Ied Mubarak 1432H

Happy Ied Mubarak 1432H to all my moslem readers.

Have a peaceful and joyful celebration!

Celebrating Our 5th Wed-sary and Canada Day

So, it is always like that...Our wedding anniversary and Canada day..both on the same day. We got our nation celebrating our Wed-sary, with the fireworks! Awesome...
Just like last year, this year we started the day with enjoying the Silly Summer Parade on Whyte Ave. This year participants were not that many, so it was just short parade. Here are some which were caught by my camera.

Clockwise from top left: Jasper the mini donkey, Farmer's Market participants, 2storey bicycles, A lady with a violin.

Clockwise from top left: Old time dressed up (do not think they have stroller that time), cute lil dog, African participant (that man worked so hard to drag that heavy thing on a windy day), Punjab cultural association.

In the afternoon, we went to Hawrelak Park for some bbq-ing and playing kites with kids and our friends. We had batagor as an appetizer. It is fried fish paste-filled tofu with spicy peanut sauce (I will post the recipe later, apologize for the cheap quality picture taken with my mobile phone).

W also had grilled chicken, fish and corn on a cob (somehow I forgot to take picture of the fish)



The recipe for grilled chicken is my husband's, and I would like to share it with you..

Ingredients:
6 whole chicken legs
2 stalks of lemongrass, cut into 5cm in length
1Tbsp of ground turmeric
1.5 tsp salt
2L of water

For marinating:
1/2c of fish sauce
1c of sweet sot sauce
1/2c of brown sugar
1Tbsp of ground black pepper
1Tbsp of garlic powder
2Tbsp of coriander powder

Directions:
In a big pot, boil the chicken with water, lemongrass, turmeric and salt until just tender (not too soft). Then marinate the boiled chicken with the marinating sauce for at least an hour. Grill until done (you may dip it back into the marinating sauce once or twice during grilling). Enjoy it with warm steamed rice and chilli paste.

It was a beautiful day indeed and we are thankful for the 5years we've spent together building our family. Happy 144th birthday, Canada!

Easter 2011

Greeting from Calgary where we spend our Easter long weekend. Recently, I have been into cake decorating, fondant decorating to be exact. I do not take any courses, yet am far from perfection. I am still learning. Thanks to the internet where you may find a lot of tutorial in doing various fondant figurine.
Here is what I made for Easter 2011. A bunny with carrot, chick and eggs and flowers in a basket, all on choco rum cupcakes.

Happy Easter every one! Blessing to you and your love ones!

Ginseng Korean Restaurant Edmonton

I am here again for sorta restaurant review. We celebrated daddy's birthday last Saturday by dining in a Korean restaurant named Ginseng. It is situated in South side of the town. I'll give you the address and contact number in detail at the end of this post. We have been there before, and we love the foods there. For our first visit we felt it was a bit pricey, but did not feel it that way on our second visit though (no idea of what we ordered on our first visit that we ended up paying lot more than the second one). This restaurant have buffet-all you can eat- menu and a la carte too, but seems like most of the people coming for the buffet where you can choose the foods and cook them right on your table yourself.

It is a heaven for meat lovers, they have quite various meats to grill, such as marinated raw chicken, beef, pork and unmarinated seafoods (shrimp, squid, mussels). They have sweet and spicy marinating. Namely classic bbq beef (bulgogi), bbq beef short ribs (galbi gui), beef in sesame oil (jumulleok), spicy pork (daeji bulgogi), spicy chicken (dahk galbi) are there to pick. Personally Chris and I love the spicy chicken, the kids love the sweet chicken and shrimp (we did not try the pork at all, no particular reason, just not a big fan of it).
They also give us some condiments, soy sauce and hot sauce. And as you expected, each table has the grill in the middle, big exhaust fan on top of it (but seems was not functioning since you still can see smoke and haze all around you and you get out of the restaurant smell smokey..) and of course you are given some tongs and scissors to cut the meats. Oh yeah, they change the grill once it is burnt and too smokey.

Other than raw meats, you can find fresh sliced vegetable too. Too bad, we did not take any, so no picture here. You may also like to get some cooked foods on the buffet line there. While you are waiting for the raw meats to be cooked, you can enjoy sesame house salad (I found out that night it was too much sesame oil, which give strong taste-aroma), California rolls (Jordan loves them, for me it's just ordinary rolls), deep-fried dumplings (yummy and crispy, very good to go with the hot sauce), seaweed soup (in my opinion, it was no taste at all), spicy soup (we did not try this one), kim chi (just so so), bean sprout salad/sukju namul (good), fried rice (looks like Chinese style one, Chris tasted it and he said it's so so), steamed rice, and weirdly enough Shanghai noodles..we were not sure why this noodle was there so we did not try it.
For drinks, there are various soft drinks and green tea included in the buffet menu. Other than that you may order with extra charge. We chose ice tea and green tea with honey.

This was my plate..with kim chi, bean sprout salad, grilled shrimps and dumplings.

Jordan got to taste the shrimp first and he loves them.

The only thing left out in the buffet menu is dessert. You can not find any of it other than fresh cut fruits (orange and apple that night). This is how our table look like after that 1.5hour smokey battle. For 29$/person, it is worth to visit!

This post would not complete without the picture of our birthday hero..(with our spoilled Princess)

An extra picture of kiddos splashing water in front of our house before leaving to the restaurant. What a joy to welcome the spring!

Ginseng Sushi and BBQ Restaurant

Edmonton, Alberta

9261 34 Ave NW

780-450-3330

Our Valentine's Dinner

Things are not the same for us with the two kids around. One which a bit hard to do now is eating out or dining in a restaurant. Well our daughter loves to eat in a restaurant, but it is somehow hard to find a family-friendly restaurant in town, especially on specific days like during the weekends. This year, Valentine's day was on Saturday. The fact that it was a special day when people like to have fancy dinner at restaurants and it was on the weekend made all the restaurants were packed with people. So when my husband asked me where to go for dinner, I said no where. We decided to have dinner at home, considering it will be hard to book a place in a family-friendly restaurant or if we could get one, it won't be so comfortable to bring our two little ones. Having said that, it does not mean that we do not love to have kids around nor we regret to have kids. It just something that we must act and see it differently. And we are thankful to have two beautiful kids. Moreover, eating at home does not lessen our love toward each other. In fact we appreciate our partner more while working together to prepare the dinner.
The menu was Korean bbq short ribs and salad. My husband prepared the bbq and I made the salad.

The recipe of Korean bbq short ribs can be seen here.
The salad recipe is as followed

Ingredients:
- bunch of lettuce
- 3 stalks of celery, cut into 4cm in length
- bunch of mini carrot
- 2 tomato, cut into 12 pieces each
- Thousand Island salad dressing
- bacon bits

Directions:
Mix all of the veggie in a salad bowl and then pour the dressing and sprinkle the bacon bits on top.

End of 2008 Greeting

I have been so bad in time management and in updating this blog (and even more neglecting my other blog and blog). So big apology for this late greeting.
At the end of this year I just want to wish you a peaceful Christmas and a prosperous New Year...have a happy holiday every ones!

Our Thanksgiving Dinner

Last week end was a long week end for Canadian Thanksgiving's Day. Unlike American, we celebrate it in October, while they have it at end of November. My aunt who lives in California always says that it is better to have it in October since it is still ahead of December, not too close to Christmas, so that we would not be stuffed with good big portion foods twice in a row-or at a very close dates. And I agree with her.
This year we celebrated it at home all by ourselves, my husband, my two kids and me. My husband set up the dinner for us by preparing the main menu. By the time the food was ready, Bianca was too sleepy, so she went to bed for a nap, and we ended up having dinner without the kids (Jordan is too small for steak..hehehe..).



The main menu was sirloin steak (see the recipe here, just replace the ribs with sirloin) and cheez-whiz spread-baked potato. I prepared fresh salad consists of romaine lettuce, red and green bell pepper, cucumber and tomato with Italian dressing.



Not to forget some sauces to spice up the meal (cheez-whiz, Italian dressing, ketchup and Indonesian hot sauce). The drink was a glass of red wine (not in the picture), I only had a sip, considering I am still breastfeeding. We closed the course with a slice of marble cake (see the recipe here) and instead of having tea or coffee, we chose to have a cup of passion fruit (Indonesian-markisa) syrup with ice.

We thank you oh dear Lord for all the good and bad things that had happened, it really shows us your mercy and guidance in every day of our lives. Thank you for the countless blessing and thank you just for our little happy family....

Our Farewell Menu

Oh....it is so good to have my internet back, after almost a month without it. We have been staying in our friend's house since we arrived in Edmonton at the beginning of June, and I've been using their computer with the internet connection as well. However, two days ago the computer got crashed after someone else using it. At the first place, I thought it was a bad thing...meaning that I would not be able to use the internet (well I used it for light internet usage only such as checking email and leaving comment for other blogger's page, not for blogging or downloading though). But then what I thought bad, turned out to be good (not that I am happy that my friend's computer got crashed), after I desperately plugged in the ethernet cable to my laptop and wuusshhhhh...it works!! I was so excited!!
Now I can freely download and upload photos and type recipe without worrying about disc space, since it is my own.

Anyhow...We left Montreal, QC on May 23, 2008 and after 7 hour driving we reached Missisauga, ON where we were staying with Christian's parents for 4days. On the last day, we went for brunch in a Chinese restaurant nearby. It was for our farewell with Christian's family, since we would not see each other for quite sometimes after this...and we do not know for how long we will see each other again coz the distance now is further than before. I managed to take some pictures of the food. And here are the pictures, enjoy!!



When we were waiting for our order to arrive, I took picture of hot chili oil and a clean tea cup. Christian and I like to eat the hot chili oil with what we order and we always ask for it whenever we eat in a Chinese or Vietnamese restaurant. The taste is better than sambal oelek.



These are typical tools you would find at any Chinese restaurant.



The restaurant is known for its specialty in serving conge (Chinese rice porridge), so we ordered the chicken conge plus you char kway or Chinese cruller (cahkwe). It was so good...I could have some more...and Bianca loved it too.



Actually we ordered Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, but when it came it was just garlic sauted one. But still it was very good as expected.



The squid was crunchy and tasty. All had gone in few minutes..



This is char kway teow or fried flat rice noodle (kweetiaw goreng-Indonesian). It was a bit greasy but the taste was delicious...I did not mind to add some more weight for this yummy kway teow...



And at the end, this was what we see...
You may see a little bit of a black tip tray on the left, for you to know, in Canada restaurant tipping is suggested as much as 10-15% of the total purchase.

Well..that's it folks...hope it gives you picture of what we had for our farewell with my in law's.

Savory Rice Plus Plus (Nasi Uduk Komplit)

After talking to my mom in law on the phone Saturday morning, I felt like making nasi uduk for my little family. It happened since she mentioned that she was given some nasi uduk by friend and had it for breakfast that day. So in the afternoon, I just made myself comfortable sitting in my kitchen preparing this nasi uduk. And since I still had some tempeh/tahu bacem and empal goreng, they would be good to go with the nasi uduk, I supposed.

Ingredients:
- 2.5c of jasmine rice, wash and drain
- 1/2 can of coconut milk
- water (as much as needed)
- 3 pandan leaves
- 5 Indonesian bay leaves
- 1 lemon grass, cut into 4cm in length and crack it with pestle
- salt

Side dishes:
- tempeh/tahu bacem (see the recipe here)
- empal daging (see the recipe here)
- kering kentang-teri (see the recipe here, I did not have it on the picture since my husband ate it all up before I took the picture)
- omelet/dadar telur: beat 4 eggs, then fry with a little bit of oil, make a very thin layer until done. When it is warm, cut into thin slices.
- spicy peanut sauce, I used the recipe here
- crushed chili
- fried onion

Bring to boil all of the ingredients to make the savory rice except the rice in a pot. Stir it well while boiling. After boiling, add the rice. Make sure that the water is enough to cover all the rice. Stir it again. Put the lid on. Cook for 20-25minutes under medium low heat, stir it occasionally to avoid burning on the bottom.
To serve, place the rice in the middle of a plate, add the side dishes and pour some peanut sauce on top.

What we had on Bianca's and Daddy's birthday party

Green Jackfruit Gulai

April is month of birthdays in the Sianturi family. There are lots of our relatives who was born in April, including my husband, my Bianca, my mother in law, father in law, sister in law-Shinta, and some of my husband's cousins (Kezia, Cherry, Sarah..and...any one else?). Sorry if I forgot to mention someone's name.
Last Sunday after church service, we had a small party to celebrate Bianca's and Daddy's birthday with all our church friends. I cooked green jackfruit gulai as seen above and stir fried spicy chocho as seen below. The recipes can be seen here.

Stir fried spicy chocho

I also asked my good friend, Lucia to cook rice dumpling, Indonesian crackers (kerupuk), and sambal terasi. Thank you Lus...your sambal terasi is definitely the best as it is so spicy!

Rice dumpling

Side dishes: Vegetable fritter, Indonesian crackers, sambal terasi

There were some side dishes to accompany the main dish, which includes vegetable fritter, Indonesian crackers and sambal terasi as seen above. You may find the recipe of vegetable fritter here.

Birthday cake

Celebrating birthday is not complete without birthday cake and blowing candle. For birthday cake, this time I did not bother to make it myself, as some of you may know I'd never baked before. So we just ordered it from a bakery shop. Initially I wanted to order something kiddie..however considering that it was not only Bianca's, I changed my mind and ended up with this blackforest cake. It's not funny to have "winnie the pooh" cake with a handsome-mature man blowing candles, right?...can you imagine?
The blackforest cake was so good coz it had real cherry crushed as filling.

Vanilla and cocoa pudding

Unexpectedly, one of our church member, Ibu Tiana, brought some vanilla and cocoa pudding. It was so yummy..and Bianca loved it! Merci beaucoup...

Pandan roll cake

On that weekend I also found out that Widi, our friend here in Montreal was having birthday on the same day as Bianca. And on Monday she came to our apartment and brought us this yummy pandan roll cake. Thank you Widi, it was a very nice of you! Once again happy birthday...

Even though I felt so tired after, I feel so happy that one phase of my daughter's development had passed. She is one year old now, a big girl! Time flies by...

Happy birthday my girl, you are a princess of my heart as always!
Happy birthday daddy...thank you for sharing today and the future with us!

note: for special report on their birthday, visit my other blogs later on next week: A Devoted Wife and Daddy's Little Princess