Sewing project

I have sewn a few things... Most of them being simple:

skirt

short/pants

bag

curtains

Most of the things I sew are things that are useful, not purely for decoration purposes... Sewing isn't that too difficult but it does require your energy, time and dedication.. I am the type of person that likes to finish sewing the whole piece in a day or 2 and not more.. If it got extended, then it'll probably be neglected and become an unfinished object.. That is why I only do my sewing on the weekends where I can dedicate the whole day just to get over with it.. Usually, I'll cut all the pieces for all projects that I'd be working on. And the sewing will be done on another day where I try to finish all those that has been cut.

Most of the sewing that I do comes from patterns that are either from sewing book or sample of clothes that I already have.. It is easier having an example than just imagining how it would turn out in the end.. A sketch would sometime helps too.. Anyway, here are some of the completed pieces..

These bags were made based on the pattern found in madebyrae.. credit goes to her!

Pets story

I love rabbits... I remembered when I was small, I would ask my dad for a rabbit. Sadly, the rabbit that he brought back didn't last long.. Instead, I had a tame monkey as a companion, given by a friend, i think.. At that time, our house were surrounded by jungles on a hill. We had placed the monkey in its own cage at the back of the house. His name was "Acu". Cute little monkey who likes to feast on bananas.. We had him for a while until the day that we had uninvited visitors barking loudly in the middle of the night for our "Acu". That was the last time we had a 'real' pet. I don't consider the cats that come to my parents house as pets.. because they came just to have their meal or have shelter but were not really friendly. My mom likes feeding them with leftover foods and they just keep coming, even after we left him quite far off from the house (> 1 km), they'd still come back..

Fastforward... with the agreement of my husband, we started to take in rabbit. During that time, we were staying in an apartment and there were only me and him. So, we got ourselves a cute baby rabbit for RM30+ and put him in a cage which actually costed more than the rabbit itself. It was really cute, and I was able to clean his cage myself.. After a while, Hamzah came and the rabbit got bigger. I cannot tolerate his poop anymore and my husband cannot tolerate it as well. So, we decided to let go of the rabbit

Now, that we have moved to a bigger place, we continued or shall i say, restarted the rearing of rabbits. It has been more than a year and we have seen soo many baby rabbits appearing. To date, there are > 13 rabbits in our yard.. maybe I should create a family tree for this rabbit family, which started with 3 + 1.

Here are some latest piccies...

My big fat stromboli

I got this recipe from one of my Bread book (Publisher: DK). The recipe was simple and easy to follow. The bread turns out soft and good. But i guess it was a bit too huge?? Nevertheless, it was really yummy.. i used mozarella, mushroom and some herbs as the filling..

Grapes updated!

Our grapes have grown bigger.. but not harvested yet.. enjoy the pics!

Breads

I love baking over the weekends when i'm at home. It started out with doing cakes but then i figured that they are too sweet to take too often.. I always like those bread that you slice and put butter on unlike the white bread commonly sold in stores. However, breads require patience and the ingredients are not commonly found in stores. You really have to go to specialty stores to get them. Good thing I found a couple stores near my place in Bukit Mertajam. I know there's a lot more choice in Kuala Lumpur, but I don't have the time to visit them whenever I'm in KL.

There's this one store that sells all the different type of grains.. wholemeal, rye, multigrain, etc. And they come with recipes too!.. so I bought a couple of them to try out. Here's one of them.. I added additional filling in; red bean paste and kaya. If I have time, I'll post the recipe later..

Wholemeal Bread Mix:

Ingredients:

A.

Wholemeal Flour New Zealand - 100 gm

High protein flour - 400 gm

salt - 5 gm

milk powder - 20 gm

brown sugar - 45 gm

bread improver - (1 tsp) 4 gm

yeast - (1 tbsp) 11 gm

cold water - 280 gm

B. Butter - 45 gm

Instructions:

1. Mixa ll (A) ingredients until even at low speed. Add (B), mix for 15 min until elastic. Rest 45-60 min or until double in size. Press out the air, round into ball, rest for 15 min.

2. Then, cut it into 60 gm pieces, round into ball, rest for 10 min. Make into shape

3. Proof the dough for 45 min or double the size

4. Preheat oven at 190 degree celcius and bake for around 15 min

note: I added the filling in step 2 before shaping them

Green Grapes!

I like seeing trees grow from seeds till the stage that the flowers/fruits come out. However, I don't have that much knowledge of gardening. On the other hand, my husband loves gardening and woodworking.. We have a small piece of land that he would use to grow his fruit trees. We have a lot of fruits and veggie plants at home and no flowers at all.. His rationale was to get the benefits from this plants.. example.. for food.. :) Some of the plants grew well (with this I mean, the fruits really came out).. while some did not.. maybe because of the insects and no pesticides..

Anyhow, this is one of them that we have at home.. a sweet green grape tree (vineyard??) It's not really big but can u still call it a vineyard?? This is the third time that it produces fruits (still growing).. but this is the first time that it mass produced the fruits.. previously only one bunch came out at a time..

I guess if you are interested in growing your own green grapes, you can buy them (keratan batang.. dunno what it's called in english and too lazy to search..haha..;D ) from us in Seberang Perai, Penang.

Chocolate ice cream cake

In most recipes that i've seen, the use of ice cream machine is required to make an ice cream cake, which is for making the ice cream itself... i tried making one a few years back, putting the cake as a base and some ready made ice cream from the shop and freeze them. But the cake couldn't last long after taking it out from the freezer..

After attending a baking demo class, i found out that it's not really necessary to use ice cream machine and there's a way to ensure that your ice cream doesn't melt that fast. You need to make sure that you cover all sides of the pan with the sponge cake and fill it with the ice cream that is made out of fresh cream mix at high speed with some chocolate (for chocolate ice cream cake).

I made one recently but the cream didn't mix that well with the chocolate which resulted in some white spot seen when the cake was cut.. I covered the cake with some fresh cream frosting and grated chocolate..so here goes the pictures...!

see the white spots above.. those are some lumped cream that didn't manage to get evenly mixed.

final result.. didn't bother to decorate it nicely.. they are bound to be eaten.. by my 2 sweet lover kids..

This was before it got decorated.. This was after it was frozen for > 24 hours. The ice cream is inside.

Recipe was obtained from one of the baking demo class I attended at EZBake, Bukit Mertajam.