Makan-makan Lagi

One of the things that I had to get used to when staying here in Holland is the "kehadiran" a lot of visitors. It is wonderful to have families and friends visiting us, unfortunately none of our close friends and family have yet to come here. Most of the visitors (like 95%) of them I never met or heard of in my life. Some were colleagues and friends of DH, while others were complete strangers to us !!!

To be honest, having strangers in the house makes me very uncomfortable. I feel so stressed sometimes and yet I could not unwind or put up my legs at night because the house is no longer mine. There are times when I feel that our lives here is such like a roller coaster, always eventful. Private moments at home during weekends are few and far between.

Recently, we had 9 visitors arriving from Malaysia. A family of five, a husband and wife and a mother and son. They arrived on 20th March and went back on the 26th. On the 24th March we had 3 more visitors joining us. Two were staying at a hotel (they preferred it that way :D), while the other one, we squeezed him in the small computer/solat room. Normally we never had that many visitors at any one time. We try to avoid overlapping of visitors, but this time the group of 9 had made last minute changes. Luckily they went back on Saturday and not Sunday as one of them had claimed, otherwise they had to find other alternatives because we had already planned on going for an overnight stay at Antwerp on the 26th.

No of bags... belum campur kotak2 yang dibawa lagi !!

Upon arrival.... the group of 9

A simple lunch of fried rice and omelette.

Since there were so many of them, we decided to have barbecue and satay on Friday night. We also invited DH's colleague and her family and another friend. It must be the earliest barbecue event in the area since it's not yet summer, where people normally have barbecues !!!

Barbecue - chicken and lamb

Chicken and beef satay...

Since I did not have to prepare and cook them, I totally supported the barbecue idea !!! The chicken was marinated by DH's colleague, the lamb was marinated by DH, the satay was ordered from the well known Malaysian lady here in The Hague. I did not have to do anything.... :D But I did contribute by making the fried rice....

Laden with food....

Another angle - just to show my fried rice :D

Since I was feeling generous, I made the deserts too - puding kastad (corn custard pudding), serimuka and apam gula hangus.

Apam gula hangus - steamed caramelised cake

Serimuka - traditional Malaysian sweet cake, the bottom part is made from glutinous rice.

This was my second attempt at serimuka in two weeks. I still couldn't get the right combination for the upper green layer. My late grandmother used to make it with very soft top layer. When you cut them, they sometimes did not look tidy but it was so delicious !!!

And last, we made ikan bakar specially to the Acik visitor who had high blood pressure !!! Poor Acik had to spend 2 days at the house so that she recovered from her headache. It seemed that her blood pressure had risen !!!

Ikan bakar...

I'm looking forward to April visitors.... because for the first time I have my own friends coming over.... HOOORAAAY !!!!