Dah February?

Subhanallah, it's February already? What have I been doing in the past month? It seems only yesterday that we came back from our most memorable journey and yet now it's already a new month! Yeah, it's been a quiet month with DH travelling around between the Benelux countries. He was back for a day or two then off again for another 5/6 days. This morning he went off to Brussels again for another 5 days, and he just got back from Antwerp on Monday night !!

But I welcome the quiet time that's been granted to me, Alhamdulillah. With him not around, I just cook simple dish for me and DS and sometimes we just ate whatever leftover from the day before. Luckily DS is not fussy. The extra time I have I try to use it in the beneficial way, finishing the one and only required annual report (which somehow took me days to complete due to my IT incompetence ) and trying my best to increase my ibadah. I try to sleep earlier and wake up earlier too, finding solace in the wee hours of the morning.

So our visitors this morning were a welcome change to the quiet period. They were here to accompany DH for the next few days. Thinking that they might be hungry after the long and tiresome flight, I laboriously cooked nasi lemak with sambal udang in the early hours of the morning. To be honest, I hate do not really like to cook sambal here. When I cook sambal, I tend to put the flame on smaller heat and cook for a long time hoping that no one would get stomachache. But then the smell of it simmering really stink the whole house. I could hear DS and DH sneezing and getting restless in their sleep hehehe. . .

But it's worth it, at the end of the meal I was left with an almost empty bowl of sambal.

Sambal udang

Feeling charitable, I even fried goreng pisang and made samosa to go with the breakfast brunch.

Goreng pisang

Samosa

It's my third attempt at making samosa, so I'm getting the hang of wrapping it up. I actually made the filling for the samosa and the dough yesterday for my iftar, but then decided there were too many food and so I just wrapped the dough inside a plastic and left it overnight for this morning for the guests.

By 10 a.m. I was ready, the table was set and the food was placed on warmer to keep them warm, but where are they??? Normally the guests arrive latest by 9 ish regardless of whether they are on KLM or MAS flight.

Visitors

Finally they arrived at 10.30 am. It seemed that there were traffic jam and DH took them on a longer kampung route so they were able to see the less seen Holland's scenic view. By 12 pm, they left for Brussels leaving me in alone again.

My Neighbour

We live in a neighbourhood of Leidschenveen, in the outskirt of The Hague. The short lane to our house only have 4 houses and all the four houses share a common gate which is situated on the bridge over the canal. My house is right at the very end, no 4. Naturally I have to pass their houses in order to go to my house. I know all my neighbours, even though we rarely meet on everyday basis. Two of the couples are quite elderly, whereas the other couple are perhaps in their forties. 

Below is Marion (I think that is how it is spelled, anyway). She and her husband Henk live at No 1 house, so their house is the very first house you see once you go through the gate. Both of them are very nice. Every week Henk takes my rubbish bin from outside the gate and brings it to my own gate. You see, rubbish collection is once a week, so every Monday night, my DH would push the bin and leave it outside the gate for collection the next morning. Most of the time, Henk would push the bin back to my house after the rubbish has been taken. He does that to all neighbours, "It's the neighbourly thing to do" he said one day when I told him he need not take my bin from outside. I'm surely blessed with having good neighbours who help me with rubbish and they happen to have the same first name!!! Read about the other Henk who was my neighbour in Amsterdam here.

 

Marion and our visitor Jas, in front of her house

Anyway, Marion is also nice and friendly. One day she called up to me when I came home from picking DS from school, just to show me a type of fragrant flower that she claimed only blooms for 2 weeks. 

The other day when I met Marion at the other neighbour's party read here, she told me one very interesting and amusing fact. She said that all my visitors who came to my house, seemed to like photos of trees. Apparently, she has been observing from the quietness of her house the antics of my visitors. It amuses her to see them going from this tree and that tree and taking pictures (with them in the picture of course). Some trees according to her did not even have leaves !!!

I laughingly said that we come from a rainforest country and naturally we love trees and nature :D The sight of beautiful flowers blooming on Dutch trees are so beautiful we just have to take pictures of them. And in response to the "no leaf tree", I said that they (my visitors that is) have never seen trees in winter with just empty branches and no leaves, after all in our country we have greens all year round.

Her statement caused me to recall all the many visitors we had with their cameras practically hanging on the necks clicking here and there in front of the neighbours' houses :D  The photo above was taken just after our visitors Jas and Jak and also my DH been taking photos in front of her house and naturally she couldn't resist and came over to say hello and cheekily mentioned the very same fact :D

 

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 !!!!

Life Moves On

As I mentioned earlier, we had a break in at our house. We found out about it as soon as we got home from a holiday on Thursday night on the 24th February. The police came that very night and they came again the following day. They mentioned that a forensic team would also come on the same day to get some marks or fingerprints left by the thief(es). They cautioned not to tamper or touch smooth surface that the thief(es) might have touched. I waited, but the forensic team never turned up....

I had visitors arriving on that Friday evening, two families staying over the weekend and in between us we had five children in the house. How to ensure the kids from touching the crime area? I had no idea. As it happenned, the team never arrived, probably would not come at all in the future. If they do, they would probably find smaller fingerprints on some of the area :D

It was a lousy weekend, for the very reason that it had been raining from Saturday morning until Sunday night. The poor kids had to play in the house, they could not even play football outside. We planned to bring them to the kids farm not very far from the house, but that too had to be cancelled. But the kids never really bothered, they still had fun in the house :D

Being couped up in the house means we ended up eating all the time. What to do? Rain, rain, cold and cold, so we eat, eat and eat !!! On Saturday we had "laksa" for lunch with "puding jagung" and "talam keladi" for dessert (both made by my visitor B). To those who are not familiar with Malaysian cooking, "laksa" is a type of rice noodle and it is eaten with gravy or soup-like dish made from fish (here we use mackerel). The gravy tastes a bit sour and also spicy due to the chilli added.

Laksa and the vegetables that goes with it...

B's husband and child tucking in the "laksa" :D

That night we had "nasi daging", acar timun and air asam for dinner and B's husband was showing his cooking expertise by making "sup tulang merah". We had a birthday celebration too, Ikhwan turned 11 that day, and we had a simple party for him. Happy birthday Ikwan, may Allah bless you always and please come again :D

Birthday boy in the middle.


Sup tulang merah...

On Sunday, we had special lunch prepared by B and her husband "nasi laha mandi"(hope I spell it right) and "roast beef". The menu was of Palestine origine I believe.

Tomato puree mixture to marinate the piece of meat

The meat stuffed with rosemary, thyme, dill and arsley(I think) , before being marinated with the mixture above.

The end result... I forgot to take picture of the roast beef before it was cut, so had to do with this one :D

And we had "kuih keria" (again made by B, thank you dear) and "masalode" or "vade" made by me for dessert. "Kuih keria" was a request from me and "masalode" was a request from B's husband :D

Kuih keria, made from sweet potato and glazed with sugar.

Masalode, made from dhal.