Baby Back Pork Ribs and American-type Barbeque Sauces

I was at Tesco awhile back and was in the separate section they have for the pork and other non-Halal items (you have to pay separately for these items including alcohol so when we are at the grocery stores and go into these sections we have to be rung up in two separate places so as to keep the Halal separate from the non-Halal in the grocery stores. It is a bit of a hassle because the act of being rung up at the register in Malaysia sometimes is a slow process!). Anyway, there was actually some ok looking Baby Back Pork Ribs so I picked them up. I don’t remember seeing them before and thought R might like me to make some barbequed ribs.

Pork Baby Back Ribs from Tesco Seremban 23.83RM

American-type Barbeque Sauces that come in bottles here are fairly limited to Heinz and a few other basic BBQ sauces that have a generic BBQ taste. No fancy gourmet BBQ’s in Seremban although I have seen a slightly better selection before at a grocery store called Cold Storage which has a few locations around KL, Selangor and Mid Valley. But even there, they are overpriced and limited.

So a number of months ago I decided to try making my own BBQ sauce, I was trying to get a good American BBQ sauce taste using ingredients available here in Malaysia. The sauce I’ve been making tastes great, rich flavor and just spicy enough for our taste. And because of the special ingredients like the SOS chili sauce there is a very faint Asian taste that I think makes it a special layered sauce.

Here’s the recipe if you’d like to try it. I use it mainly on oven baked chicken, but I also used it on the oven baked baby back ribs and it was very tasty. I usually cook the meat awhile and then add the sauce towards the second half of cooking so it doesn’t burn.

BBQ Sauce

1 cup Tomato Sauce

1 cup SOS Chili Sauce

1/4 cup Distilled Vinegar

1/4 cup Dark Soy Sauce

1/4 cup Brown Sugar

1 tablespoon Yellow Mustard, like Heinz not dry

1 tablespoon Tabasco Sauce

1/4 tablespoon of Mexican Chili Powder*

1/4 tablespoon of Asian Chili Powder*

1/4 tablespoon of Red Chili Pepper Flakes**

1/2 teaspoon Black Pepper

Mix all of the ingredients in a stainless steel saucepan and slowly bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Stir regularly. Reduce the heat to low and gently simmer until it turns dark and thick (about 10 to 15 minutes). Transfer the sauce to a sealable container and store in the refrigerator. It should keep for a month.

*Chili powder here is usually Asian chili powder, a bright red finely crushed powder. Mexican chili powder or what in the US we just call Chili Powder is browner and has a different taste so it is important for the recipe to use some Mexican Chili Powder in addition to Asian Chili Powder. MasterFoods Brand Spices from Australia makes a Mexican Chili Powder available here in Malaysia in the spice section of stores like Tesco or Jusco.

**I think I mentioned before Red Chili Pepper Flakes are hard to buy here, so I get mine from the extra packets that are delivered with Dominos Pizzas. Then later use the packets of Red Chili Pepper Flakes for cooking because cooking with out Red Chili Pepper Flakes at times is nearly impossible! OK Dominos Pizza isn’t great at all but thank goodness they do deliver to my house in seremban when I can’t cook for whatever reason and thank goodness for those pepper flake packets they are like gold in my house!

Taugeh Hijau

I was at Family Store buying my vegetables for the week, there wasn't a great selection because it was Sunday and the Family Store by my house gets really busy on Saturday and to a lesser degree Sunday morning. So by the time I rolled in there, the selection was pretty grim. I got what I could and looked for anything else that might be worth buying. I saw this small packet of some cute little greens called Taugeh Hijau so I put it in my basket.

The Taugeh Hijau sat in my crisper for a day or two and then I noticed it and thought I better do something with it before it spoiled. I looked online and found "green bean sprouts" for one translation and on a blog another suggestion that Taugeh Hijau might also mean snow pea sprouts or pea sprouts, that they are the greens for peas. The Taugeh Hijau I bought looked kind of like other pea sprouts images. It seems they are usually cooked in Asia. I didn’t need to look at the recipes, I could tell by the finished products that it’s more of that stirfry-lightly or blanch them type of preparation done here so often in Asia especially Malaysia... similar to the preparation the baby ferns I recently prepared and other greens.

But I was serving cold chicken and vegetable pasta for dinner and so cooking these didn’t appeal to me, I thought maybe I could add the sprouts to the top of the salad raw. I found one entry online that said they could be both cooked or served raw and that raw they tasted good. So I tried a stem. Sure enough, it tasted good. In fact it tasted an awful lot like alfalfa sprouts which I love and aren’t available at family store and are quite expensive when they are available at Jusco. So here I have another sprout alternative! R was skeptical but I cleaned them and placed them on top of the pasta salad. Guess what, he liked them and I did too. Very nice taste and cool texture- a crisp bite in the mouth and it made the salad look pretty fancy.

I’m going to have to get them again and try cooking them too.

Wall Lighting in Living Room

The wall lighting for the Living Room was proving to be the hardest fixtures to buy. I really had been looking for something over the past few months because I was tired of seeing the dangling wires when we watched films on our TV. But, in Malaysia generally there are two types of wall sconces. The very dated frosted glass dome type lighting or weird designs with colors or ... I can't even explain them, but imagine some really ugly fixtures.

I contacted the Malaysian furniture store Linds Furniture via email back in April and asked about some wall fixtures on their website that I thought were passable, I didn't love them but at least they looked contemporary and white would blend into the wall, right?

Wrong. Here was the response from Linds: "The name of the Foscarini lights is Fields. They come in two different colours, White and Orange. Price is listed as below (stock as listed):

Fields 1: RM 4,400 (1 in orange)

Fields 2: RM 5,200 (1 in white)

Fields 3: RM 4,900 (1 in orange)

The big light in the middle (of the picture) is a combination of all three fields.

For those not in stock, we can order them, with a waiting period of not more than 3 months. Attached is a pdf document with details of the lights."

So if I wanted to buy the light in the middle it would cost 14,500 RM (approximately $4,833 USD) and I would have to wait up to 3 months to get it in white. I just wonder, who in their right mind would spend this much on this fixture? No thanks, I kept looking.

I had nearly given up, but finally found something useable from Avalon Light Fixtures in Senawang not far from Seremban. I liked the curved part and the contemporary look. I wasn't sure R would like them so I took a photo and shared it with him first. Surprisingly, he liked them. I was, at that point, prepared to spend some money on the fixtures, I mean not 14,000 RM, but more than I had initially wanted to as I figured they were in an important room of the house. But to my delight they were with discount only 40 RM each!

Panasonic MX-900M Blender

So I have been putting off buying a Blender since we moved to Malaysia. Every time I'd see them in the stores I couldn't decide what to get. I was looking for stainless steel to go with the kitchen or black to go with the coffeemaker. But many of the SS models are imported models and just way too expensive. You see I bought a blender back when I lived in New York . It wasn't that expensive maybe $75 USD (but you can get much better quality appliances in the US for less cost than Malaysia). I bought it to mainly make frozen drinks like margaritas, etc. And when I used it, the thing barely could crush the ice to make the drinks, in fact, I don't think the ice ever got that small it was more like shaved ice. This was disappointing. I figured I had to spend a lot more to get something that would do the job but never go around to it.

So being in Malaysia, I immediately thought... oh there are good fruits here, we can make all sorts of frozen drinks!!! Every time I was in a store, I would think about my bad blender in New York and not be sold on any of the Malaysian blender options.

Well, my parents from Virginia were just here to visit R and I for the first time and they thought I really needed a blender so they said they were going to buy me one as an early Christmas present! We went around the shops looking and I was still being fussy. One day we happened in my favorite appliance store in Seremban called Syarikat Hoong Bee (Jalan Tuanku Antah Jalan Rahang) where R and I bought all of our Panasonic products for the house. We have been pretty happy with the Panasonic refrigerator, washing machine, fans etc. we have bought from the guy Jimmy there.

Jimmy said that the best blender is the Panasonic MX-900M Blender (now R said Jimmy just says that because he sales mainly Panasonic, which is probably true), nevertheless, he said it is the model that all the commercial businesses use.

I wasn't crazy about the idea of buying a white blender, but I was trying to be flexible because my parents were buying. But I did like that the model had a plastic container instead of glass because many of the real glass models just seemed way to heavy. He said the blender was made in Malaysia which didn't excite me (although strangely the plug is not a Malaysian plug and needs an adapter?). So I said OK to this blender to put a rest to the whole situation! I bargained him down to 140RM (about $46 USD).

Right after buying the blender we stopped by a fruit stand and picked up some fruit. All the fruit above cost 2oRM (under $7 USD). One Papaya, two mangoes, bananas and some strange small fruits on a stem. Does anyone know what they are called? They have a white fruit and taste pretty nice. I mainly bought them to try with my parents as they were trying all the local fruits (they liked Durian!!!).

So we decided to make some Papaya drinks in the blender using the whole papaya, some ice, sugar and rum. We put all the ingredients in and turned the blender on it blended it in like 2 seconds! It was amazing, there must have been something wrong with that New York blender. I can't wait to blend tons of things like pesto with my Thai basil ...

Pucuk Paku: Wild Fern Shoots

Once in a while I see large clumps of this frilly green at Family Store near my house in Seremban. I've been curious what to do with them and figured that they are eaten like the many other kinds of 'greens' that I find in the stores and Wet Market here in Seremban. Recently while at the store I saw a fresh carton of these great greens just begging to be bought. So I brought a bunch home and started searching online. It turns out they are Fern which makes sense because they look a bit like ferns. It seems there are various kinds of fern and they are mainly referred to as Fiddlehead Fern. Only most of the photos online and the recipes seem to call for Fiddlehead Ferns that look chunkier than the Fern I bought at Family Store. It seems that these are popular in the US, but I never saw them in New York when I lived there, ever. Nor do I remember eating them in a restaurant. Actually, the thicker swirls look pretty damn cool!

Nevertheless, I had these thin ones, and so I needed to find out how to cook them. The best way to search is to use the Malay name obtainable from the Family Store label. Here it said Pucuk Paku. I was searching recipes and actually found a blog from a guy named Sham in Kuala Lumpur who is from Negeri Sembilan (the state in which Seremban is located); his blog is a joint deal with his mother together they post traditional Malay cooking with emphasis on Negeri Sembilan style! They post a recipe for Goreng Pucuk Paku (Fried Wild Fern Shoots) here.

I thought since I was in Negeri Sembilan and had some Pucuk Paku I better use his recipe which he describes as, "This one is really an easy one. I'm not that much of a vegetable eater but this is definitely one of my favourite vegetable dish. Very Negeri Sembilan... I think lah. I think you can get the wild fern shoots from any good wet market here. Bibik did the shopping for this and also the cooking for this dish. So enjoy!"

But, I didn't have either of the anchovy ingredients so I just sauteed the fern with minced garlic, hot chili, salt and pepper in olive oil. They tasted great! R ate them right out of the pan on the stove! He called them addictive. I didn't do that good of a job at separating the thicker stems from the lightweight fern parts and so the stems were a bit too crunchy and the fern a bit over cooked. Next time I'll do better...

The Malaysia Water Company: Sains

This is the second time the Malaysia water company known as Sains has dug a big hole in front of the house. And they have dug holes a number of times in our neighborhood and in the immediate area since we have lived in the house. There seems to be constant water pipe bursts and leaks. I have read about it and heard from others this is a common problem in Malaysia.

So in this case, like the time before, they dig a big hole which looks ominous. Then they look inside the hole for a long time. Not sure what they are doing. Then they fill it back up and a few days later the asphalt team comes and covers it with fresh asphalt. There are tons of fresh asphalt patches all over Malaysia's roads too.

We shouldn't complain because water in Malaysia is cheap. Our bill for a generous amount of water each month including some gardening watering comes to 5 RM (about $1.70 USD) per month. Sometimes a couple RMs more.

I should say that this does not include drinking water because we do not drink the tap water here. We drink bottled water which is a sizable expense of about $30 USD a month.

Back to On Sweet Thai Cuisine in Seremban

I've wrote about our favorite Thai Restaurant On Sweet Thai Cuisine before here. But I didn't post photos. Well, here are a few shots. This place is always good. We've had different things, but our favorite is the Phat Instant Noodle (Maggie) with Chicken and cooked extra spicy.

The ingredients vary but on our recent visit I spotted chicken, broccoli, cauliflower, egg, instant noodle, greens, red chili peppers and carrot. How can you bet a great lunch like this for 4.50 RM (approximately $1.50 USD)?

Oh, and I love that they serve me my noodles in the pretty plastic floral plate and R merely gets a yellow one.

On Sweet Thai Cuisine

1978, Gorund Floor, Bukit Blossom

70100 Seremban

06-012-374-3400

06-012-639-5055

Buying Ground Coffee in Malaysia

I like real coffee opposed to the instant type which is quite popular here in Malaysia. So finding good ground coffee isn't impossible, but a bit of a challenge. I can always go to Starbucks and spend a huge amount on a bag, but I didn't do this in NYC and I don't want to do it in Malaysia either... The best and most economical I find is at Tesco which sells about three varieties of Tesco Finest (the one in the photo above is Java Sumatra) and costs about 9.99rm for 227g. It is decent enough.

With the exception of "White Coffee", the best ground Malaysian coffee I can find in Seremban is 'Kapal Api' (about 4rm per bag). It really isn't good by itself at all! It tastes like Turkish coffee, bitter and strong. So when the selection of the Tesco coffee is running low (as it is now) I sometimes mix the Tesco Brand Coffee with the Kapal Api and it comes out as a good daily Coffee mixture.

I should write a whole post on White Coffee sometime soon.

Making Homemade Bread in Malaysia

My first ever home baked bread sitting on willow pattern dinner plate

Yesterday I happened into the Bakery Supply Store located in Seremban in the small storefronts across from the Specialist Hospital. The Bakery Store has a few things that the other stores in Seremban don’t stock. Yesterday the Yeast section caught my eye which I must have missed last time I was there. I opted to buy Saf-Instant Levure Seche de Boulanger Dry Baker's Yeast in the small packets because I wasn’t sure if it was the right kind of yeast that I am used to in the States. I came home excited that I’m going to be able to make pizza crust with the yeast. So I am looking online and find that Saf-Instant made in France is one of the best Yeast brands world wide. It makes sense, the French do make good bread afterall! The Saf-Instant site explained this was the instant kind of yeast, which I’ve never used. The Seremban bakery store had some of the other Saf products available too, including larger size bags.

So as I am searching how much yeast to use to make pizza dough with the Saf-Instant product I came across some bread recipes. And then I found lots of blogs talking about Jim Lahey's, owner of Sullivan St. Bakery in New York City, ‘revolutionary’ home baked bread recipe which was featured in the NYTimes in 2006 here. Apparently, everyone in the US has since been baking this home bread recipe of his in their ovens at home. Well, I left NYC in early 2006 so I missed the article and knew nothing to date of the home bread craze going on since. Although I can say I have had some of Sullivan St. Bakery’s bread when I lived in NY and it was fantastic. It’s the kind of ‘gourment’ bread that’s been so popular in NY since the 90s and I would buy this kind of bread often (also to note this bread was always expensive starting at something like $4.00 per loaf and going up up up). One of the big bummers, in my opinion, of Malaysian foods is their bread selection. And Seremban has an even poorer selection than KL. So, I was thrilled, thrilled! to find a recipe to make this crispy type crust bread here in Malaysia.

So yesterday I started looking at the recipes online and other versions, but opted to start by making the original Jim Lahey recipe in the NYTimes figuring I could adapt it later. The only thing I needed was some kind of cooking vessel for cooking the bread inside the oven. I had seen some clay pots at the Family Store near my house, and I was fairly sure they would still be there. So last night I made the bread dough because it needed to sit out for 12 or more hours before the next step.

This morning the dough had increased in size and I went to Family Store and picked up a clay pot. Large in size it nearly fills the height of the oven. Based on Jim’s recipe I think I could have gone for a smaller clay pot, but the next size down there were only two at the store and the covers didn’t fit right on the top of the pots. So I went with the big one at 16.90RM (yes that’s under $6 US). I wasn’t sure if the clay pot was oven safe but for $6 bucks figured I’d give it a shot.... as my mouth was really starting to water for some of that bread.

Inside of this Clay Pot is glazed

Came home and did the whole recipe as called for. I think it was a success, the pot didn’t break or crack and the bread turned out good, there is some room for improvement both for taste and making the process simpler and less messy. R thought the bread could be more spongy and I agree, but overall not a bad loaf for about 30 cents (US). Oh, I might watch Family Store and see if they get any more of the smaller size clay pots, I would buy two so I can fit two of them in the oven at the same time and hence be able to bake two bread loafs at a time. One bad thing about this whole process is the heat from the oven in the house, like it’s not already hot in Malaysia!!!! So cutting down on the time the heat is on is a good thing and baking two loafs at once is better than two in a row.

Having a Cat in Malaysia

T sitting on his favorite chair in the Guest Room (chair is Ikea Snille)

T is around 9 months old now and we enjoy having him in our lives. We found him through Petfinder which is one of the better ways to find a pet in Malaysia. He has already had all of his booster shots (35rm per shot) and has been fixed (operation was around 140rm). I've spent time since September when he arrived finding different cat products, often times finding little selection at high cost. Relatively speaking the cost of having an animal in Malaysia seems higher in proportion to in the US in terms of cost of living.

One of the first things I searched for was good quality cat food. The imported brands like Science Diet and Blackwood and others are grossly overpriced. And I worry, as I have with food we buy for ourselves, about imported dry food. Even when the expiration date is far off, sometimes food like cereals gets stale very fast. Not to mention the possibility of bugs getting the product. So when I see that over 100rm bag of gourmet cat food sitting on the floor of the small and not really visited pet store in Seremban, I'm a bit skeptical. So what to buy? Jusco and Family Store have a number of brands of soft and dry cat food. Some are asian brands that I'm not familiar with. I tried a few of these as well as the Purina brand which I am familiar with. Sure, not a great brand in the US, but at least reputable. Purina foods here seem to pay more attention to nutrition and the food meets the standard set by the American Association of Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) as noted on their products.

So T gets the Friskies hard food at 14.99rm for a 1.5 kg bag. (this price is Family store, Cold Storage in Mid-Valley was charging nearly 18rm per bag and Jusco charges 17rm).

T also gets soft food. What is strange about the soft food selections in Malaysia is that nearly all of them are fish based... Tuna being the most popular, then all sorts of mackerel mixtures. T's favorite by far is Purina's Seafood Platter in Prawn Jelly! The cans come in 400g size and are 3.90rm each at Family Store. The serving suggestions on the back of the can are crazy though.... they suggest a cat the size of T or bigger should eat two full 400g cans of this fish a day!!! T is already battling not being overweight, I imagine how big his belly would get eating this much fish a day.

Cat Litter is also expensive here. A small bag of Tidy Cat (which you know isn't that great) is about 15rm. The fancier brands and clump kinds can run up to 26rm per bag!!!

What else have I noticed so far, well, I'm pretty turned off by the Vets here in Seremban, if we had a real medical issue with T I think we'd have to drive to the big state of the art Vet hospital closer to KL (I forget the name) because from what I have seen at three vets in Seremban, the medical is pretty sad for animals.

Oh another thing that is really interesting... Many many people cage their cats here in Malaysia in big 3 feet or 4 feet cages. I started seeing it on Petfinder and also other places. It's true most houses that have a cat also have a cat cage where the cat spends some or all of its time. I hate this and I couldn't understand why. Well, after having T for awhile I now understand why. I think it's because most Malaysian homes do not have screens on the windows. Therefore, the cats would escape and unless an owner didn't mind their cat being outside (to mix with strays, dogs and even other creatures like monitor lizards or snakes!) then the owner would have to cage if they wanted to keep the windows open. I still won't buy a cage, and our house is big enough that T can be closed off in a room for short periods. Otherwise, I bought a leash for him to put on when the patio doors are open and we are near the patio. He loves to go out on his leash. But guess what? Malaysian pet stores don't really sell yard leashes only short dog leashes for walking a dog. I had to have the yard leash mailed from the US... along with some cat toys.

Property and Land Taxes in Malaysia

If you are wondering what the property and land taxes are related to a house here in Malaysia, they are low compared to the US and many other places.

There are two types of property ownership in Malaysia Leasehold and Freehold. Leasehold is when you lease the land for a period of time often 99 years and then it is renewable [or not] at the end of the lease. The other is Freehold where you own the property outright. We prefer Freehold and were lucky to find a freehold property we like and could afford. For more info on freehold/leasehold check here. By the way, most properties available in KL are leasehold. Foreigners can own either Freehold or Leasehold.

There are two main costs associated with property and land ownership in Malaysia. One is called the Assessment Tax which is a tax generated twice a year by the local Majlis Perbandaran where the property is located. Assessment tax is collected by the local authorities for the 'provision of services to the residents'. The amount and classification of properties varies from state to state and within the state. In most states the amount of the assessment tax a house owner pays is calculated on the annual value of the of the property and the annual value of the property is the total value of rents if the house is rented out in the open market. If this sounds confusing, I agree. If you want more info. you better do some googling.

The other payment is for the Quit Rent (rent is a deceiving word here) which is generated in our case by the Kerajaan Negeri Sembilan Darul Khusus. This is a once a year payment. From what I understand, Quit Rent is a form of land tax collected by the Malaysian State Governments. It is imposed on owners of all land. The amount of the quit rent varies from state to state and even within each state. For more info. check here.

The Mail (POS) is so unreliable, we have not received either bill which were supposed to arrive before or just at the beginning of the year. So yesterday I went to both offices and paid my current bills.

Our bungalow has a Quit Rent cost of 218 RM per year and a Assessment cost of 780 RM total per year. The total costs related to the state in regard to our home per year is 998 RM (about $327 US Dollars). This sure is better than to $4,700 US dollars I was paying in New York (worse the current owner now pays $8,800 US dollars on the same house as it was reassessed)!

Dental work in Malaysia

Dental is usually not covered on your insurance plan here in Malaysia. And in our case it is not, so we have to pay out of pocket.

I just went through the experience of having a ceramic crown put on one of my upper back teeth recently. The experience was like this.... in October we were referred by an expat living in Seremban to go to a certain dentist in Seremban who is known here to be the ‘best’ and also most expensive (don’t want to cut costs here). The two dentist office (a father and son) were schooled overseas. The dentist we went to graduated from a California dental school and is currently a member of the American Dental Association and Calfornia State Licensed Dental Surgeon (many dentists here are trained outside of Malaysia but it is less common for them to continue to hold licenses overseas, I think). The office reception room looked like it was still in the 70s but the work rooms had new equipment and it was extremely clean. R and I went for our teeth cleaning which was 125 RM per person. The job was fine, no pain and, well, good enough. Better than the experiences I had in the middle east. The dentist also took an xray of my bad tooth which cost 85 RM.

We scheduled the tooth work for the beginning of January. So when I went back recently, the dentist took off the existing crown and made an imprint for the new tooth. He put on a temporary tooth which was white on the exposed part and some blue plastic material on the inside and told me the crown would be ready in one week. One day later the blue had fallen out and I was back there to get it replaced; I thought this blue material was very cheap and I felt like I couldn't bite on that side of my mouth for the whole replacement process. The day the crown was ready I went back and he attempted to put it in, but it didn't fit and I noted it was too dark in color as well. So another one had to be made. This took another week during which I had to wear another temporary crown. Anyway, I went back on Tuesday and he put the new crown in and it looks good and feels ok so far. He surprised me and said he was going to guarantee it for one year. The whole procedure cost 1,500 RM for a nice looking white molded ceramic crown.

The Cost of Eggs in Malaysia

I wanted to write a post on the cost of eggs here in Malaysia. So I photographed the egg carton which is the eggs I recently bought at Family Store for 3.80 RM. The eggs cartons here come with 10 not 12 eggs per pack. So I always find myself running short faster because the 10 carton looks almost like a dozen. Then there is the size of Malaysia eggs. In stores like Family Store and Jusco, they all look about the same and run from high 3 RM to nearly 5 RM for the 10. I never bother to look at the package too well and so I missed on the package above for the LH Egg brand that these are medium size eggs. And medium they are. Both R and I have commented in the past on how small the eggs are sometimes. No only for LH Brand but Malaysian Eggs in general.

So I went back to Family Store looking for Large eggs and couldn't find any carton that were marked "Large". Although this Happy Egg brand lists CLASS A on the package so I thought they might be bigger, and they are "lower cholesterol". This is up a step from LH's marketing of "No Harmful Residues"! But the price is higher at 4.20 RM.

First one more stop before I made this post to a storefront within walking distance of my house.... Yoong Sing Trading Shop selling fresh eggs. The guy there was very nice and told me these eggs come from Melacca.

He has them all Graded and the Grade A eggs cost 3.40 RM for 10. So I bought 10 of them.

He also talked me into testing 2 of these white eggs at .50 RM each as he said they are, "The best!" I asked why but he couldn't give me an answer. I asked him if they were chicken eggs and he nodded, but I'm not sure he understood me for sure. Their slightly elongated length makes me wonder if they are some other type of egg. And I wonder, are they costing more because they are white in color? In the states, the brown cost more as white are the common stock. Here, brown are the common eggs. I will have to try them for taste and report back.

Egg on Left from Yoong Sing Trading, Egg in Center Happy Egg, Egg on Right LH Egg

In terms of size though, Yoong Sing Trading' s Grade A Egg above is the largest in size of the three brands and is the lowest price. LH Egg is clearly the loser. I've learned all eggs are not the same around here and going to the specialty store is worth the extra time.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and an attempt at Sustainable Living in Malaysia

I’m reading Barbara Kingsolver’s 2008 book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.) right now about how she and her family left Arizona and moved to their farm in Virginia to try and grow their own foods and buy the remaining items only from local sources. The book reminds me that when we made an offer on this house our plan was to turn the narrow backyard space into a vegetable, herb and fruit garden so that we could grow some of our own foods and to live a somehow sustainable lifestyle in Malaysia for the two of us. While we waited for the sale of the house to go through I read all about Permaculture and read up on Tropical Gardening as best I could; I spent nights laying awake planning out the garden! And in the end, Gardening along with all the environmental green products we wanted to put in the house- wind power, solar energy, recycling, composting have all had to be re-thought/adapted for different reasons.

Well, immediately after moving in, we found out that the back right area of the house, exactly where the vegetable garden was going to go was right above where the sewage pipes flowed out of the house. So that idea was shot down. Yeah we thought maybe we could make planters above ground for the vegetables, but my experience is that vegetables never grow as well in above ground containers... maybe we will revisit this idea in the future because after scoping out the entire property during the landscaping process, we determined that there really is no good place for a vegetable garden on the property (due to our our neighbor’s tanks, sewage lines and our own spectic tank which is in the front corner of the property near the Bamboo plant). The sewage tank was another after-moving-in surprise we thought the house had sewage lines that ran to the main sewage pipes of Seremban town this is what the real estate agents confirmed when we asked. Maybe they didn't understand our question because here bungalows have septic tanks in the ground as there are no city sewage pipelines. The only viable spot for a vegetable garden on our property is in the center of the front yard!!!!

A shot of our backyard. V= where the Vegetables were to be planted near the back door to the Kitchen and all the way to the side of the property, H= where the Herbs were to be planted alongside the Wet Kitchen, F= where the Fruit Trees and plants were to be planted. The Tree to the right is was an existing young Mango Tree.

So we remain gardenless at this point in time. Well, it is OK for a couple reasons, firstly we totally underestimated how hot it can get in the yard and gardening would be an exhausting job. Secondly, there is an abundant supply of vegetables sold at Family Store and the Seremban Wet Market at a very low cost.

I am enjoying Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and there is still a lot to be taken from the book. For example, I’m not really sure where most of the vegetables come from around here. I bet that most of the vegetables in the Wet Market are locally grown and many of the growers even set up inside or outside the wet market. But, I’m not as sure about Family Store and Jusco. I’ve seen USA labeled plums in Family Store and seen US Potatoes in Jusco; I’ve actually bought ‘Red Delicious’ Apples from Jusco which were shipped from Washington State in the US. How do I know, because I tasted the apples and they tasted horrible, like sawdust and I checked where they came from. I’ve tried other red apples here in Seremban only to find that the imported ones are not good (at least the ones coming all the way from the US). I think the apples I eat which are large light redish/yellow in color come from China. But, I should check. I really should be more aware of where these things are coming from. Even before picking up Kingsolver’s book R and I have been trying over the past year to wean ourselves off of the bottled/packaged Western food products that we buy. They cost as much as they do in the US or more making these products account for a good portion of our monthly food cost. The products I am talking about are things like- Heinz Ketchup instead of local ketchup (let’s face it Heinz does taste better, but we can get a bottle of Malaysian ketchup for under 2 RM where Heinz costs over 9 RM for a very small bottle.). The same goes for Western cosmetic products. Some things we still use because there isn’t an adequate substitute, but where we can buy a local product or from Asia we do try.

It seems that Animal, Vegetable, Miracle has its own website here for more information on the book.

Malaysian Curry Powder and Tumeric Powder

I don’t usually by Chicken with bones, but I wanted to try Malaysian Curry Chicken which uses this type of chicken, so I bought ½ a chicken (cost 7.84 RM or about $2.55 US Dollars). Yes, the chicken doesn’t look that great does it? Well, much of the chicken even the boneless chicken isn’t the most fantastic stuff. But, well, TIM (This is Malaysia), the cost is low and it tastes ok. The recipe I used for the Malaysian Curry Chicken on www.malaysianfood.net is here. It called for Baba’s Meat Curry Powder (http://www.babas.com.my/index.htm) which is what I had on hand. I bought this packet from a stall in the Seremban Wet Market awhile ago, the woman said it was the most popular Malaysian Curry. The curry powder (forgot to take a photo of it) was almost an orange-ish color more orange than yellow curry and I read online that Malaysian Curry has more Turmeric in it so it makes since because Turmeric is more of this color.

I have a great example of Turmeric that I picked up at Family Store. Reading the label on the package of Santhas it said “Crow Brand Curry Powder” so I thought I was buying a big package of Curry packaged in Seremban! But No, when I came home and searched the words “Serbuk Kunyit” I found out it means Turmeric Powder. So now I have a lifetime supply of Turmeric except that the bag expires in 2011!

Anyway, the Malaysian Curry Chicken first attempt wasn’t good. The recipe called for one cup of oil (lots of oil is used here in Malaysia for wok cooking, etc. so that wasn’t a surprise, and I use ½ cup oil for my fantastic Jamaican Curry recipe). Well, if you look at the Malaysian Curry Chicken recipe I used at the end it says “Turn off heat, skim off excess oil on the surface” and it wasn’t joking, there was tons of oil on the surface, and who really has time to get it off? What a gross mess. Next time, I’ll try this recipe with less oil. I think I should give Baba’s Curry another try at least and try to master this popular Malaysia dish albeit my own version. This post has given me an idea, I should really try and get a better handle on different kinds of CURRY... I should do some research and make a post on it.

Broccoli in Malaysia

Head of Broccoli from Family Store at 1.86 RM (about 60 cents in US dollars).

Tangerines in Malaysia

The Family Store in Seremban had this big box of small size Tangerines (I think that is what they are?). I've seen boxes like this around Chinese New Year. Inside the box each piece of fruit is wrapped in orange plastic and the fruits are given out in local stores to customers and other places. The box cost 10.90 RM about $3.50 US Dollars.

Green Peppers in Malaysia

Green Peppers from Family Store. Cost 3.20 RM (just over one US Dollar).

Cost of Beans in Malaysia

Here are some fresh beans purchased at the Seremban Family Store. The Yard Long Beans

(Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis) above at 1.79 RM (currently about 57 cents in US Dollars) for the bunch. R prefers these in his stir-fry while I like the smaller 'French' Beans below as I think the Yard Long Beans taste a bit rubbery when cooked. Nevertheless, I like to use them because I cut them about 6 inches long so they have a nice long shape which adds a nice dimension to the dishes.

The 'French' Beans cost 2.31 RM (currently about 74 cents in US Dollars) per bag.