It’s almost tomorrow…

I guess everyone knows what day it is tomorrow and perhaps, like me, all of you have been getting cards and gifts from family and friends here, there and everywhere.

Thank you so much to smallkucing and family for sending me and my family these…

…and to Yan in Taiping, Perak for the lovely Christmas card…

…and of course, not forgetting lsun3 (小影) for her very lovely homemade greeting card…

…My girl particularly loved the very nice Christmas charm that she sent…

She can’t wait for Christmas to be over so she could take those bells and add them to her charm bracelet!

In the meantime, she has ventured into the kitchen again and the other day, she tried out this dish…

…that I called Tropical Snow by virtue of the fact that she used snowfish with honeydew melon plus the rambutans…

…from our garden. It was so very nice, anytime better than anything we had had at the cafés and restaurants anywhere…and I’m not saying this just because it was my girl who dished that out! We finished the whole lot in one sitting and we had to go out for dinner that night, and no prize for guessing what dish we would be having on the menu for our Christmas dinner tomorrow.

Yes, the rambutans are turning red and ripening now. There are not so many this time around but it’s o.k. as we are not really into the fruit. Most of the time, we would be plucking the fruits and giving them away to everybody instead of eating them ourselves…and yes, I’m slowly getting used to my new camera and feeling a bit more pleased with the snapshots…

…that I’ve taken with it.

My sister-in-law was back in town to visit her mum and she brought us a whole lot of sio paos and the giant steamed paos from Kuching and while she was here, she made these pork burgers…

…and gave some to us. They were very nice, I must say and to reciprocate, I whipped up my dabai fried rice…

…using the dabai paste that I got from Peter, the boss at Payung Cafe and the air budu from my friends in Trengganu. In the kampung (village), we used to eat dabai using the air budu aur as the dip so I reckoned the combination would turn out well. My sister-in-law said she had never tried it before and she liked it.

Talking about my own cooking, I bought a packet of Penang laksa rice noodles that I saw at a supermarket here the other day and fried it the same way I would with bihun – with canned clams in soy sauce…

…but no, we did not think it was all that great. It was extra-springy…to the extent of being over-firm and rubbery though it was perfect for frying as it would not break as easily as bihun, never mind thin or big but all things considered, I would prefer our hung ngang (big bihun) or even the regular thin Thailand-made ones.

Ok, enough of my chattering! You gotta get back to your preparations if you have not managed to finish all of them yet. Happy Christmas in advance, everybody!!!