as simple as sticking twigs into the ground and waiting for them to sprout. And hey, if you can't stand the sight of them, you can always rip them out and have them for dinner.

Pancakes with The Girls!

Last weekend we decided to make pancakes from scratch. By 'we', I mean The Girls. Maybe I should put some emphasis on that: The Girls. There, much better.

Anyway, The Girls and I, we go way back. Like, some of us have known each other for maybe even more than two decades. That's a very long time. I remember running around with some of these girls. Literally. We played catch. I remember the hair-pulling and tickling and kicking (all in good-natured fun, of course). In fact, we're hitting our thirties soon *gasp!* and we still hair-pull and tickle and kick. But then again, I still crack lame jokes. Along the years, we've shared boy problems, jammed in a band together, watched other friends come and go, had slumber parties, debated third (and first) world problems, watched movies, taken road trips to the beach and back, kept each other company through diarrhea sessions, gotten lost in big cities, and grown up, but somehow, The Girls have still managed to hold it together and remain pretty firm friends. This year, our ages total up to a grand 142 years. Which means this year, the average age of The Girls is 28.4.

That doesn't stop us from giggling over pancakes. Especially if they're made from scratch. The Girls (minus one, who's in a different part of the country), when we meet, there's somehow always food involved. Sometimes we like to go to fanc(ier) eateries and have our dinner cooked for us and laugh while someone else is doing the dishes in the back, but sometimes we enjoy cooking our own meals. Although how what was supposed to be a light afternoon tea ended up being full-blown dinner remains a mystery, we managed to eke out 15 thick fluffy pancakes (and a few crepes) with the following ingredients:

Flour, baking powder, butter, milk, eggs, and mandarin oranges and a lime for a suzette sauce. The glass of black liquid is Coke, and no, that wasn't part of the pancake batter (one of The Girls asked).

We zested the lime and an orange, but the pot of suzette sauce was bitter and we had to toss it out because we burnt the butter. We left the zest out of the second pot, and watched it like a hawk, so it turned out pretty and sweet and all sunshine-y. Tasted like marmalade, actually.

It was really a team effort, and halfway through there were designated teams (really: Pancake Team and Suzette Team). It was really therapeutic, greasing the nonstick, ladling out the batter, watching it form a neat circle, then seeing the batter gradually dry up and the little bubbles emerging and flip flip flip. Steaming hot golden pancake. Wonderful aroma wafting through the house.

We had our pancakes with suzette sauce, honey and butter. But only after taking lots of pictures of our beautiful 15-level pancakes.

At the end of the day, The Girls remind me of pancakes. No, they're not oily and greasy friends. And no, they don't taste like waffles. But they're the ones from your childhood, the ones you grew up with, and the ones with all the memories of warmth and laughter and fun. Comfort food. Comfort friends.

Photowalk: State Museum

This photowalk was pretty last-minute, as in it wasn't even planned, and it was a good thing I decided to bring my Pentax with me. Planky had texted me in the morning asking if I could hang out in the afternoon, and after several wrong turns (literally: Kuching is getting really confusing to drive around lately, what with all the construction work and road repairs), we ended up having afternoon tea on the grounds of the Sarawak State Museum.

This is what afternoon tea looks like in Kuching:

Not quite the tea and scones you were thinking, hey? The first dish is a local dessert called ais kacang, and it's shaved ice topped with jelly, fruit, red beans (the kacang), syrup, milk (condensed, evaporated, or coconut), and some other stuff, all up to the whim and fancy of the hawker. The second dish is belachan beehoon, and it's basically rice vermicelli (beehoon) with a gravy made from fermented shrimp paste (belachan). Usually you get julienned cucumber and slices of boiled cuttlefish with your belachan beehoon, and sometimes you even get slices of century egg. This one didn't have any century egg, but they gave us a bit of sambal belachan in a tiny orange dish, and it was really spicy, and I mixed this into the beehoon and it was superb!

The real photowalk was after tea, and I took some snaps of the blooms. It was interesting to see the different stages of growth. It would have been better if we had more variety though, as the museum grounds had mostly hibiscus plants. At least I think these were hibiscus plants. My knowledge of botanics is pretty bad.

I had some pretty crazy shots as well. Like this one:

You might be staring and wondering what's so crazy about it, and you've got a point, there's nothing crazy about it. Nothing crazy about practically hugging a pillar and putting your face against it and aiming your camera at the sky and trying not to breathe and staring into the viewfinder trying to get the symmetry and standing there while the whole world zooms by and laughs. Nothing crazy at all.

We went to the waterfront to try to catch the sunset but that didn't work out. No pretty orange purple hues today.

Dinner was at Jade Pot Tea House, where I had the usual, Taiwanese spicy pork noodles. This time it was really really really really spicy. I guess the waiter mentioned to the cook that I didn't find their spicy noodles that spicy after all, and they must have been very liberal with the chilli and pepper in an effort to make me weep in pain because the noodles that night were a deeper shade of red (it was more pale yellow than red before), and you could literally see the flecks of chilli and pepper (you could feel the powder on your tongue). More importantly, we caught the kitchenhand/chef peeking out at us a few times, probably hoping to see the gulping down of glasses upon glasses of cold water or something. I cleaned the bowl. No extra water, no frantic fanning of the face, no sweat. They must have been in shock.

Pet Potato: Day 129

Pet Potato turned 129 days old on Saturday. He's not doing too well, as you can see from the following pictures:

There were a couple of days this last week where the rain poured pretty heavily, and Pet Potato gave me quite a shock after one of these storms. He wasn't standing upright anymore, but was pretty much bent in half, collapsed after the wind and water, and leaning his head miserably against his humble pot.

I had to dig Pet Potato up.

You can see that, beneath the surface of the earth, Pet Potato was actually doing quite well. Remember the measly half that was replanted after the alien invasion? Well, that's all gone now. What's left is two little potato sproutlings!!!! Wait. Sproutlings. Is there even such a word?

It took me a tiny while to think it through, but I thought Pet Potato had come too far to just throw him out with the kitchen trash. Ended up changing the earth in his pot and placing him deeper in so he has more stability (and won't get bullied by the rough rain!), and crammed in enough earth to reach the brim of the pot. Watered him. I might trim Pet Potato's shoots a bit eventually, just to remove the yellow rotten bits and maybe prune him a little shorter so he's not so fragile and gangly.

And in case you were wondering about Apple and Rambutan, they're doing great. Bright green leaves and everything. Check them out (first pic is Apple, second is Rambutan):

Will keep you all updated on Pet Potato's progress! Onwards, Pet Potato! Rawr!