Of cords and corn

The fabric cord with a name tag attached to it that you wear around your neck – we always refer to it as a name tag, don’t we? Actually the name tag only refers to the tag. What is the name of the cord? Bet you don’t know it’s called a lanyard (pronounced lan-yerd). Besides name tags, you can also hang keys, pen-drives, whistles and anything you want to keep track of. Of course it’s only for small items, you can’t very well hang your kid from there.

How do you remove corn kernels from an ear of corn? If you were to look up the internet, you will only find this method. (Picture from http://www.shirinbalal.com).

There is wastage and it’s rather messy too as the juice oozes out from the kernels when you cut them. I learned of another method from my sister. Cut the corn into three or four stubs. Then half them lengthwise.  Peel off the kernels starting from the row of corns closest to the cut edge. You can do this easily as the flat surface of the halved corn gives you sufficient grip. The kernels will come off whole. The diagram below shows a stub with the left side of the corn already removed. My sister gets her boys to help remove the kernels and they get it done in a jiffy.

Cheap Western Dinner

This morning I caught a bit of Rachel Ray on TV. The dishes she prepares are easier than Martha Stewart’s. The recipe was fish fillet fried with bread crumbs with a side dish of pasta.

That reminded me that I haven’t fried pasta for a long time. I had two pieces of red snapper in the freezer, so I decided to cook pasta with fish. I fried the fish with olive oil, then tore them into flakes. Next the onions were sauted, then drained pasta added into the pan. Then I stirred in a cup of mushroom soup made from one sachet of Campbell’s and some tomatoes. Done!

For dinner, we had roast chicken. If we eat out at a Western restaurant, the damage would be about RM100 to RM120  for six of us, depending on what we order. Eating in is of course cheaper.

This home-cooked meal costs about RM30.

Chicken + carrots + onions : RM16

Pasta (leftover from lunch) : RM1

Mashed potatoes + gravy : RM7 (the pre-pack gravy itself is RM4+)

Salad : RM2

Garlic bread : RM4

For more ideas on how to save money, get my book Stretching your Dollar$ and $ense.

Quick meals

When I was a stay-at-home mum, I used to cook six days a week. Now that I’m working, this isn’t possible. For the first two months of working life, I catered food. For RM310 per month (weekdays only) to feed my family of six, it is a pretty good deal. There is no need to do marketing, prepare the ingredients and cook. All I need was two tiffin carriers for the caterer to load the food in. The problem is that my family can be quite choosy in their food intake. One day, there was cuttle fish cooked in chilli, four-angled beans and braised tau kwa. Of these three dishes, only the tau kwa suits our palate. We don’t like cuttle fish and four-angled beans, so our dog had a feast thanks to our pickiness.

After we stopped catering, it was economy rice galore. Every day we’d ta pau some dishes from the stall. We can choose what we like to eat, yet the family complained that the food tastes different from home-cooked meals. What a choosy bunch of eaters! In any case, eating out every other meal is no fun and isn’t very healthy either, what with the msg and all.

Now we’ve struck a compromise. On busy days especially those two days when I have to work nights, it is outside food.  On other days, we eat simple home-cooked meals. For those of you who are in the same predicament, you may like to try out some of these ideas. If you have any fast and easy meals to share, please do.

1. Put chicken and herbal ingredients in crock pot in the morning. In the evening, stir-fry some vegetables and open up a can of beans or fry some eggs to eat with rice.

2. Bah-kut-teh can be prepared in the crock pot too. Supplement with fast to cook vegetables such as lettuce. This can be stir-fried or added to the stew itself. If you’re doing the latter, it’s better to add the vegetables in a separate bowl of gravy so as not to alter the taste of the stew.

3. Spaghetti bolognaise. Dump a can of sauce, vegetables such as carrots, onions, potatoes even and minced meat into crock pot. Add an extra can of water and season with sugar and salt to taste. You can boil the spaghetti just before the meal or boil it in advance and refrigerate it before leaving the house.

4. Pasta with white sauce. Dump a can of sauce (Prego is a good choice) and add in diced chicken pieces, carrots, potatoes and a can of water. You can eat it with pasta or bread.

5. ABC noodle soup. Put chicken or pork, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes and onions into crock pot with sufficient water for making noodle soup. When you get home, transfer the soup into a pot for boiling over the stove. Add noodles to the stock. Yee mee, mee hoon or mee suah are good choices.

6. If you have no time to prepare any of the above, you can still customise a nice meal from dishes bought at the economy rice stall. Choose a dish with gravy, say chicken or pork slices in black sauce. Make sure you spoon in extra gravy. When you get home, boil some egg noodles. Drain away the water. In the same pot, add in the meat and gravy. Throw in some vegetables such as butterhead lettuce. Mix well and serve.

7. For a change, hot dogs or burgers would do nicely if you have young kids. For a faster and healthier alternative, boil the sausages instead of frying them. Burger patties can be put into the oven but you’ve got to watch the oven so that the meat don’t burn.

Now we only eat more fanciful meals on Mondays when it is my off-day.  We had Quiche Lorraine last Monday. I still have plenty of Calrose rice so maybe we’ll have sushi next Monday. Today we’ll have steam boat. Bon appetit.

P/S: Baking bread now only happens once in a blue moon when the urge to eat home-baked bread strikes  and when I’m in the mood.  The above picture showed my last attempt at baking buns which was a couple of months back – when the moon turned blue.

Meals for less

Big price hike in Little India – Star Metro, Wed, 9 July 2008

Story and photos by ELAN PERUMAL

The cost of two pieces of capati and a glass of teh tarik, which used to cost about RM4, has shot up to more than RM5.

The Klang Consumers Association (KCA) is obviously fuming over the recent indiscriminate price increase by the operators of food outlets.

According to KCA chairman A. Devadass, it is certainly unreasonable to charge RM5.20 for two pieces of capati and a glass of teh tarik for breakfast, but that is what the food stalls are doing.

Devadass said the price of a piece of idli (rice flour dumpling) had gone up from 70sen to 90sen and it was the same case with string hoppers (putumayam).

“A customer who eats three pieces of any of those stuff with a glass of tea or coffee will have to pay RM4.20 for their breakfast whereas they would have paid less than RM3 earlier,” he said.

“The price of thosai has increased from RM1.20 to RM1.50 per piece and a glass of fresh milk is going for RM1.90 from RM1.70 earlier,” Devadass told StarMetro.

According to the revised price list issued by the Klang Little India Traders Association, a banana leaf rice meal with chicken is priced at RM8.80, while the mutton meal costs RM9.30.

Devadass said the KCA had received numerous complaints from consumers on the higher prices imposed by the food outlet operators and he had filed an official complaint with the Domestic Trade and Consumers Association.

He said the escalating costs of essential items like foodstuff had badly hit consumers, especially the low-wage earners.

“The consumers said that breakfast for a family of four, including two children, costs about RM15. A main meal for the family costs up to RM30,” he said.

This means that just the three basic meals of breakfast, lunch and dinner for a family of four would cost at least RM75 a day.

Devadass said although the petrol price had increased by 41%, there was no justification for the doubling of the price of the simple foodstuff such as capati, thosai, idli and string hoppers.

Kampung Jawa resident S. Taneermala, 58, said she had no choice but to pay whatever price for her meals since there was nothing consumers could do about the situation.

“When I’m hungry, I need to eat and the price is something I have no control over. I had to pay whatever is asked,” she said.

There is something we as consumers can do. We can eat out less often. Eatiing-in is the best way to cut down on food bill.

Eating out may cost RM15 for a family of four including two children as pointed out above. For my family of six, with a jumbo roll of bread (which we can’t finish in one breakfast), spread such as kaya and margarine, breakfast costs less than RM5 or slightly more if you factor in the beverage.

Lunch need not be expensive either. Today I prepared pineapple fried rice using the extra rice I cooked yesterday.

• Fresh pineapple – RM2
• two Chinese sausages – RM2
• some beans and 2 eggs – RM1
• rice, garlic, oil etc – say RM2
• Total RM7 for four people.

Home-cooked dinners can be dished up for less than RM20. Today’s menu to feed six -

• one kampung chicken – RM13.50
• baked beans with eggs – RM2.50
• stir-fried cabbage – RM1.50
• rice – RM2
• Total RM19.50

One dish meals can even be cheaper. Eg. stewed pork meehoon only cost RM12. One tin stewed pork – RM8, sawi – RM1, meehoon – RM2, oil, onions etc – RM1.

What are you waiting for? Cook-lah!

Cheap carrot cake

Everyday we hear that prices of commodities are going up. Next up is petrol. On everyone’s lips is the catch phrase “lifestyle changes”. Don’t complain you don’t have money when you still drink coffee that costs RM10 per cup. Or eat a slice of carrot cake that costs RM5. I’m not saying we shouldn’t splurge once in a while for a treat. But if we regularly eat stuff like this, it’s no wonder our pockets will be burned through with a hole the size of Mars.

Eating in is one of the best ways to save money. For my family of six, I can cook a nice western meal for less than RM30. The same meal will cost me more than double in the restaurants. A simple fare of rice and three dishes cost anything from RM10 to M20 depending on how much meat I serve.

And for some sweet indulgence, bake your own carrot cake. The above cake costs me less than RM10 to make. (Compare that with RM5 per slice!) We had it for dessert and breakfast. For a long time I had been searching for a nice and simple recipe (using easily available ingredients). Recently my friend Jo who loves to bake, gave me this recipe. It is healthy too as there’s no butter and plenty of carrots.

No. 3 doesn’t like vegetables and I was able to persuade him to take a small slice to try. “You won’t be able to taste the carrots,” I said.

“No! No! Don’t ask him to try, he’ll eat a lot and we’ll get less!” the older kids had said earlier.

“Mmmm… nice,” no. 3 said after a bite, and served himself a second helping.

Oh no!

If you like to try your hand at it, here’s the recipe :

Swiss Carrot Cake

• 5 eggs
• 9 oz sugar
• 9 oz finely grated carrot
• 9 oz ground almonds (I used 4 oz only)
• 1 lemon juice and peel (I couldn’t find lemon so I used juice of 4 limes)
• 3 oz plain flour (I used 8 oz to make up for the shortfall in almonds)
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• pinch of salt

Whisk egg yolks and sugar till  it looks like thick cream. Add carrot, lemon juice, peel and ground almonds. Stir until well mixed. Fold in alternately egg white (which had been whisked till firm) and flour. Pour into 8″ tin and baked in preheated oven at 180 deg C for 30-40 minutes. Spread icing when cake is cool.

Topping : 8 oz icing sugar mixed with lemon juice.

I didn’t use Jo’s topping recipe. Instead I used a cream cheese icing which I copied from a cinammon roll recipe.

Cream cheese icing :

• 3 oz package cream cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cups icing sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/8 tsp salt

Beat all ingredients together till well mixed. Spread on cooled cake. I only used half of this serving for the cake. The remainder can be refrigerated for future use.

Sometimes the modification I make to the recipes yields disastrous results but fortunately the cake turned out pretty good. The colour is yellowish orangy and the texture is moist and crumbly. Next time I will use brown sugar.

Anyone has a simple and tasty carrot cake recipe to share? (Simple as in easy to make and ingredients are easily available).

Honest Baker

There’s this bakery in Klang which I patronize now and then. The owners are a husband-and-wife team who have been in the business for many years. Their premises are run down. The shop front has two display shelves which are empty and a Walls ice-cream freezer for storing their ice-cream cake. Behind the partition is where the action lies. The baking, cake-decor and customer transactions take place in the dinghy, untidy kitchen. The popular cakes here are chocolate fudge and fruit cocktail. They also cater full moon packages and make pretty nice cream puffs. They never fail to ask each time I visit, “Any creame puffs for you?” Usually I don’t buy them as I don’t like the cream in the puffs. If it’s kaya puffs, that I will buy.

The last time I went to get a cake, I asked for their calling card. The woman rummaged for one in a round biscuit tin.  She’s the most disorganized baker I’ve met.

“Here,” she said, after she made a mark on the card with a green marker pen. I saw that the word Best in ‘Best cream puffs in town” had a blob of green on it. I thought she wanted to highlight Best, but it turned out that she wanted to cancel it.

“Aiyah, the printer never asked for my permission before putting down “best cream puffs.’ I didn’t see it before it went to print or I would’ve stopped him, some more he printed so many. I cannot claim to have the best cream puffs in town. Sometimes when the mood is no good, they won’t turn out best. “

It looks like her printer has more confidence in her cream puffs than she has. Mmm… I wonder if she has been feeding him free cream puffs.

Bad taste

At the Big M

If you’re ordering McDonald’s delivery, please make sure you check your order before you send them away. Chances are you might be shortchanged. Recently I ordered 4 burgers for my children as hubby and I had a dinner to attend and I didn’t cook dinner (Sunday is the cook’s off-day). Only two burgers were delivered. We asked no. 1 to call up to complain but as written in their order sheet, calls for refunds will not be entertained. I have a feeling that dishonest workers are taking advantage of this clause to filch from customers. No more McDonald’s delivery. Or if we really have to use them, we’ll have to go through each item meticulously to make sure everything is in order.

At the small m

Last weekend we ate dinner at a mamak restaurant near our place. We’ve been there many times but service this time was a -1 on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being worst.

When we arrived, I indicated to a waiter that we need a table for six, as the long tables were all taken. No response. We found one ourselves by joining two tables. Then we waited for about 10 minutes for our order to be taken. At the mamak’s we shouldn’t have to wait for longer than 5 minutes.

When we finally managed to flag down a waiter, he insisted on taking the order of the next table where the diners had only just arrived.

“We came first,” we told him. After being instructed by another waiter to serve us first, he acquiesced.

As usual, no. 4 ordered roti bomb and we asked for this dish to be served first as she is the slowest eater among us. But Murphy’s Law always see to it that hers is the last dish to be served, including this time.

No. 2 ordered fried maggi mee without chilli. The noodles turned out spicy. This waiter has a hearing problem I think or maybe his mind was on other things. He had an absent look on his face, as if he wasn’t not quite there. We sent back the noodles and asked for one without chilli.

When I paid for the bill at the counter, I complained to the boss, a young man wearing a bright red shirt. He listened quietly, then he beckoned to the waiter who had served us. Another waiter joined in the fray and asked what was wrong. I repeated my complaints to him which he repeated to the offending waiter. I had no clue what they said to each other as their exchange was conducted in Tamil. In the end, I didn’t receive a word of apology from them or anything by way of explanation. I walked off in a huff. As I passed by our table, I felt like overturning all the plates of sauces and spitting on the table so they would have a messy table to clean. But civilized people don’t do such things, so I had to be content with just ‘plotting revenge’ in my mind.

We won’t come here again,” I told the kids.

Rich Kaya

For aeons I’d been wanting to make kaya again. The last time I made it was a few years ago. I’d been putting it off as the thought of stirring the kaya at the stove until my hands ache is a sufficient damper. Then out of the blue, I got hit by kaya craving on Monday.

Kong-kong th’ng and beh leh ko

I thought I had seen the last of him.  But I was wrong.  The kong-kong th’ng man is well and alive today.

In my younger days, a lanky old man used to ride his bicycle through the villages and housing estates to ply his sweet ware.  He sells kong-kong th’ng and beh leh ko. 

Leftovers

This is what we had for dinner the past two days.

Sunday night : KFC and pasta pie made with leftover pasta. The spaghetti sauce which I made for No. 4's birthday party is depleted but there was still plenty of leftover pasta. So I put the pasta in a casserole dish with a layer of shredded KFC in between (tuna would've been better but I'd run out of canned tuna), beat some eggs and poured it into the dish, topped it with mozarella cheese and popped it into the oven.

Chicken Casserole

Bird flu or not, chicken's still on the menu. I've taken a hint from chef Jamie Oliver who told his young apprentices that they must always ask where the meat is from before making a purchase.

If it's from a bird-flu area, no way I'll buy the chicken. But then again, what's to stop the chicken seller from lying. I just have to take his word for it.

Mashed potatoes with a difference

I’m not very good at following recipes. Sometimes I try to modify them even before I had the chance to try them out first and get them right before adding my ingenous touch. As a result, my cooking can be a hit-and-miss affair. Ask my in-laws, they’ll vouch for it. During pot-luck dinners, I know my rating will rank down there with the lowest of pond life while my sis-in-laws will get high marks for their sumptuous dishes. Not that I’m complaining, I get to eat good food which I don’t have to slog over.

Anyway, I digress.