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 ...

The Case of the Curious Coconut

I was out at the back of the house and found the strangest thing. There is a coconut (I think that is what it is) sitting on the water drain grill.

What is weird is that there are no palm trees or trees with this kind of nut anywhere around the area. No trees up on my neighbor's property where it might just fall down on to mine. And what else is strange is the odd location it has been neatly placed. R and I figure someone or something (an animal?) must have brought the coconut here.

Passion Fruit

Remember that Mystery Vine growing in my backyard here that blog readers helped determine was a Passion Fruit Vine? Well, above was my first ever sampling of passion fruit. Apparently we have the darker fruit growing in the backyard opposed to the yellow fruit because the fruits continued getting darker on the vine for quite some time.

It took me awhile to actually try this because the long vine I initially photographed with all the fruits went missing one day, just as the fruits were nearly ready. I had to wait for another vine to grow down for me to cut.

The fruit inside the pod shell is soft with seeds. It tastes very nice and the juice is especially tasty.

Mysterious Vine Growing on the Property

The other day I noticed this mysterious vine growing down from the rambutan tree at the back of the property. It's like it appeared out of nowhere and is now hanging down with lots of green fruits (?) about 3 1/2 feet above the ground. It looks like a long beanstalk vine. How strange. Things grow very fast here in the tropics.

Now what is it??? I should research what this fruit is and if we can eat it.

Jackfruit

Our Neighbor behind us brought over this bowl of fragrant smelling fruit. She couldn't tell us the english name of of it. So During breakfast this morning we sampled the fruit which has a strong pleasant odor and a rich multi-layered sweet taste. The Fruit seemed ripe but was also a bit 'rubbery'. Overall, a fantastic tasting fruit that we had never tried or seen before.

Each piece of fruit looks like a hollowed out flower bud.

After searching yellow-orange flower bud fruits of Southeast Asia and looking at many photos, I finally came to the conclusion that the fruit is "Jackfruit". Although most of the photos showing the inner fruit of Jackfruit online look like a lighter yellow color, I did see some that are more the yellow-orange color of the fruit we received. We often see these large pods at makeshift fruit stands along the road and often with the more round pod which we think is Durian. We have wanted to try the jackfruit but never got around to it as we didn't know how to cut the pods, or where to buy the fruit already cut. Well, now we know and we will be looking out for more of it!

Rambutan Tree

The large Rambutan Tree on our property has Rambutan pods (?) growing on its branches!!!!

I found them because I was seeing empty green pods on the ground near the mango tree for the past few days so I searched around for them. I guess an animal has been pulling them off the tree and opening and eating the unripe fruit down on the ground.

Can't wait to pick the stem off the tree when the fruit is ripe and try our own Rambutan!

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.

Sea Coconuts

Whenever I am at the grocery store and see something and I don't know what it is, I try and ask a person... sometimes I don't get any help but most of the time the person will try to explain what the item is and how it is cooked. The other day I was at Family Store and saw a package of "Sea Coconut" in the cooler section between the vegetables and fruits for 5.50 RM for the package. So I asked the Chinese woman next to me how to cook them or eat them. She told me I had to boil them in a pot of water and that they were sweet. So I took the Sea Coconuts with me to give them a try hoping I would find a recipe online.

Later the woman who told me about the sea coconuts found me in the store and handed me this package of Lo Han Kuo and told me to dump the package in the pot with the sea coconuts while I cooked them. So I bought the Lo Han Kuo too.

At home I found a few recipes for Sea Coconuts online all with the same basic recipe... put the items in the pot and boil for 45 minutes (example here). Since I didnt have any dates I added a few raisins hoping that would work.

When it was cooked I realized that R and I had already tried this dessert before when we were at our favorite Chinese restaurant Restoran Oversea in Kuala Lumpur. After our meal one time, the owner brought over this special dish as a gift to us... when we asked what it was he wasn't able to give us the English name. Well, we didn't really like it at Oversea and even though mine tasted nearly the same, we didn't care for it at home either. Far more interesting than the taste of the dessert is the history of Sea Coconuts or Coco de Mer here and the little known Lo Han Kuo sugar substitute (Siraitia grosvenorii) which really is sweet and a nice taste (more info here).

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.

Fruit Ripening

From the second floor of our house, where we spend most of our time.... away from the construction on the first floor in the Kitchen or the Roof repair, I noticed some fruit ripening when looking out the windows.

First I spotted from the Home Office window, two Mangos in the large Mango tree in the front yard. This is the first time I have seen any fruit on the tree.

Second the Rambutan tree in our neighbor's backyard and dangling above our brick wall has some fruit ripening; I hope some of these delicious fruits fall into our yard!