Harvest Time! Yam Seng...

I am back in the office today, after a long long weekend with a trip back to BP. The whole Brady Bunch was carted off in our Exora to BP. This is the first time that baby Emily has gone back to my hometown and her first time meeting her grandpa. Everything went well, too bad most of the eating shops were either closed for Raya or were too busy that we didn't get to taste much of the nice food in BP. But nevertheless, we are thankful for a safe and fruitful trip.

My sister just delivered a baby boy on Saturday while we were in BP. I was about to harvest the rice wine I was brewing for her anyway, so when we reached home on Monday, we started the harvesting. The wine tastes and smells really sweet and good. But we learn that the brewing time should be shorten next time to 20 - 25 days instead of about 35 days like what we did this round. This is because, we could see mold starting to form on the side of the ceramic pot and on top of the rice. We managed to rescue this by wiping and scoping the mold off before we start harvesting. We also learn that proper sterilization will work wonders in keeping other organisms from growing. We only want the wine yeast to work its magic, not the other microbes.

Another thing we learn is the importance of filtering. The wine produced is clear liquid with slightly golden reddish tinge. But there is lots of residual in the pot too. We tried scoping very careful, it works in the beginning but towards the end, it's hard since the residuals started to surface and get mixed up with the liquid. So we had to resort to cloth filter (those used by the kopitiam uncles). Next time, we will try to find even more fine cloth filter for better results. After harvesting, bring the wine to a quick boil and then put off the fire and let it coll before bottling. Make sure bottles are clean and dry, possibly sterilized with alcohol. Overall, I am pretty pleased with the result, we had our first dish with it yesterday, ginger fried egg in rice wine. So sweet and tangy, yummy.

My rice wine success!

Repeal 114A

Olympic Wild Week

Had a long weekend but there was no rest. It was a public holiday on Monday and I took Tuesday off for my baby's medical follow up. It's the puasa moon and the boys finishes school at 5.30 pm instead of the usual 6.30pm. This makes for a mad dash every evening to fetch my daughter from daycare and my sons from school. Those boys cannot be trusted to behave if left in the school compound for too long. By the time I get to their school, it would be 6 pm. I really want this month to be over soon so that hubby can fetch them after work instead of me doing it. Hubby cannot reach by 6 pm.

Maid still not here yet, my mornings are still crazy. Sometimes, I am at awe of myself for getting through this crazy routine daily. Probably, other working mothers do the same too... You kids and hubbies out there need to realise how great your mommies are!

The London 2012 Olympics is still underway, it's closing this Sunday. Just managed to follow a few random sports on local TV since it's all in the middle of the night. I am usually out by 11pm. I did catch LCW's final match against LD. It was a very close match that made me respect LCW more. I used to follow badminton games a lot, my favourite player was the cool Cheah Soon Kiat. I thought he was cute :P. But ever since the Malaysian team's performance took a dip and after so many disappointing games from them, I gave up following. But seeing LCW play this time brought back my confidence in our badminton talents. Even though he lost and only got silver, there was no need tobe disappointed as he had performed marvelously. The game could have gone either way. So syabas to him. And last night this young Sarawakian diver got a bronze which surprised a lot of us. Great wo