Posts tagged Food

2012 Christmas Ginger Bread house

Last year, we managed a time-lapse of the construction (see here). This year, with a toddler roaming around the house, a camera on a tripod wasn’t a good idea so it’s just a couple of photos whenever I remember to grab the camera.

Instead of a regular standard house, we decided that we’ll make a larger house using two Ikea ginger bread house kits. A couple of cracks in the second box meant that we had to make some changes and adjustments. Now that we’ve gone for size, perhaps next year will be more upgrades instead of size!

Aquaponics Project

What’s aqua-what? Hydroponics?

Well, hydroponics is plants in water instead of soil medium. Aquaculture is usually the cultivation of aquatic creatures for food (i.e. fish, prawns, etc). Aquaponics is both together. I think wikipedia has a better description than what I can write (see Wiki entry).

In a nutshell, it’s combining the aquaculture (in my case, Fish) with the hydroponics part. If you’ve kept any fish before, you’d definitely realize that they do produce a fair bit of waste. Otherwise, pet shops won’t be trying to sell you that fancy filter and pump kit plus no matter what, you’d still end up cleaning and changing the water eventually.

Well, let nature do it for you is the name of the aquaculture game. The waste the fishes produce is actually pretty good for plants. So hence my project.

I’ve an outdoor man-made pond with about forty odd Tilapia fishes. They eat and shit a lot. That’s because most of them are edible size by now. Just so you know, these are the 4th generation in my pond (yes, life finds a way to breed) and edible size means over 1.1kg (approx 4.5 lbs). I put a pump in to push the water out into a poly tank what holds hydrokorrels – I can’t find the brand or type I use but this link is pretty close.

The water fills up and gets flushed down and back to the pond. The challenge was that most plants don’t like their roots drowned under water. The roots tend to rot quickly. The solution was inspired by the toilet bowl. Taking some physics lessons, a simple siphon can be created with off-the-shelf PVC pipe parts. This siphon works when the water reaches a certain level. Once the water reaches the right level, it will immediately begin the flush phase where it actually dumps all the water rapidly.

The challenge is to find a fill rate fast enough to trigger the siphon effect but yet slow enough to allow time for the roots to breathe between fill cycles. After some careful tuning, my Laguna 8,000l/hour pump fills my growbed tank in about 10 minutes but dumps the water in 70 seconds.

The diagram is below. Basically the outer 84mm cap is to prevent dirt, leaves and other stuff from clogging the siphon. It does also help you to adjust/tune the water level by creating a barrier to hold the grow bed medium (those hydrokorrels) away from the siphon proper. You won’t need to remove everything just to make adjustments. For the return pipe, the siphon effect is stronger with at least one bend (elbow joint) plus a pipe length of at least half a meter or twenty-odd inches.

Here are my growbed and pond photos.

Adjustment valves to tune the water going into my other filters/hydroponics troughs and the growbed. My 8000L/hr pump is too powerful for a single growbed at the moment.

The return valves/pipes into my pond.

Sweet basil, Thai basil, Mint, rosemary and spinach growing nicely.

The siphon assembly.

My basil and 3 day-old spinach plants. Spinach grows pretty well and fast. I get to harvest them every ten days.

My Tilapia fish. Hardy and dirty. Just what’s needed for the plants. They’re edible too and fast growing.

 

Hee Lai Ton, Sri Kembangan

It’s Chinese New Year and it is usually filled with eating. Well, yes, there’s all the family reunions, meeting long lost relatives and friends but it’s always around food. It used to be that most breakfasts, second breakfasts, brunch, lunch, afternoon tea, evening tea, dinner and suppers were all home-cooked food. Today, most people have no time to prepare such meals from scratch and resort to eating out. Even in my family, we’ve started to supplant home cooked dishes with store bought ones. Of course the main meals (the eve, first and second day of the New Year) is still home cooked.

Anyways, along with Chinese New Year, it was also my father-in-law’s birthday. It’s kinda cool to have your birthday around Chinese New Year because everyone will know about it and you will get more presents! Anyways, I digress but we got him a fancy iPad2 which I setup to keep him busy with lots of e-mags, news portals, flip board and more.

For lunch, we went to this restaurant in Sri Kembangan that is famous for it’s Poon Choi. Read the wikipedia link if you want to find out more but it is translated wrong in my opinion. It should read “basin dish”. Inside this boiling pot, we had chicken, oyster, vegetables, pork, prawns, bean curd, fish maw, bean curd skin, abalone, eel, fish balls and more…

Anyways, the food is pretty decent fare but the highlight of course was the Poon Choi which was full of stuff to eat. There were other dishes of course such as fish-wrapped oyster with sea weed balls, suckling pig and stewed goose feet with sea cucumber. I ate everything except the feet — I don’t eat legs… chicken legs, pig legs, cow legs, fish legs, human legs… whatever.

The food is pretty good and it’s a pretty packed on the Saturday we went. I don’t know if the other dishes are worth going for though. They’re famous for their Poon Choi so if you are longing for that dish, the one they serve up is pretty good.

Hee Lai Ton
12, Jalan Muhibah 3,
Taman Muhibah,
Seri Kembangan,
43300 Selangor D.E.
03 8992 5561

 

Authentic Spanish – El Meson

Having spent over a month in Spain, finding good, authentic Spanish food in Malaysia is hard to find. Maybe because Spanish food in mostly not really halal but probably also Spain isn’t that famous in Malaysia. I found a decent Spanish place once in Mont Kiara but it closed down a few years later.

Eventually, El Meson popped up on my Radar. I don’t know when they opened up in Bangsar since I don’t frequently that area but I’m a fan from day one. I didn’t try a lot of food since there was only two of us but I went more my favorite Iberico and Serrano hams. A paella completed our simple lunch. All I can say is that it’s as good as you can get if you’re itching for a taste of Spain. OlĂ©!

I’ll be back for more, including their all-day breakfast! Dos cerbeza, por favor!

El-Meson

61-63 Jalan Telawi 3
Bangsar Baru,
59100 Bangsar Baru,
Kuala Lumpur
03-2282-8290

TTDI Ramadan Bazaar

The muslim fasting month of Ramadan in Malaysia brings out an interesting activity usually called the Ramadan Bazaar in many cities in Malaysia.

One of the biggest feature of this bazaar is the wide array and choice of food. In some cases, the food is rather poor but in others, the food’s rather nice. Of course you can’t compare with home cooked food but some of the stalls are pretty good. The past of couple years has seen us visiting several bazaars around town. This was our first time to the bazaar in Taman Tun and I must say it was the best bazaar yet for us (food-wise). We went on a Saturday evening which we had the good fortune of some nice weather. Browsing stalls with charcoal grills, boiling woks, pots and all sorts of heat producing equipment in the hot tropical sun at five o’clock is no fun. We had overcast skies, cool weather thanks to the rain that stopped by four and a good strong breeze. Best time to go is about five as the stalls would already have been setup and you avoid the last minute crowd at six in the evening. We spent over fifty-plus ringgit and bagged ourselves ayam percik, roti jala, satay, murtabak and more.


















A CNY Burger party

After multiple rounds of Chinese New Year dishes and over-loading on carbs, we decided on a burger night with home-made burgers, salad and coleslaw. Nothing beats having good food and family over to spend some time with each other. They are what I’m always thankful for. As the festivities come to a close, another amazing year with the most amazing person in the world. When I wake up and see her by my side, that’s what makes heart sing and what I’ll always be so blessed — no matter what comes my way!

My nephew can’t wait to light up some fireworks so our home was a pretty good place to do it. We are blessed with a pretty sizable front lawn so… “fire in the hole!” Before the fireworks photos get posted, here comes our delicious dinner first. If you’d like the burger recipe, head over here.