Busy Bee Cafe

Little Bee and I have been busy in the garden these past few days, planting, sowing, weeding and, for Little Bee, mostly watering (flooding).

Little Bee’s been ill too, as I think her MMR jab is now kicking in, but, maybe it’s old wives tale, maybe it’s just something that my mom kept telling me, I took her out in the garden after her afternoon nap so she could get some fresh air.

While she yet again flooded all my plants and sowed seeds, I was clearing the vegetable patio bags and found these!

OK they are not lovely and straight and perfect like the carrots you find in the supermarket, but I was amazed that there were in the bags at all as I haven’t been watering them or clearing the weed from the bags. They’ve been there for months without me caring for them and they had withstood the mini cold snap we had.

I shall clean them properly and see if I could use them for my lamb dish tomorrow… as I could see some bug holes in them… even if I can’t use all of them, I’m sure I could use a bit.

It is wonderful, the treasures that you can find in your garden.

 I got this recipe from one of my Periplus Mini Cookbooks that I bought when I was in either Malaysia or Singapore or Bali. I have always been interested in cooking Thai but kept thinking that the dishes are complicated. Silly me… they are no more complicated than Malaysian cooking.

The recipe used pork, but obviously as I don’t consume pork, I changed it to chicken breast and omitted the 1/2 tsp of salt as I feel the soy sauce and fish sauce is salty enough.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

2 fresh coriander stems and roots
2 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp white peppercorn
1 chicken breast, minced
1 can (300g) corn kernels, drained
1 egg
1 tbsp plain flour
1 tbsp corn flour
1/2 tbsp light soy sauce
1/2 tbsp fish sauce
5 kaffir lime leaves, thinly sliced
Vegetable oil for frying

1. Pound the coriander stems and roots, garlic and white peppercorn using a pestle and mortar until fine. Put the pounded ingredients in a mixing bowl and add the remaining ingredients. Stir and mix well.
2. Heat oil in a frying pan or wok over medium-high heat. Scoop tablespoons of mixture and carefully slide each patty off the spoon into the hot oil. Cook on both side until golden brown. Remove and drain on kitchen roll. It’s nice on its own or serve with some chili sauce, hot or cold.

Some people say that sliced bread is one of the best inventions. But I’m sure they’re talking about the bread slice machine that thinking that sliced bread itself is an invention.

But, who knows… maybe those who think that chickens come as they are in the supermarket and not a living breathing feathery animal, they might think that bread comes out sliced from the oven instead of looking like this.

OK… seriously, I am just joking and not trying to offend anyone.

Anyway, I was doing my daily browsing on pinterest and came across this. Saw the recipe for American sandwich bread and thought it look like any other bread on the shelf at the supermarket… apart from being unsliced… so how hard can it be? So I just have to convert the recipe to metric as I don’t do imperial!

So… if you want to make this:

into this:

Here is how you do it

Ingredients:

500g flour
1 tsp salt
250ml warm milk
80ml warm water
30g unsalted butter, melted in the microwave for 20 seconds
3tbsp honey
1 packet of 7g dried yeast

1. Add the warm milk, warm water, melted butter, honey and yeast in a bowl, mix and set aside.
2. Sift the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl, make a well in the middle and pour in the yeast mix. Stir in the flour and liquid together and start kneading for about 5 minutes until the dough feels smooth and bouncy (that’s how I describe it). Cover the bowl with cling film and leave it for about an hour until the dough has double in size.
3. On a floured surface, press the dough into a rectangular shape about 3cm thick. Roll the dough into a cylinder, pressing it down to make sure the dough sticks. Seal the ends of the dough by folding them in and pinching them closed. Place it in a well greased loaf tin, cover with a cling film and leave it for another 30 minutes, until it almost double in size.
4. In the meantime, preheat the oven, 200C or gas mark 4. Place an oven rack at the lowest position and another one at the middle of the oven. Pour two cups of boiling water in a pan and place it at the bottom rack and the pan with the dough on the middle rack.
5. Bake for 45 minutes. Remove bread from pan onto a wire rack and leave it to cool. Slice to your desired thickness

We were blessed with a really mild winter so I didn’t bring my pot of lemon plant in until late December when it started to get a bit chilly outside… OK then it went very cold early February when we had that brief cold snap.

Now… it’s warming up again.

I guess with the mild winter and being warm indoors, my plant must think that spring is already here! There was a flower in December and now there are more flowers. I’m hoping that this is an indication that spring will come early this year.

And that I will have lemons!

Yes, I live in hope.

Cut some heart shapes for Little Bee. Give her a white card paper and a glue stick… and she’s a happy girl

I’ve promised myself that this year will be the first year that I will pay more attention to the garden and the things I grow.

And here are the first batch of garlic growing well and I will put them out in the garden when winter comes to a close.

What do you do when you only have five minutes to spare before you rush out the door for work and your Little Bee is pestering you for her hand warmer that you made from a really nice fabric over the weekend but it’s no where to be seen?

I grabbed Little Bee’s old sock that is now too small for her, fill it with rice and sow it up. Bang it in the microwave for 10 seconds.

Give it to Little Bee. Give her a hug and a kiss. And Little Bee is happy to let me go to work