I spotted, actually T spotted, a bird making a nest in the small Mango Tree at the back of the house. Everyday T has been glued to the window closest to the tree watching the activity.
Often the sunset makes the entire sky pink, but this photo doesn't capture just how pink and beautiful it really is.
One of the best things about living in Malaysia is Air Asia. The flights are cheap and I recently purchased some tickets for travel in the fall. Well, I always see on the Air Asia website these amazing deals, but when I key in the dates and destinations of my travel the prices are never as cheap as the promotion. Although they are cheap enough. 
I found my mom's recipe for Popovers in my recipes and decided to give them a try as they are very easy to make. My mom's recipe is the easiest one I've encountered and usually is failure-proof unlike other fussy popover recipes.
My Bunga Kantan plant behind the carpark continues to thrive. I initially wrote about it here. Another Malaysian blogger Autumn Belle, who has a fantastic gardening blog called My Nice Garden, wrote me that from the photos on my blog she can see that my plant is generating seeds which is apparently uncommon. I do see the Malaysian Little Spider Hunter Bird hovering around the plant alot (see my post here) and so I think that is how the plant is being pollinated. 
I sent Autumn Belle some of the dried brown seeds like above and a few fresher larger green and pinkish pods. She sent me some items in return which I will write about later! Anyway, she just posted a very good informative post on Bunga Kantan here asking her large readership if they have any experience with germinating Bunga Kantan from seeds. I hope that they can give us some advice or if anyone reading here has any advice please post it! 
In the meantime, I planted two pots of Bunga Kantan seeds as a test. 4 seeds on April 24 and 4 more on April 29. You can see from the photo that nothing has sprouted yet in the Bunga Kantan pots. The other pot is a mango seedling that I pulled from the grass in the front yard. I want to see how that does, but I'm not sure I need anymore Mango tress on the property because I already have four and they grow pretty big.
I decided to try and make a vlita salad yesterday after putting up the Bayam Merah Post. So I searched online and found a couple recipes which I adapted slightly. The salad tasted pretty good, the fresh lemon juice was nice. I happened to have a couple lemons on hand, usually we use more limes. Here's the recipe:
I bought a huge bunch of Bayam Merah a vegetable leaf that you can find out more about in the Wikipedia article on Amaranth. The first time I bought it here in Malaysia someone called it Chinese Red Spinach. So I have been preparing it as a spinach of sorts. Looking at the Amaranth article though, I see that many countries use this leaf in cooking. I'm going to check out how to make the Greece salad dish using this leaf called vlita or vleeta. What is best about it is that, unlike green spinach, when cooked the red of the leaf bleeds so when you mix the cooked Bayam Merah on say rice, the rice takes on a red color similar to the color of beet juice which makes for a colorful meal. Price of the bunch above 1.44 RM from Tesco.
The store also had this foot stool as well. I would remove the fake leather cushion and find another or leave it without one.
Since living here our favorite Noodles have become these brownish hard noodles which are called different names and similar to Chinese Noodles. Both brands above are produced in Selangor, Malaysia the yellow bag is called "Megah Mee Clay Pot Ee Mee" and the White and Red bag is called "EE KEE" (2.60RM per bag). Although the brand name states "clay pot" the instructions on the back show the noodles can be used for soups or fried noodles as well. We like them as fried noodles and below is how we make them.
One of the simplest meals we make are vegetables and these noodles. We use whatever vegetables we have on hand and some chili peppers. First we cook the vegetables in a bit of oil in the wok and set them aside. While we are cooking the vegetables we add two of those round noodle disks to boiling water and cook the noodles for about two minutes. They should get softer, but not mushy. We drain the noodles and then add them to the wok and fry the noodles. Stirring them a lot so that the noodles don't get stuck on the bottom of the wok.
When the noodles start to stick, we add some light and dark soy sauce to loosen them from the bottom of the pan. Then we add the vegetables back in and toss the mixture.
Lastly, we add some of this Thai sos sauce (here a popular brand called Maggi) to make the noodles a bit spicer and to give the noodles a bit of a sauce base. I think that these noodles made in the hawker stands in Malaysia are made with soy sauce only. But we like the extra taste. The noodles are brownish, but I think that the dark soy sauce is what makes the noodles look darker too.
The painting and clean up of the upstairs 'Family Room' (as they call it around here), Stairs and Entry way is finally complete! I think it looks great and is ready for some furniture, now if we could only find the right items. The Ikea mattress cushions that I saw with the grey covering turned out to not be a good idea. The grey part was not a permanent fabric but kind of a temporary cheap fabric cover that would get ruined pretty quick. So for now we have to find other cushions that will work or resort to sofas/chairs. The search is on....
For the past couple days the painters were here sanding and priming the walls in the Family Room, Stairway area, and Entryway to make the walls smoother. What a mess, but we put up plastic in the living room doorway and the kitchen doorway to cut down on the dust which was really bad last time they sanded the living room and dining room. The walls in these areas were painted a light 'gardenia' green. Almost white but with a light green tint. It was ok, but the walls were a bit uneven in places so we decided to paint the rooms Nippon 145 White in Spotless. We had used a cheaper non-washable paint Nippon paint in the living room and dining room and it just isn't performing as well as our Home office or Kitchen which are Spotless White. So we decided to use the better paint especially for the stairs walls which gets dirty faster. Here in Malaysia the Geckos create a dropping that gets on the walls and it needs to be washed off. No matter how hard you try to make your place gecko-free, they manage to get in anyway and there is always some of the brown hard droppings around the windows and floors. This sounds gross and it is, but after being here for awhile, it is just part of living in Malaysia that you have to deal with. Well, having washable paint on the walls does help cleaning it.
Entryway with sealer coat.
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