Have you got your Java? Try this on your IT guy:
You know, I can just imagine that look of incredulity on the poor IT guy’s face . It would be priceless!
Go ahead, have a Java on me for the week!
July 24, 2016
Sunday Humour: How to Annoy your IT Guy
Category: Entertainment
July 22, 2016
Fabulous Friday Flavour: Roti Telur
Category: Fabulous Friday Flavours
For those wondering the meaning of the title of this post today, let me enlighten you:
Roti = Bread
Telur = Egg
Roti and Telur are Malay words and in Malay-English translation, we would say it by flipping the words around: “Bread Egg” to Egg Bread. Or Eggy Bread. Because if said as “Bread Egg”, it would not make any sense.
This is the Asian version of French Toast. Or rather, more specifically, this is my Mom’s version of French Toast which I grew up with. And today, it happens to be her birthday as she turns to the grand age of 64 years young.
She’s this tiny little lady( (I got that from her) and as small as she is, she’s still healthy, fit, full of energy and very restless. She can’t sit still. It bugs her to do that (I got that restlessness from her as well). And when it comes to cooking, she’s the queen! (not quite me yet)
From complex to simple left-over meals, she has done it all. And mind you, still doing it.
She has fed us well all these years with mostly home-cooked meal. Our home was like a 24-hour restaurant: Tell mom what we want to eat, and she’ll whip it up the next day or several days later; even if it’s back-breaking for her. When it comes to food, she’ll never deny us of our cravings. In fact, she fuelled it and I know that secretly, she enjoys it.
Roti Telur is just one of those she used to make quite a bit using left-over white bread.It’s comfort food. It’s a nice, little piece of familiarity of home as my mom used to make this for us when we were kids. As I later discovered, it was one of her repertoires when she couldn’t figure out what to cook anymore.
I have that same conundrum too these days and like my mom, I have resorted to asking the kids what they would want to eat. (Now I know why she asked us what we want to eat almost every day!)
This is a simple and filling breakfast or lunch alternative to our rice staple where slices of white bread are soaked in beaten eggs before they are (sometimes deep) fried and then draining off the excess oil before consumption.
I love how those pieces of bread sizzle in the frying pan!
These roti telurs taste best, believe it or not when dipped in chilli sauce. It is the only way to enjoy them although if you prefer to just devour them as they are, that is OK too.
These days, I’m making them for my own kids. They have been asking for more and that is always, always a good sign. Random requests like that make my heart swell! In time, I’ll introduce chilli sauce to them with Roti Telur when they can handle a little fire in their food. A must in my opinion.
They must have thought that dipping fried bread in chilli sauce is kind of weird, but hey! I”m kind of weird. Plus, my Asian roots reign: food just doesn’t taste as good without chillis! Weird or not, they have to learn. They just have to embrace the weirdness, because it would be the weird in them that would make them interesting beings.
Let’s do the weird as we massacred the traditional French Toast fare as we toast to my Mom’s birthday today:
Roti Telor (Eggy Bread)
2016-06-10 08:17:59
Serves 6
Comfort food from childhood
Prep Time
10 min
Cook Time
10 min
Total Time
20 min
Ingredients
- 6 pieces of white bread, cut into 4 triangles
- 3-4 eggs
- 2 tbsp skimmed or evaporated milk (optional)
- A pinch of salt
- Oil for frying
Instructions
- Cut each piece of white bread into 4 squares of triangles
- Beat the eggs. Add the pinch of salt and milk. Mix well
- Heat oil in the frying pan
- Separately, soak individual pieces of bread into the beaten eggs. Make sure the bread soaks up the eggs well
- Fry them up till golden brown (but not too brown!)
- Repeat till either eggs or bread are used up
- Pat off the oil on each fried bread with paper towels so they won't be too oily
- Serve with chilli sauce
Notes
- The use of milk is optional, but I find that using it makes the bread a little fluffier. Goes down well when dipped with chilli sauce.
Grubbs n Critters https://grubbsncritters.com/
It’s food for the soul that would stand the test of time for many, many more years to come. It is the kind of food that makes memories so personal, sentimental and present. And like me, I want my kids to always have the best memories of home-cooked meals.
For now, the little critters are safe from the eat-Roti-Telur-with-Chilli-Sauce-Ordeal as it has been mighty difficult to find a darn good chilli sauce in Holland. I am, however, missing my chilli sauce fix and there is only one brand of chilli sauce I swear by. Unless I don’t have a choice, then there’s nothing else.
Can someone please FedEx me a couple of chilli sauce bottles? Make sure it’s this one because this is the one chilli sauce which I really like. It’s one to die for.
July 20, 2016
This Rubbish is a Serious Business!
Category: All Things Dutch
Every single household in The Netherlands has a part to play in waste management. There would be at least 3 different types of bins in each household because sorting out rubbish is one serious business here.
These are the three visible bins we have in our backyard:
- Green – Used for only organic or biodegradable waste such as vegetables, fruits, leftover food etc
- Orange – Used for only plastic and aluminium
- Black – For everything else
We also have a separate makeshift bins for cartons/papers and a crate in which we separate out glass bottles. Those are stored in the shed.
There is a curbside collection system. When the time comes to empty the bins out, we would have to drag the bins to the curbside the night before or first thing in the morning prior to their arrival. It’s a great system.
For the much bigger trash, we would be required to get to the communal dumpster to dump them. It’s almost like a weekend hobby where cars are headed there to pile on the rubbish they have accumulated. In there, the trash would be sorted out in various different categories even more and everyone is expected to dump them where they should belong.
We have a lot of bins. Everyone does this.
I’m all for recycling and would happily do my part to care for the environment. In fact, I don’t mind the sorting at all and the kids have been trained to also sort out their trash accordingly. It’s a pretty good habit to instill in kids.
What I do have a problem with is the schedule as to when the bins get emptied out: Green Bin once every 2 weeks and the other 2 bins once a month. In the meantime, these rubbish bins would sit in our backyard.
Give it 3-4 days and the green bin would be harvesting maggots, worms and emit the foulest smell of rotten food you can ever imagine. It’s a torture to go anywhere near the bin to throw more organic stuff, especially after 1 week, let alone longer.
The dump-everything-else-bin would be just as bad. The size of the bin ensures that you can stuff a full-grown man in there as well which means that’s a shitload of rubbish in there! The flies would be circling and hover about the bins quite quickly.
Tough luck if you forget or if you missed the collection time! You’d have to wait for the next cycle.
This has been a far cry from what we used to do in Bangkok where all the trash goes into the same bin AND we were able to clear out the trash from our homes every day at the end of the day. We then dump them into the rubbish chute and how the trash gets dump thereafter is forgotten.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Not so much here. The rubbish is right in our faces and noses; day in, day out until the time comes to get cleared out. Sorting out the trash and bringing the trash out is everyone’s responsibility. There’s a risk of your trash being rejected if they are not sorted out properly and no one is going to be doing the shit for you.
The idea around it is simple: Manage your waste. The more rubbish you accumulate, the harder it is for you, the smellier your home would be.
This is all fuelled by the country’s policy to avoid creating a lot of waste. It is done in a very environmentally friendly way such that raw materials can be recovered from it, using it to generate energy through the incineration of residual waste and then only dump the leftovers.
As a result, less than 5% of all the Dutch waste ends up in landfills; a very impressive rate! It is no wonder that the Netherlands has been recognised as being one of the best countries in the world for waste management.
I wish more countries would adopt this system and minimise the use landfills. It’s an education process and it’s great that we can now do more on our part for the environment as this was not possible before in Bangkok (even in Singapore!).
I just wish we do not have to wait for 2 weeks or a month for the bins to get emptied out because, with kids and 3 cats, it is impossible to not throw any more rubbish than necessary. But this is Holland. Jammer, maar helaas**!
**Translated from Dutch to English as “Too bad, but unfortunate!”