I have spent a gross amount of time this week discussing and brainstorming about my newfound obsession - making soaps and bath bombs. I have also spent an indecent amount of money getting in raw inggredients, and voila, presenting my chocolate orange bombs (they smell exactly like terrys chocolate orange!!).

Chocolate orange cupcake bombs

In the middle of a lovely summer’s afternoon, I suddenly yearned for Christmas morning. Where admist all the gaily wrapped presents and tacky red stockings lay the one mainstay of what Christmas is - a Chocolate Orange. Now in cupcakes so you don’t have to whack it to get it out.

The seaside collection -

Clam shell chocolate orange

Orange fish

Just like Grandma used to make

Made from sodium bicarbonate,citric acid,pure sweet orange essential oil, natural orange coloring and dusting of 100% pure cocoa powder.And lots of love

PS: I am currently looking for ideas of flavour combination ect. Any comments/accusations/suggestions are very welcomed, be it presentation or the pictures. I can’t decide between the wicker background or the polka dot background….ideas?

PPS:If you noticed a small watermark on the pictures…aha…it is currently a project under wraps that will be revealed in time..:)

As I only had four responses to my blog re: Paying it forward, I am sending out packages to Zona, KJean,Mirebelle & lasilasi.

Guys could you please email me your address : nasilemak at sourrain dot com.

Its hard being a black cat

In my effort to garner participants in my previous post on paying it forward, I have whipped something up over the weekend that may well go into the care packages that I am putting together. Rather than sending out stuff from my favourite smellies shop, Lush, I have started making toileteries.

Made from all natural ingredients, these bath bombs contain citric acid, bicarbonate soda, PURE essential oils, all natural rose petals/lavender and just a smidgen of natural coloring to make it all pretty instead of looking ghastly white. I tried one yesterday in my bath ,and the whole floor was just filled with a heavenly rosy smell of rose essential oil. Not chemically made, mind you, only pure essential oils are used in my products. I have very sensitive skin, and bath products sometimes plays havoc with my skin due to the extremely long list of unpronouncable chemicals.

Now, aren’t they just so edible looking???? Being me, even my bath products are made to look like cupcakes.

I am going to continue making them, and with any luck the bath bomb that I send out will be close to retail looking perfection. If you have not used bath bombs before, they scent your bath with lovely smelling oils which is good for your skin as you soak in it as well. They are not bubble baths, which uses chemicals to foam up the bath.

If you don’t have a bath, do not fret, as I had also made some lavender glycerin soap! Due to the lavender flowers that I have embedded into the soap, this is good for a face or body scrub as well. Again, nothing but pure glycerin,lavender essential oils, lavender flowers and a drop of coloring. If you have oily skin, I can replace the lavender essential oils with tea tea oil instead - dry skin will work well with palmarosa.

Inedible fish

BTW, these are practice runs - those pictured are the first time I am making any kind of toilteries. Hopefully batch 2 will come out looking more presentable. As I had splurged on ingreddients and tools, I am also going to start taking orders for them. So if you would like to order handmade all natural toilteries, email me!!

Got this idea from mei’s blog. I was going to do something similar with la petite chinoise before she dissapeared off the blogsphere, and thought this might be a good time to bring this up again

What it is:
This idea is based on the movie Paying it Forward, if someone does you a good turn, you pay it forward doing three good deeds to three other persons, requesting that they do the same and pass it on. The theory is that the world would be a better person by the good deed power of three.

I will be putting together some ‘care packages’ which will include bits and pieces e.g. books, earrings, lipbalms, seeds, Tshirts, food (earrings and lipbalms will be replaced by other ‘manly’ items for blokes!). This is really the least I can do for all the support that I have received through my blogs in the past three years, not to mention the friends that I have made and the worry that I caused when I went MIA!

How do I participate:
Leave a comment on this post (will be open until 30th) and I will pick a minimum of three names to send packages out. Depending on what the reception and my budget is like, I will try to send to more than three commentators…I might only get one comment on this posting, who knows!!

When will I get it?
I will probably be sending this out through land and not air mail, as air mail costs will probably be much higher than the items contained in the care box. Obviously, if you’re in the UK, the package will probably reach you in a day or two rather than taking up to three months. Yes, this is open to all my readers irregardless of where you live.

I will be sending out items in a month or two, and you should receive it about three months after the posting have gone through. You should be getting your packages through by Christmas (I hope!) and might choose to open it on Christmas morning instead.

What is the catch?
The catch is that upon receiving the package, you promise to do the same on your blog. If you do not have a blog, a token sum donated to my chosen charity would be very much appreciated.

I have questions!!
Then please email nasilemak at sourrain dot com

Can I specify my gifts?
I am not Santa Claus neither am I your mother - so NO! However, I will try my very best to provide a happy suprise rather than a nasty one. This means no meat products for veggies or seeds for people that do not even have a cactus. And no girly products for male receipient - unless you specifically ask for it that is.

Sekian, terima kasih. (that’s all, thank you)

PS: Please either leave your email address on the comment or email me at nasilemak at sourrain dot com - otherwise I will not be able to get in touch with you!

This, is for Mavis. We had a discussion yesterday night on bubur gandum, also known as sweet wheat porridge. It is basically made out of boiled wheat pearls fragranced by pandan leaves, sweeten by palm sugar and thickened with coconut milk

We decided yesterday that rice pudding tastes like gandum, and it got me thinking about sweet lashings of gandum all day today. As I go past the chinese supermarket on my way to the bus station, I popped in for some wheat pearls. Obviously as I don’t even know what it looks like, I was unable to find it.I figured that instead of gandum I could always make sago, basically a substituting tapioca pearls for wheat pearls, a traditional Malaysian dessert.

1) Boil 500ml of water with palm sugar (gula melaka)to taste. Add pandan leaves, knotted.
2) Measure out one cup of tapioca balls and boil until completely translucent. Keep stirring, otherwise the tapioca will clump together. Thin with extra water if needed.
3) Once it is thick and nice,lower heat settings to the lowest possible. Add a can of coconut milk. Keep stirring, and do not overboil otherwise the coconut milk might coagulate.
4) Add a pinch of salt, and taste for sweetness. This Nyonya dessert is originally very sweet - if it is not sweet enough you can add more palm sugar at this point.

PS: the white dots in the middle of the sago means that the sago is not cooked yet - I had to pop it back into the pot. Cooked sago is completely translucent.In case you’re wondering why my sago is green tinged, I bought pandan flavoured sago

Where can you get

Clear waters with lovely pebbles

Beautiful stained windows telling the story of Christ in 36 panels

Family of ducks

…..and beautiful ruins from the 11th century?

Stay tuned - can’t access flickr from work now (pixs are suddenly not displaying BLAH), so this has gotta wait…if you can guess the name of the place I’ll give you £10

…is now blooming in my garden!

After a slight scare of not having any blossoms at all last year on the cherry tree (although, we DID only plant it last year), this year it seems to be doing much better. Slightly dissapointed that it turned out to be white blooms instead of the bright pink ones that I have been seeing on other cherry trees, but hopefully the cherries will be sweet and ripe in July!

Somehow I think cherry blossoms here are slightly later than Japan’s sakura season - or is that plum blossoms??

Rice, as we all know, is an Asian thing. Rice noodle, rice flour, fried rice, rice porridge, glutunious rice…the list goes on. The one thing that I could never get used to is sweeten rice - and in Malaysia this comes in the guise of pulut hitam.

Rice pudding is a traditional dessert here in the UK, something that I had always sworn off. Hey, I rather go for a trifle anytime if you ask me. Strangely enough, it can also be eaten warm or cold. Bacon made this once, and it consists of milk,rice, milk,cream and flavourings like vanilla pods or cinnamon. I think the one bacon made had vanilla essence (eh, we were poor then ok - I rather stick with vanilla pods any time). We had it hot, and it was like a strange sweeten rice porridge…bizzare.

I’ve never had it ever since, and it must be 2.5 years since bacon made it. Bacon still has it occasionally, as it is sold in the yoghurt shelves here…he eats it for breakfast instead of yoghurt. I was starving today as I was walking into the train station, where this woman was handing out rice pudding samples. Yes, one of the great things of working in town is getting free samples handed out to you all the time…I love it!

Yes they come prettily packaged as well. In case you’re wondering wtf is rhubarb, it looks like a red-stalked celery. Sour tasting, I never understand the English craze for rhubarb. Saying that, I have planted one in my garden so we shall see when it grows. Anyway, it is usually so sour, it is only made into a jam like consistency with tons and tons of sugar.

Decided to give rice pudding another try, seeing that I left my banana at home and was really starving. Strangely enough, I enjoyed this creamy confection. Tasting something between ice cream and nasi lemak (its the cream in it I swear!), the glob of rhubarb jam that comes with it made a whole lot of difference. Bacon has his with custard on top as well, but that’s really way too creamy. Dangerous food for breakfast as it is full of cream and carbs (200 calories per pot) but it did keep me full until noon.

Will definately go for it again - yum.

A storm’s brewing once again in the land I call home….

One of Malaysia’s most prominent political blogger, credited as being a big resounding influence on the recent elections is currently in jail for sedition of one of his blog post. This is THE man that regular citizens have looked up to for his courage and fearlessness in revealing injustice and defying opression by the same people that has been trusted to run the country. Making a stand, RPK has refused bail and visitors. His wife started a campaign to raise his bail money (a measly RM5000, less than USD 2000) - hoping that 5000 Malaysians will donate RM1 each. After 6 hours the total is about RM24,000 in bank transfers and USD 4,000 via pay pal. Being at work, I completely missed the whole donation drive and by the time I came back it had been suspended due to the generosity from people donating a few hundred RMs at a time instead of the requested RM1. Regular citizens just wanting to do their part to help this man who is quick acquiring folk hero status.

His wife, who had personally witnessed him beaten up by the cops when he was arrested in 2000, is pleading that all Malaysians do their part, and petition their MP to boycott Parliament. Hopefully with enough protests, the powers to be will realize that RPK is not alone, and the Malaysian public that was responsible for the political tsunami will again show their support for one of the very few who are brave enough to stand up against the limp government.

The reason I am blogging this because I am advocating democratic free speech - media or otherwise. RPK, as a highly articulate journalist and a member of the royal family is now in jail for a blog post. Is there any hope for the rest of us - the regular citizens? You’ve voted for change - please continue to support those who advocated change and woke the rest of us up to the non democratic government.

If anything happens to RPK whilst he is in jail, I have no doubt that a turbulent upheaval will occur in Malaysia….

UPDATED 8th May: Bail have been posted and RPK will be released tomorrow. There will be a candlelight vigil at Dataran Merdeka at 8pm tonight.