Exploring your own city-Penang

When you cannot travel outside your city, then you can only explore within.....it was taken a while ago, but no time to do my postings here. Just to keep a record of what I did during this low profile period of time.

 

  

Choong

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Sourdough Steamed Buns

Now, it's all healthy food, sourdough this, sourdough that. And this is the version I made, not easy to get the smooth like silk skin, as one needs to get the proofing time correct for the steaming session, otherwise,....only the bakers know how hard it is.

The content is coconut with gula Melaka and Pandan leaves.

Texture it quite good, and I find that Pau (buns) that made with Sourdough base can last longer, and the texture stays soft for a longer period of time. 

Will try to make another batch soon.

Choong

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nasi lemak- vegetarian version, my version

Have been vegetarian close to 14 months, and one of the food that I missed most is my daily nasi lemak, and it is hard to find or get Vegetarian version that I like or well prepared. Hence whenever I am free, usually, will prepare on my own, in my kitchen.

This is the pandan with coconut milk for the rice, and then mushroom curries (3 types of mushrooms), acar (pickled vegetables, nyonya style), fried sweet potato leaves with fermented soya bean, salted eggs and fresh basil leaves. It tasted good anyway, haha.

Choong 

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Delicacies from The Kitchen Of the Glamorous J

there is a sudden urge of wanting to eat Kuih Kochi (Glutinuos rice wrap in Banana leaf and steamed) but since it is out of my planning, I didnt get the kelapa muda (young coconut), hence being the creative Aquarius I am, it has been replaced with Walnut mixed with Gula Melaka...and here it is, my own version of Kuih Kochi.

This Sponge cake (the way to make this is similar in making Chiffon cake), but mainly for this, I wanted to use lots of coconut milk, the taste was good, and I will try to modify this, to have made with my sourdough starter, hopefully soon. This one tasted more like sponge cake (intended to be that way, as it is suppose to have a top coconut milk dressing, but since I did not have the time to make it, hence of this version. I like it plain too, as the coconut milk smells good.

Choong

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Message to take note of-Message for myself

 I am very weak, helpless, please look at me. Throughout my life I cheated myself, now I am helpless, so please help.

I have to remind myself; it is the time for me to keep the essential advice in my own heart. I think carefully from the bottom of my heart of my own situation. From the limitless beginning of samsara up to now, I have taken countless lives: happy ones, sad ones, bright, miserable and good ones. I have experienced them, but I didn’t help myself, I didn’t achieve anything at all which helps myself. This is the time to make some good virtuous efforts. 

Although I may look a very efficient and clever person, in reality I have been most stupid. Why have I been stupid? I have wasted my time playing like a child, wasted my time for this life’s benefits only. A child plays with things out of which it gets benefits for a short period. Similarly, whatever I have been doing was of benefit only for this short life; so actually, the efforts I have been putting in were like those of a little child.

Not realizing that, I showed myself as an intelligent person. But in reality I’ve been stupid. If I were not stupid I’d know this life is very short, the time is going to come. Why do I waste a tremendous amount of time and energy for gaining benefit in this life only? That is the sign of stupidity. While I am playing like a child, all of a sudden the fearful death will come and then I’ll regret, I’ll have a terrible regret. Such a time will come on me for sure.

We all have in mind: “I am going to die for sure, but not for a while, not just yet.” We keep on saying that and we will be busy working for the benefit of making money, a better position, whatever luxury benefits this life. And while I am lost and caught in that, suddenly the fearful death will come and say, “Hey, it is time for you to go now, right now.” While I am thinking that it won’t be for a while yet, I will get that all of a sudden. Though we prepare for tomorrow and tomorrow, there will be a time I have to go right now and there’ll be no tomorrow, no time to wait for tomorrow. One day the death will come, saying, “You have to go now.”

Even though I may be preparing for tomorrow, I won’t have time for tomorrow to come. It can happen while completing my work, it can happen while drinking a cup of tea from which I took half a sip, or I may start eating food and have eaten only half the plate, the other half may be left. Forget about the work, even a plate of food or a cup of tea I won’t be able to complete. No time left. Death will come in between, I have to leave half the cup and go. 

Time will come on me like that one day. The last day of lying down on your bed, you lay down like a tree. You will not be able to turn around your body because you are so weak. Still you try to call your closest friends to come and take your hand, you try to reach to them, try to pull them. Time will come on me like that one day. The time for me to wear these clothes is only today. No matter what cloth I may have put on my body, I will go far away and my body will be left. Whatever is left of the body will be like mud or rock. And there will be a time that I see my own corpse for the first time.

Time will come on me like that one day. Your last talk, when you want to say something to the person for whom you care most, is sad words. You try your best to speak out, you’re so weak but still you force yourself to talk, your tongue is already drying up, so the other person cannot understand what you are saying. They cannot understand, you realize that and very sadly you have to go.

 Time will come on me like that one day. Those who are very close in my heart, my friends, relations, my companions, all of them, may be standing around me, but the end of being together is separation. They will all, while crying, get separated from me forever. That time will come on me one day. What will happen thereafter? While we cannot be separated for a short time from our friends and all those we care for, at this time you have to separate for ever. While they are crying you have tremendous different hallucinations.

 Also you have physical pain in the body and also you have pain on the mind. But you are helpless, weak. In that way we will end the life. That time will come on me one day. By about this time a very kind compassionate master or friend will try to remind you, make you think of virtue, think of good work, think of your spiritual masters. And if you have your spiritual master there he’ll try to guide you, no matter what happens. You can hear it half, you can understand it half and half you can’t understand it. With sadness, while regretting you have to go. That time will come on me one day. The breath is going in and out faster and faster with quite a noise, and finally it will end as though the string of the guitar is cut: “Bang!”, finished. Just like that it will end suddenly. That is how this life ends.

 That time will come on me one day. The body which we cared for so much, which we really enjoyed and looked after, which is so precious to us, will now be called corpse and people will avoid it, thinking it is no longer the body. It will be put in a coffin. That time will come on me one day. 

 Normally we can’t even bear incense burning on the body, but then the body will be totally burned by fire. The fire will burn all the flesh and the bones and finally a little left-over dust and bones will be collected. The body which normally cannot even carry a thick, heavy cloth, will be buried under the ground. That time will come on me one day. There will be a time our nice, sweet name, is decorated by using the term ‘the late so and so’. For your friends, your relations and your retinue, it will be time to cry. All your belongings, your hat, your clothes, your shoes, everything, will be distributed in the ten directions. You yourself alone will reach the bardo stage. Sadly you go through the bardo stage, sadly. 

It is very hard; luckily I am not born there yet, I am only visualizing now, imagining. But it is almost the same as if I were born there, because I have a perfect karma to be born there. Before it arrives I would like to avoid that. Therefore I take refuge to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha: Namo Buddhaya, Namo Dharmaya, Namo Sanghaya

 

Ref: 

At that time Pabongka Rinpoche prays to his master: 

Kabje Paboka Rinpoche`s meditation notes.

It has been a long year

 It has been a long full year without any traveling, be it within the country nor out of the country...luckily, we live in a place with mountains and sea.....

My walk around the neigborhood....

Actually, have not been updating my blog for sometime, cause suddenly I do not know what I am suppose to write, but somehow need to record something for my own-self during this pandemic,,,

On Death

 Some of the many people you see in the morning,

You will not see in the evening,

Some of the many people you see in the evening,

You will not see in the morning.......

From the saying of the Buddha

Kuih Srimuka-Plant Paradox (local delicacy)

This has been one of my favorite kuih, and to make this, have to find the right recipe, because the standard recipe use a lot of flour, and also sugar. And finally found one.

Bottom layer is almost the same as the standard old recipe selling in the market, that is usin Glutinuous rice, but sometimes, a bit of sugar is added. For mine,none is used. 

Bottom layer:

Glutinuous rice, 350gm, small type.

wash and soak in water for 4 hours, wash, then add in 400ml of coconut milk (if packet, then add in 1 spoonful of cooking oil, a tsp of salt, two pandan leaves, then steam for 20 mins, then compress it, making the rice compact and even. 

Top layer

200gm of steamed sweet potato (mashed it after steaming)

192gm of water

50gm of dates powder (make your own to get the sweetness)

a pinch of salt

30gm of glutinuous rice flour

76gm of tapioca starch

Blend water and 200gm mashed sweet potato, then add other remaining ingredients together.

Once the bottom later is ready, add the top later, make it even with spatula then go for another round of steaming for 10 mins....

Then, let it cool, and add in as much sesame seeds as you like.

Choong
25 June 2020
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