Mooncakes are out again!

Though it is only in the sixth lunar month, mooncake manufacturers have already begun selling mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Was around Tesco's to get some bills settled, and decided to walk into Tesco and see if I can get a few stuff. Lo and behold, the mooncake stalls for several companies were already set up and the sales promoters were busily pushing brochures of their products at the customers. Hmmm, this is like, it isn't yet the Hungry Ghost Festival month (7th lunar month), but the mooncake 'hungry ghosts' already can have their feast. My eyes were flitting amongst the product line, looking for a particular mooncake that I know someone at home would love to have. The salesperson from Baker's Cottage noticed that I was looking, and she quickly shoved her brochure onto my hands (mind you, her competitor from Six Happiness quickly jumped in and did the same). Then she started explaining the product line. An interesting one was a 'healthy & nutritious' choice of mooncake called Golden Bliss - delicate carrot butter skin, no sugar added to the lotus paste filling with roasted macadamia nuts, dried blackcurrents, cranberries, white sesame & sunflower seeds, and as replacement for the duck egg yolk, a pumpkin centre filling. Others were more sinful (and sounds more delicious) like Mint Hazelnut Truffle or Cheesy Choc-Oreo.

I was more interested in the charcoal powder mooncake, which I had once last year. Theirs is called Precious Black (黑龙珠) and the skin has charcoal powder, which gives it a jet-black colour.  The filling is a no sugar added white lotus paste with chunky dried longan and as substitute for the yolk, a wolfberry-lotus paste mix.

Precious Black - nice! Its been on their best sellers list for the past two years.

The skin has no taste in particular, and probably the suggestion of eating charcoal adds novelty to this mooncake. Think of it as eating carbon pills with your food. The thing with mooncakes is if you buy them early, you get nice gift boxes to go with them. So you can make a pretty presentable gift out of the mooncakes, or reuse the boxes for something else. These mooncakes came in a thick paper box with a magnetic latch. I know someone who actually collects mooncake boxes and tins, so perhaps after eating the mooncake, I can still make a gift out of the box. Now to get the jasmine tea out and have a slice of mooncake.

Mooncake box. Click here to see more of mooncake boxes in 2012.

Floria 2011 - Roses are forever... but are they???

I had a chance to visit Floria 2011 at Precinct 2 Putrajaya on Sunday, which was the last day of the floral exhibition. The theme for this year was Roses are Forever. For me, roses do conjure up the sense of romance and love, and that of exquisite scents.  So it became a must go event once I came to know about it. Roses are bred in temperate countries, and most of them have been bred selectively so that the flowers are able to unfurl their buds with minimal warmth. Put those roses in the tropical heat, they they go from a bud to totally flat out in three days max. Hence if the theme was roses, one would have to view the thematic display latest by the third day.  Unfortunately, due to work and a big distraction (though I was more looking forward for that distraction), I was prevented from going on the first 3 days. So when I went on the last day, I wasn't hoping much and was more interested in getting grafted trees for pot planting.

A yellow rose making a statement at Floria 2011.

When I reached Precinct 2 in the vicinity of the exhibition area, the first thing that hit me was the number of people busily carting plants and flowers that they have bought to their vehicles. One may be mistaken that Klang Valley folks have a serious gardening culture, or that the sellers were slashing down prices so drastically that everything was worth buying. Nay, Malaysians as a whole do not have the gardening culture. Ask them if they know the methods of propagating a certain plant, or how you should trim the plants after flowering, or what fertilisers should or should not be used for a particular plant at a particular stage and nine out of ten times you will draw a blank face. We have a buy, display and toss away culture. Hell, even the municipal councils are doing that with the flowers on road dividers. Anyhow, back to Floria, since it was the last day, I wasn't expecting the roses to do well. Despite my great adoration for roses, I think they are unsuitable as a floral exhibition theme in the tropics, unless you do it in the highlands. However, I was wonderfully surprised to find that the miniature roses were still doing well, and working their charm on the visitors.

Miniature roses.

Some of the rose beds in front of the Floral Pavilion weren't too good, and looked kind of messy. But the Solenostemon (formerly Coleus) beds were dazzling, and so were the Impatients (busy lizzies), chrysanthemums and petunias. Even the orchids were lending their weight in captivating the eyes and also the cameras of visitors.

Busy Lizzies dazzling the eyes of visitors.

Beds of Solenostemon (Coleus) and Chrysanthemums.

A closer view of the Solenostemon and Chrysanthemum bed.

Lovely orchids on display.

Petunias by the Floral Pavilion.

A bed of not so happy roses standing under the tropical heat.

The Floral Pavilion had many rose themed floral arrangements, and despite the air-conditioning, a large number of the roses were wilted or smelt like they were rotting away. There was an aroma garden setting where there were one was of roses, and the other of tuberose and lilies. Guess which one still held on to their scents on the last day of the exhibition - the lilies and tuberose.

Large yellow Chrysanthemums floating on a water bowl at the entrance of the Floral Pavilion.

A large display made with roses placed on glass vials.

The Javanese wedding arrangement was a good combination of the woven coconut fronds and roses, and looked stunning. There were many notable wedding dais designs with interesting use of flowers.

Part of the Javanese wedding display utilising roses and woven coconut fronds.

Upper section of the Javanese wedding arrangement.

Interesting use of roses in tall glass containers.

The display for fine dining floral arrangements were quite interesting, and whilst some were just the standard floral arrangements for table, there were a few notable ones with good usage of containers and roses. There were also other arrangements using roses and vegetables as well as the usual array of floral arrangements on display. Just by the exit, there was a stall that sold roses imported from Kenya, and they were lovely roses.

Fine dining display by Shangri-La Putrajaya.

Love the way the white roses are placed in the shallow container with a banana leaf wrap.

The garden bazaar sold everything from plants to fruit trees in pots to bonsai to orchids, farm machinery, crafts and most definitely roses. Besides that, there is an orchid competition display, just like in the previous Floria. The double and triple petaled Adeniums were going like hot cakes, even at the high prices. I guess novelty has its advantages.

People were buying plants like there was no tomorrow. Well, indeed tomorrow the bazaar won't be around anymore as this was the last day of the exhibition.

Roses are red...well candy striped to be exact.

A bonsai Melaleuca for sale. Look at the price tag!

The dainty Ionopsis standing out with a fiery red Renanthera in the background.

Another Melaleuca bonsai for sale. How I wish it was..it's not about the money, money, money.

Adeniums for sale. Love the yellow ones.

Orange Gomphrena (Globe Amaranth) on display.

Spathoglottis kimballiana.

The floral exhibition as a whole was good despite using a rather difficult theme of roses in our tropical weather. I am sure the number of visitors both local and foreign must be staggering (especially the local visitors).  In the end, I only bought a pot of Vietnamese mint/coriander, better known locally as daun kesum (Persicaria odorata) as I am prone to killing them by allowing the plant to dry out.

Hopefully the next Floria will be even more exciting and perhaps a more sensible choice of theme flower. The answer to the question of the entry title is perhaps roses are forever, but the blooms do not last a whole week under the hot tropical weather. Click here to see the previous year's Floria (Floria 2010)

When life gives you a huge huge heap of peppermint....make creme de menthe

I was getting a bit put off by the peppermint sprawling all over the balcony, even though it was nice to smell peppermint every time you walked on the balcony (especially when I stepped on the runners). So half asleep and groggy, I made the decision late Wednesday night that I will drastically cut back the peppermints, especially when other half and extended family will be arriving by the end of the week. Boy, was I in for a surprise with the amount of plant material that I had to remove.

The huge pile of peppermint parked in front of the couch with a 1.5L soft drink bottle for scale.

Stolons from under the polybag. They were growing into the adjacent bags.

What's left of the peppermint. Compare that to them in this article and over here.

So you might be thinking, lucky him, he's going to have fresh peppermint tea day and night, bath in peppermint scented water etc. Problem is, I love peppermint tea, but the menthol relaxes the gastric sphincter muscles and I get bad bad case of reflux. On the other hand, to throw away such a large amount of peppermint is sheer waste, and I can only give that much to friends and colleagues. Thus, I laid everything on the living room in front of the TV and whilst watching TV, proceeded to pick only the shoots to be given away to friends or use by family for making fresh peppermint tea. I ended up throwing 2/3 of the peppermint away.

The pile in the centre was thrown away. The one in the blue basin was used for making peppermint extract and the rest was eventually discarded, after finding no takers for peppermint.

This was packed them into a garbage bag and my oh my, do my garbage smell delightfully refreshing with the strong peppermint smell. Then and only then did an idea hit me...and I looked up in the internet on how to make peppermint extract/tincture. The idea is so that I can flavour drinks or ice-cream with peppermint flavour as it is next to impossible to get peppermint flavour from the supermarket. Then I started reading about making your own creme de menthe by adding syrup to the homemade peppermint, which sounded like an even better idea. Getting all excited, I made a mental plan to stay focused and concentrate on getting the extract first. So the first thing that I did when I got off work the next day was to go get a cheap 80 proof vodka and crammed all the peppermint in the blue basin into a 500ml Duran bottle and fill it with the vodka.

Peppermint soaking in vodka.

Now I am counting down till the end of the month to see if the peppermint extract is of any good. Wish me luck.