Siu yoke (烧肉）Roast Pork Belly

This was bound to happen sooner or later. Well, here it is: pandemic pork belly, because all that extra time I've got to spend at home, I got to make a dish I would otherwise not.

Ingredients

• 500g pork belly
• ½ tbsp Shaoxing wine
• ¼ tsp five spice powder
• 1 tsp salt
• ½ tsp white pepper
• 1 tsp white vinegar
• 1 Tbs coarse salt (for layering on top of the pork belly)

To Prep the evening before:

1. Mix the salt, five-spice powder and white pepper together.
2. Rinse and clean the pork belly before drying with paper towels.
3. Poke holes evenly around the skin of the pork belly and score the rind to stop any bubbles from forming while it is roasting. 
4. Brush the Shaoxing wine on to the bottom of the pork belly before rubbing in the dry mix. Ensure that the skin of the belly is kept clean.
5. Place the pork belly on aluminium foil and fold the sides on to the meat. You should be left with a wrapped pork belly but the skin should still be fully exposed.
6. Place the pork belly in to the fridge to marinate and dry for at least 8 hours.
7. Once the pork belly has marinated, remove it from the fridge  and brush the skin lightly with white vinegar before covering the skin with coarse salt.

To Cook

1. Bake the pork belly in an oven at 200 degrees Celsius for 45 mins.
2. After 45 mins, take the pork belly out of the oven and remove the salt layer on top of the skin.
3. Take the pork belly out of the aluminium foil and place it on to a wire rack to roast. Make sure to use either the leftover foil or another tray to catch the oil drippings.
4. Return the pork belly to the oven, putting it on the highest rack to broil for another 10 mins, or until the skin has become crispy.
5. Remove the pork belly from the oven and let rest for at least 10 mins before cutting it in to bite-sized pieces to serve! To make the cutting easier, start from the meat side and cut down in to the skin.

 

Salted egg cookies

These days, salted-anything sells. You've got all sorts of amuse-gueules: salted-egg fish skins, salted egg-chips (Singapore's Irvins Salad Egg Chips sell for US$11 come to mind (and to mouth), salted-egg crackers, and of course cookies. So I had fresh salted duck eggs in my fridge left from a friend who stayed with me for a time. Of course I could make a salted egg porridge or stir-fry them with mao qua or bitter gourd, but who does that for one person? So I searched Pinterest to find salted egg cookies and I modified it to my own tastebuds. This was the result. This one's for keeps. 

Makes roughly 45 small bite sized cookies

85g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature ( I used ½ cup crisco)

⅓ cup caster sugar (or 6 Tbs)

½ tsp salt

1 cup all purpose flour 

1 heaped Tbs cornflour 

½ tsp baking powder

3 cooked salted egg yolks, briefly mashed 

1 egg yolk, lightly beaten to glaze

black sesame seeds to sprinkle (optional) 

Using a wooden spoon or an electric mixer, beat butter, sugar and salt for about 1-2 mins or until combined and fluffy. Do not over beat. Place flour, cornflour, baking powder and salted egg yolks in a medium coarse sieve and use a spoon to sift and press the flour-salted-yolk mixture into the butter mixture. Then, use a spoon or spatula to mix until the flour mixture is totally absorbed into the butter mixture. Gather the crumbs to form a soft pliable dough. Wrap dough in cling film and allow it to rest in the fridge for at least 30 mins.

Line baking trays with baking paper and preheat oven to 170°C

Place dough on a lightly floured surface to roll into 3 mm thickness and cut them into shapes using your desired cookie cutter. Brush the cookies with egg yolk and sprinkle sesame seeds on them and bake for 25 mins or until golden brown. 

Sticky glutinous rice dumplings (bachang or zongzi)

Singaporean style sticky Glutinous Rice Dumplings (Bachang or zongzi)

To make 35 rice dumplings, you will need: 

Ingredients
9-10 cups of glutinous rice (soaked overnight or at least 2 hours in warm water)
0.5 cup of winter melon (diced)
4 lap cheungs sliced (Chinese pork sausages)
18-22 small shiitake mushrooms (soaked overnight)
2 bags of chestnuts (or soak dried ones overnight)
1 cup of raw red peanuts with their jackets on (or soak them overnight)
1.3-1.5lbs of pork butt (needs some fat)
12-24 boiled quail's eggs (optional)
70-80 bamboo leaves (usually one bag will be sufficient)

Run the bamboo leaves under water and clean it with a brush. It will be dirty. Boil the dry bamboo leaves in a pot for 30 minutes. Leave in the pot while you prepare the other ingredients.

Stir fry the following:
1.5 Tbs oil
3 cloves garlic
2 pieces of ginger
Add pork and mushrooms, 3 Tbs light soy sauce, half cup of water, a pinch of salt and white pepper. Remove and leave the gravy in the pan.

Add peanuts to the remaining gravy to simmer for about 7-10minutes. Add 1 Tbs of sugar if you like them sweeter. Put aside.

Add all the soaked rice to the gravy mix and stir fry for about 5 minutes. Because you've soaked the rice, it will make the rice fluffy when you steam them later.

Folding the bamboo cones
Take two bamboo leaves and make them into a cone. Add rice, followed by each of the 5 ingredients: pork, chestnut, sausage, winter melon, and mushroom. (boiled quail's eggs if you have them) You can check youtube to find how to fold them here: https://youtu.be/mkdYFK4RchM)

Using an instant pot, I added enough water to half submerge the dumplings with the raised metal rack below. Adjust high on steam for 30 minutes for 10-12 dumplings.

This is the final result. A pyramid of yummy sticky goodness.

A Blast from My Past: Nian Gao Recipe

Some people like this brand of Koda Farms sweet rice flour.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. bag of glutinous rice flour  (Erawan Brand look for the green bag or Koda flour) approx. 480gm
• 1 1/4 cups brown sugar (or 5 flat pieces of cane sugar)
• 2 Tbsp. oil (I used grapeseed)
• 2 1/4 cups water

• 1 glass container to steam in (lightly sprayed with olive oil so it won't stick or else use banana leaves to line the container for easy removal. 

1. Boil the water and brown sugar until fully mixed. Let it cool to room temperature. Add the glutinous rice flour and oil. Blend the mixtures until it is completely incorporated.  
2. Steam the batter for 50 minutes on medium high.
3. Let it cool before refrigerating it. 
4. Slice the cakes, coat with egg and lightly pan fry on medium-low heat for about 3 min. on each side or until it's soft and gooey.

After it's steamed, it looked like this. 

Overnight it's hardened enough to be sliced into morsels to be dipped in egg.

Pan-fry them on medium heat till they are a gooey delicious shade of golden brown. 

Lo Bak Go (Radish cake) that made the cut

So I've always made it without wheat starch but it's a necessary secondary starchy flour. I used 5 tablespoons of this with a cup of rice flour and it was magic watching it come together.

This is the brand that I am most familiar with living in Surrey, BC, Canada because Heng Long carries this brand which is very reasonably priced. 1 cup of this is needed. 

This was the messy pile of radish after shredding it and putting it in the wok. Cover for 12 minutes and it was all beautifully soft. 

This was after adding the thin rice and wheat flour mixture which coalesced into this goopy pre-lobakgo-ness.

After steaming for 45-55mins, this would be good enough to serve my grandma, my epoh, my mum and my mum-in-law (all too busy in heaven to pay any attention to my Chinese culinary skills!)

The "Glue"

1 cup rice flour 

5 tbsp wheat starch or corn flour

1 cup water

The "Liao"

1 white radish (medium)- Korean ones are fine.

1/2 a red onions

3 tbsp dried shrimps (soaked for 2 hours)

4-5 medium-sized dried scallops (soaked for 2 hours)

3/4 cup mushrooms (soaked till soft and diced)

2 tablespoons oil

The "Shesoning" (agar agar ok?)

1 tsp salt

1 pinch of sugar

1 tsp sesame oil

A dash of fish sauce

1 tsp toasted sesame seeds

1/2 tsp white pepper

1 tsp Shaoxin wine

1 tsp Knorr chicken seasoning granules
A handful of cut spring onions to look pretty

The How-to

1) Add water to rice flour and wheat starch to make a thin batter.

2) Heat and add oil for stir fry (red onions, dried scallops, dried shrimps and dried mushroom, till fragrant and until golden brown.

3) Add radish and seasoning to taste until combined.

4) Cover and cook until tender and translucent, about 12 minutes on medium high. Radishes are famous for sweating lots of liquid. 

5) Using the same wok, Add the batter and stir them until slightly thickens, Pour mixture into a well-greased glass container and steam for 50-60 minutes on medium-high heat. Remove from heat and set aside to cool before sprinkling spring onions then chucking it into the fridge to ogle at the next morning. 

Chocochiplets

To be fair, this was pilfered from recipe #234 from Hamlyn's Cakes and Baking that I had bought in 1991, with slight alterations, of course. (If there weren't any alterations, I'd be sending you to the Hamlyn site.)

The first time I tried this recipe was on 21 August 1993, before my son was born. Probably for the International Fellowsheep Young Adults' Group back when I lived in Clarens, Switzerland. This is a quicky-feel-good recipe for the no-fuss, no-mess baking guru.

Then again, if you were a real baking guru, you wouldn't be reading this. No duh.




Ingredients:
100g margarine
50g caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
150g self-raising flour
175g chocolate chips
Handful of walnuts

Cream the butter and sugar until it's light and fluffy.
Add the egg until incorporated.
Fold in the flour.
Then the chocolate.
Throw in the walnuts with flair and go "ka-bam-bam" for good measure.

Place a small teaspoon a little apart (it's margarine so it won't melt into a flatter cookie) and bake for 15-20 min on 180C. Makes about 30-35 small bite-sized morsels of crunchy goodness.

2 July 2014 Kimchi courtesy of Mrs. Sun-Kyeng Park

Making the "Sauce" 

Add the other ingredients to make the "Paste"

Massaging the "Paste" into the cut cabbage  

The finished products in 1 litre jars

 

Sun and I in her Langley kitchen

Ingredients for four 1-liter jars of kimchi

2 cabbages

1 cup of salt

Cleaned, cut into rectangles and salt-rubbed overnight (or at least 5 hours)

Wash 2 or 3 times

Leave to drain for an hr

"Paste" for 2 cabbages 

2 cups of water 

2 tbsp glutinous flour

1.5 cups of gochu garu (red pepper flakes)

Quarter cup fish sauce

3 tbsp of crushed garlic

1 tbsp cut ginger

2 tbsps sugar

1 tbsp of sesame seeds

Cut 3 sprigs of spring onions in 1" pieces

Optional: Fresh chives 

Add glutinous flour into a pot with 2 cups of water on medium heat. Keep stirring until it becomes a translucent "paste". Cool a bit then add the gochugaru, fish sauce, crushed garlic, cut ginger and sugar. 

Take the cleaned and drained cabbage and put it in the largest mixing bowl or pot. Sprinkle sesame seeds and the chives before adding the finished "paste" which should have been cooling down until it's warm. Massage it into the cabbage well.

Leave to ferment for a day in summer room temperature before refrigerating the next day.

Enjoy!

Appropriate

It seems appropriate
To describe my restlessness
Like a sleepwalker desperate
To lie down
But finds herself walking unconscious.

It seems appropriate
To be thoughtful and gracious
Yet, I cannot find it within myself
To extend kindness
Though it is not asked of me.

It seems appropriate
To expect my Father to help
My ingrown awkwardness
My violent feelings-
My exasperation of self.

It seems appropriate
To want nothing more than healing
Nothing less than health
At the quickest instant
Her words to lose their affect
Words to lose their sting
Words to lose their meaning
Yet I cling, or they cling to me
Like burrs of a Velcro fruit.

It seems appropriate
To cry foul, or at least air the room
For it is still with musty ill-kept silence
There seems nothing to do,
Nothing to say,
No where to start,
No place to heal,
No one to bridge the gap,
Nothing more to add.
There is only dullness
And on my part, elusive waiting
Wanting to get away,
Feeling wronged,
Not getting out
Nor staying in.

I have so much to say
Yet cannot say it.
I have so much I wish to ask her
But trust not to speak my mind.
I have been desperate to understand
Yet have been so misunderstood.
I have longed for opportunities
That now, feels stale from waiting.
I want to be a friend,
But don’t know how.
I want to befriend,
But am not taught how.
I am upset by my lack of knowing
what is simply
Appropriate.

The Power of No

The power of No

I do my best thinking on the treadmill these days. Maybe it’s the perspiration or the endorphins that gives my spiritual cortex a keenness I don't expect when idling. I was drawn to the passage in Matthew 26:39-44 when God refused to let the cup of suffering pass from Jesus’ lips.  

Three times, Jesus asked “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”

Denial is an ugly noun, made uglier for the inherent meaning it carries- the refusal of the request. I’m not talking about the asking for something fence-sittingly good or a downright dumb request. I’m talking about a vehemently good request like the asking for healing for a friend dying of cancer or a plea for relief for someone going through hell and high waters. For Jesus to ask it of the Father strikes me an odd thing. Didn’t Jesus know that this was the reason for which he was sent to earth? As if that wasn’t strange enough, he asked it three times. Was it for our benefit that he asked?

“No” is a word I do not like to use. I’m a yes-person because I’ve always thought myself a positive individual but here I’m compelled to rethink the positivity of “no”. God said “no” even though God did not express it in words. It was clear he meant no since Jesus drank from the cup of God’s wrath (Jeremiah 25:15). Jesus wasn’t thinking about himself. Jesus was thinking what drinking it would fully, finally and perfectly accomplish. Defeat death in its totality.

Recently in my life, in my waiting on God to direct me to a teaching job and international homestays, I’ve sensed it a “no” throughout. I’ve sent out 12 resumes since Feb 22 and put up ads for an available room to rent to schools all around North Surrey. While God had blessed me with so many homestays before and jobs even before I finished school, this time I’m challenged to grow in my faith. The power of no is actually going to affect me positively. It’s already started. I’ve sensed God saying “no” to many things in my life before but His “no” is going to accomplish something in me that no “yes” is ever going to.

So, today being Saturday while Jesus once lay in the tomb between death and resurrection, I await tomorrow’s victory. I’m learning to accept, be thankful for and to enjoy the nos in my life as God’s guarantee for the greater good that I know He is planning for me. Oh for Sunday to arrive! Christ is Risen!

When Struggling Mothers Praise

When our homes are muddied and untidy,
Let's praise the Lord in His Sanctuary
When you smell something sickly in the oven,
Praise him in His mighty Heaven!
When our little kidlets refuse to shower,
Praise Him for His acts of power
As mums we know, (how we know!) our weaknesses,
Praise Him for His surpassing greatnesses
Ignored, slighted, resigned we will get,
Praise Him with the sound of trumpet
When they speak unkindly, indifferent, full of ire,
Praise Him still with harp and lyre
Dwell not on his laziness nor her lying,
Praise Jesus with timbrel and dancing
Cease the endless worry throughout the night,
The better praise is with strings, flute and pipe
This passing phase will soon come to settle,
By praising Him with clash of cymbals,
Praising Him with resounding cymbals.
The sounds of our praise will wake our deafened child to God.
Let all struggling moms who has breath give praise to her Lord.
Look out you, dark enemy of our soul,
For He, worthy of praise, is our goal.

Based on the Psalm 150.

The charm of the letter is the heart of the sender

“It’s curious how emblematic a single letter can be, how it can encapsulate an era or sum up a complex relationship.” – Jennifer Williams, Writing Personal notes and letters.

The beauty of being written to is the sense of importance it gives the receiver. It is immensely pleasing and flattering to be singled out and acknowledged as someone worthy of a letter. A letter shows that you’ve chosen to make friendship and the arduousness of sitting down a priority. It is an idoneous gift of time and affection that emailing rarely achieves and never attempts.

            When I was thirteen, I recall a strange phase whereby I would write letters to my best friend who sat in front of me in class. Never mind we saw each other every single day, talked during every recess hour and walked to the same bus stop in tandem. She would hand me an envelope (usually pink and sweet smelling) with at least several sheets of matching stock paper to speed me up to date with everything that was au courant in her life. Considering we were at that age where an acne breakout is front page-worthy, I look back and wonder what else we could’ve filled reams of paper with such secretive gratification? I had spent a small fortune on paper and envelopes writing out thoughts and feelings that were consistent with my theory of symptomatic existentialism. If I feel it, it’s important write it down to share it with another soul. It was through letter-writing therapy that I understood the mechanics, aesthetics and value of human individuality and our persistent need to seek to be heard and understood.

            Letter-writing was first threatened when the telegraph was first born in 1825 and significantly improved by Samuel Morse (who gave us the morse code) around 1835.  That was followed thirty odd years later by the first telephonic utterance “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you” which heralded the new era of transmitting and receiving sound, effectively dealing a lethal blow to the romance of letter writing. With email, instant messaging, FaceBook and Twitter upping the ante on our state of brevity, we have exchanged haikus for billet-doux; post-its for letters; 10Q for Thank you.  Who did the research on writing 140 words on Twitter? Why 140? Pinterest allows you 200 words to truncate who you are. We may e-card it, text it, netspeak it all in lieu of notation, longhand, and snail mail. Contrary to Polonious’ opinion, I don’t think brevity is the soul of wit. More like BITSOW. That’s more like it. Give it a week and it might turn up on Urban Dic after someone texts

[[Best diss I heard 2day dude. #bitsow.]]

When I was in my early 20s, I used to carry a dip pen and an old world jar of Parker’s Quink to write letters even though Papermates were the new fountain pen. I would carry cockled onion skin paper and stamps everywhere I went so that when the mood strikes I would have the wherewithal to plunge into composition. You can write sitting in a Parisian cafe- in a quiet corner without an electronic doodad. You can pen it on a plane, transcribe it on a train, fabricate it in front of a fireplace. Once I climbed 11, 782 feet to Jungfraujoch (aka the top of Europe...hello, in an electric tram) near Interlaken, Switzerland so that I can jot down three or four sentences on a postcard to a friend.  It’s not just the novelty of being able to send something from that particular place, but the concreteness of having this realia travel from your hand into some sack, sack to carrier vehicle, vehicle to processing and distribution centre, then to air mail centre, followed by the passing of many more trolleys into many more hands, to the destination delivery unit to the sorter, to mailbag, to truck, to carrier, to letter box, and into the hand of your delighted friend. I know that only too well because I was that delighted friend upon which many a postperson had delivered rutilant heart-warmers.         

Everything inside is a memory

In a wooden Crabtree and Evelyn box once crammed with morsels of tea biscuits are letters written to me from a boyfriend. He was a graphic designer who loved to declare very profound feelings of love and desire with colour, wit and 3-D spangles. Throughout our courtship, I’ve squirreled every whit of writing he has ever written to me creatively on crepe paper, cardboard, handmade mingei (Japanese folksy mulberry paper) and gorgeous vellum. He is still the only man who hand-stitched his own version of Baedeker for what I would need to do on my five-week long trip to Europe without him. He wrote three letters a week to me every week I was in England, France and Ireland. Does it surprise you I ended up marrying him? 

Menus, Happy Wednesday card, postcards, store-bought, homemade, napkins, rags, ribbons, strings.

Some of you might want to try but get befuddled before you begin. Here are some prudent blandishments to launch your letter-writing career. Your best friend will thank me for it. 

How to start a letter:

1. Write exactly what you were doing 5 minutes before actually writing.

2. List what are presently on your table.

3. Imagine where your friend is while reading the letter you are penning.

4. Introduce your  peeve #1. Why nobody writes letters anymore, for example.  

5. 3 random facts: What day is today? What the weather is like? How much ink is left in the pen?

The way to write a letter using different moods, personalities:

1. Lampooning voice

2. Playful

3. Creatively ungrammatical and borderline saucy.

4. In someone else’s point of view. Try the family pet’s.

5. Channel Clement Freud’s personality: verbose, spoken in low, measured tones, highly observant about visible details and proprietarily snobbish. Write the way a parent speaks or draw a picture of your lunch instead of describing it. Paste a newspaper clipping or better still, fold an origami rhino and sign it off, thick-skinnedly yours…

Type only if you are using something not from this century.

Maybe the Rhino origami was too farouche. Here are other ways to sign off:

1. Yours through time and eternity,…Civil war General George Custer ended a love letter to his wife Elizabeth this way

2. Remembrances to your mother, your affectionate, …. John Keats to his sweet Fanny Brawne scored points to include his remembrances to her mum

3. Love and luck,…Patsy Cline to one of her fans. Platonic, yet not entirely loveless.

4. Yours, as ever…

5. Love you more than (insert your favourite food),…Tina Francis, on all her TGIF posts on Shelovesmagazine.

I fear we may have come full circle to a new problem where our next generation no longer knows how to write for the sake of loving to communicate. It is not for the want of filling in a text box or fulfilling a quota of x number of words. This is why I am such a zealot for heart-to-heart compositions. Make your best investment this spring by purchasing your first refillable fountain pen, a stack of lightly ruled or 7x10 Monarch sheets from Crane and Company. After you’ve penned your tenth letter, you’re ready to take on monogrammed ones complete with wax and seal.

oxo shirl

  

A tribute to my Father-in-law

The first time I met my father-in-law in his home was sometime in mid-1990. I remembered chiefly because when he opened the door, he was dressed in his boxers and a white singlet. Well, why wouldn't he on a hot day in his own home? While his wife and son fussed about him putting on "proper clothes",  I time stamped in my memory what I felt his comfort around me indicated.
1. Unpretentiousness
2. Acceptance of me into his family

Those two characteristic traits have been the backbone of my relationship with my husband's family since day one. My father-in-law's name is Wong Choon Ong. He has O's in every word in his name the same way I have E's in mine. He has a few other monikers like Henry and Feiba. I felt it was very wrong to call him Henry because I have friends called that and he wasn't like that at all. But "Feiba" was something all his children called him primarily because he was slightly pyknic. (Feiba literally means "fat dad"). It took me a while (at least a whole *minute* of intense struggling) because well, wasn't that just *rude*? But it never did sound rude when his children called him that. It was a term of deep endearment. That's another one of the remarkable things about Feiba- he was wonderfully endearing.

In the first hour after I had entered Moses' home (and Feiba had put on some "proper clothes"), he had already made me feel at home. There's something very loving about a person who feels breaking the ice early is helpful to make others feel at home. This was how it happened. You'll have to imagine this.

Feiba: "Shirley, Shirley...come, come. I want to tell you something." (I see the others rolling their eyes and looking embarrassed because they know what's coming but there I was, wide eyed and innocently curious...)
I go over there and he whispers in a low voice in both English and Mandarin the story of his going to Vienna as part of a choir and his "retched" reaction to cheese. Well, I show my true colours roaring in raucous, un-ladylike guffaws. Our friendship was sealed. It seemed he had honed his story-telling craft to perfection because he would deliver it with the deadpan face I'd come to expect each time he started with a "Shirley, Shirley...come, come...I want to tell you something..." Mercy.

Feiba had the distinct quality of being emotionally attuned to people. His pastoral heart was well suited to his ability to encourage others. He had been an art teacher for all his work life and his ease in self-taught piano playing always turned heads. He was an adroit painter and musician. He had a wonderful sense of humour and often made faces just to prove his point. Perhaps you can't quite see it but this picture showed Moses, Feiba and I all in our PJs having a BBQ and again, Feiba recounting a joke. After I had joined the Wong family, not only was it okay to wear our PJs all day, we can wear it outdoors as well. Win/ Win.

Another memory I have that is vivid is Feiba's suspenders. It's an old world charm that is very hard to carry off if you didn't have a certain kind of personality. He was not a tie-and-belt man but a bow tie-and-suspenders sort of guy. His past students who used to visit him at his home all loved him for being the down-to-earth easy groomer. I am proud to say that when my own son was four years old, he wanted to wear suspenders like his yeye (paternal grandfather) did. He really had oodles of charm when he wanted to.

When my husband and I lived in Switzerland,  my parents-in-law came to visit and we gave up our bachelor pad so they can stay in our apartment while we camped out at our good friend Dominique's home in the next village. We had an enormously fun time going to Geneva,  Fribourg, Bern, Lucern and Interlaken. Here Feiba and I pretend to be absorbed in a game at the Musee de Jeux outside Lausanne. I look at this photo and recall many things about that trip, now made even more bittersweet since the last person who could reminisce with me is no longer here.

In the later years, Feiba would have the knack of telling his growing repertoire of stories and delivering the punchline in Hokkien- a dialect I didn't understand. So you can imagine my same wide eyed and innocently curious look followed by Feiba lawling as I went around the house asking for the explanation.

When my son Myron was born, he looked just like his dad Moses. Moses also looked like his own dad, so it completely took out the mystery as to what Myron would look like in his 30s and in his 60s. Here is a picture taken a dozen years ago. Behind Myron is his cousin Berakah, who being four years older plays the role of the older sister. So much of the legacy of what Feiba leaves for his grandchildren is the tenderness of heart. Both his grandchildren display this in copious amounts. There is this gift of humility that is very quiet, very unassuming and very underplayed. Of course Feiba had his own struggles not being perfect by any means. Something I had read embodies my father-in-law very well. A.W. Tozer put it in this beautiful nutshell which for my own liberal use, am going to insert my father-in-law's moniker in there.

"A real Christian is an odd number anyway. Feiba feels supreme love for one whom he has never seen, talks familiarly everyday to someone he cannot see, expects to go to Heaven on the virtue of another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong so he can be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest and happiest when he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible and knows that which passeth knowledge."

Feiba, I will miss the way you hum and sing when you ironed clothes for the family. I will miss the way you smile and your eyes crinkle the way they do. Thanks for being as jovial and as positive as possible through the heartaches and the storms. My own faith tells me you're too busy being reunited with our loved ones in Heaven to worry about us. That's good because that's what we all want.

Process Genre Approach to Writing

I am learning this new approach that is different from the Product approach or the Process approach of the mid-70s (something I was taught in). It is also different from the Genre Approach of the 80s where students benefitted from studying different forms of written texts. Badger and White (2000) have termed what we now called the Process Genre Approach. This approach allows students to study the relationship between purpose and form for a particular genre (eg. business letter) as they use the recursive processes of

1. pre-writing
2. drafting
3. revision
4. editing

The teacher acts as a guide, assistant and encourager as well as arouse curiosity and self-confidence by matching student interest to the writing topic.

The teacher should directly train students about writing strategies by demonstrating how pre-writing (eg. background material is read and students give verbal feedback) activates the schemata and outline strategies for the drafting and revision processes.

Teachers should include the listening, speaking and reading skills in the writing class.

The teaching procedure is divided into 6 steps:

1. Preparation (Define a situation whereby a written text is required)
2. Modeling (Teacher introduces a model of the genre: eg. argumentative essay to persuade the reader to act on something. Teacher teaches how its organization develops to accomplish its purpose. Students compare with other texts)
3. Planning (Students brainstorm about the topic, discussing and reading associated material)
4. Joint constructing (Students contribute information and ideas and the teacher writes it on the board)
5. Independent constructing (Students work on their own)
6. Revising (Peer editing from other students as the teacher guides and facilitates.)

According to Raimes (1983, 266) teachers should always try to provide students with writing assignments that can

• Unite form and content
• Ideas and organization
• Syntax and meaning
• Writing and revising
• Writing and thinking

Raimes, A. 1983 Anguish as a second language? Remedies for composition teachers. New York: Longman
Badger, R and White G. A process approach to teaching writing. ELT Journal 54 (2): 153-60

Tips to Resettle Well in Another Country

How someone leaves their home country determines how you enter a new place. Leaving right leads to grieving right. In the normal transition process, Take time to
1. Plan, prepare, participate.
2. Time to say goodbye (mentally leave)
3. Characterized by hope, expectation and control of destiny
4. Leaving Right: dealing with interpersonal issues and unfinished business.

Consider this acronym RAFT:
R- Reconciliation
A- Affirmation
F- Farewells
T- Think destination future

Consider the risks as families resettle:
"Inter-generational stress"
Culture shock
Lack of personal esteem
Loss of status, job, identity, health, property, home possessions, homeland
Isolation
Absence of extended family
Fragmentation
Dependency
Loss of cultural values and ethnic heritage
Loss of esteem for 'mother tongue'

Notes taken from Judi Bastion, guest lecturer in LING302 Cross Culture Communications class with Professor Ruth Anaya, 2 Feb 2012.

The best 7-Up biscuits

Today I made tonkatsu with mixed veg and 7-Up biscuits. These are just the best things to make if you need something to go as a side carb. Here's the recipe:

2 cups Bisquick*
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup 7-up
1/4 cup melted butter

Preheat oven to 450F (220C)
Cut sour cream into biscuit mix, add 7-Up and butter. Makes a very soft dough.
Sprinkle additional biscuit mix on board or table and pat dough out. Makes about nine 3/4" high biscuits.  Place cut biscuits in pan and bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.


No Bisquick? Use this recipe for substitute:
2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 tablespoon white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening

Thursday Brunch

I had an interesting brunch after the gym today. Cindy had returned from Australia with a rather curious spice mix for bread and olive oils. It's called Dukkah (from Talinga Grove outside Melbourne) and has strong Middle Eastern flavours. I took one and a half rolls to dip them in olive oil and basalmic vinegar before dipping it into Dukkah. It has a very grainy crunch (conceivably from nuts) but there is definitley fennel and other fragrant herbs which makes this a winning dip.

To the only man I have ever loved

Dearest Moses,

I celebrate your life today, all too brief but still as warm and as inspiring to me as I think of the life we once shared. Death was never meant to be gotten over but a prodding reminder that life is a gift from God. Fifteen years ago, you left rather unceremoniously. You had very little say in staying. I had no say about letting you go, but today I have something to say on this 5th of January 2012.

After all these years, when I think of your name, it's inevitable your laughter and the way your eyes linger over my face penetrate the fog of my memories. When I recall a particularly wonderful holiday, it was because you were holding my hand, or linking pinkies because your palms were often sweaty. If I had a sumptuous meal in any restaurant today, I would still compare it to The Nadaman in Shangri-La just because you had impressed me with a $100 meal eating oblong nibbles of sashimi, sipping thimblefuls of sake, and breathing expensive and rarefied atmosphere. I still kept the menu. Don't get me wrong, I haven't hermitted myself in a cave nor ceased to laugh raucously and ungirlishly in the company of friends since you left. I know that wouldn't have been how you wanted me to live. I guess I'm confessing in a way how very full you've made my life in the five short years we were married because I still feel connected to you in a way that defies explanation.

Wood is what married couples give to each other when they reach their 5th year wedding anniversary. Your wood had lasted me to the gift of china- which is a gift to celebrate 20 years. You are still a gift I thank God for. You wouldn't have thought that of yourself when you were alive that I was storing up every good gift you were giving me for these years of widowhood. You know you did that when you chose to write all those saccharine love letters to me during courtship and after marriage? I'm a sucker for romance and how quickly you had seen right through my steely facade and verbose exterior. I have reread your many concise letters and I've decided to write an article to encourage the art of writing letters as a memorial and testament to the endurance of your love. Love, when it is honestly expressed, truly lasts. For that, I thank you.

I will celebrate your life by purchasing a nice set of china to sip my Earl Gray from. A good man is not hard to find, but a man who had committed his life to love his God, wife and family extravagantly? You stand pitifully alone. I've learned so much about the power of leaving love notes that I left one this morning in Myron's lunch bag. I hope he understands that I love him justifiably with the love of two parents.

Always,
Shirl

Red mulled wine recipe

Mix the following:

Spiced apple cider mix
1 cup of red merlot
1 stick of cinnamon
1 cup of iced lemon tea (mix is fine)
1 pomegranate
Lemon juice (optional) 

Slow fire for about an hour

Add the pomegranate to cups before spooning hot mulled wine in teacups. Serve it before dinner as an aperitif.

My first Christmas Facial

I’ve just had my first facial.

Goodness gracious. In your middish 40s! Yes, I did. I went into Azure Skin Care with a bucketful of hopium that what goes on this face will not come out red, botchy and bumpy. This was so undeniably “not-me”. I’m never lured by advertising (I was in advertising before so I know the shenanigans that go on behind closed boardroom doors), I am skittish with steaming open anything (billetdoux are fine, but least of all, one’s pores) and the cost of disambiguating the term “exfoliate” would be better served on someone who has thickish, leathery skin. An elephant leaps to mind.

I am not a gambling woman even though the first and last time I went into a Las Vegas casino I lost a quarter to a one-arm bandit only to gain $50 in dirty quarters. The reason why I found myself in Clayton Heights was because of my iPhone. It’s one of those things that seem to hit you at happier, more whimsical moments in your life when you decide a Groupon App is good for a chuckle. Then you click on it “just to see” and some startling discount catches your eye and the Christmas season coupled with no-homework-assignment completely pull all your No-More-Spending guards down. Before you know it…POOF! you have made an appointment and you are standing before a white-robed beautician.

So, there was Brittany- punctilious and professional. I was looking at my face doctor.

There’s something very soothing about having someone who looks nice work on one’s face. I’ll never get over the odd feeling that I’ve just met a stranger and the next minute I’m taking nearly all my clothes off. At least until down to the bottom half of my skivvies. I found out later that a bra strap is a horrible obstacle when one’s neck and shoulders are being massaged but I’m getting ahead of myself here…

It is mandatory that anyone in the aesthetics industry must be good at conversational fluff. The reason is because there are awkward long pauses that should be filled either by a) Classical (nothing Beethovanesque thank you very much) b) Barry Manilow instrumentals (surprisingly relaxing), c) some kind of shiatsu Japanesey bone-melting massage sursuration or d) intelligent confabulation.

Back to my face.

First the cleanser. I told Brittany that I came out with no makeup at all thinking I’d spare her having to wipe it all away again. I pulled a 404 on her. (completely clueless- File Not Found) Luckily for the cotton pads covering my eyes, I’m sure I couldn’t see her face showing mild mortification that a woman my age would dare step into the world without her face armour. Suffice to say, the cleanser came on and my face was just beginning to enjoy the effects of being treated like royalty. 

I called the thing with the long arm connected to the bottled distilled water and minerals a Face Humidifier. It isn’t, of course, but that never stopped me from calling anything what I fancy. It steams open one’s pores causing the breathable craters (euphemistically called “large pores”) on my face to release every smidgen of toxin it has accumulated since blackheads and hormones were first introduced. It had a profound effect on my respiratory system as it was steaming open the alveoli sacs in the pit of my lungs giving it a tingly eucalypty fragrance. It might be the only time my lungs smelled this good.

Next were extractions. We all know about addition and subtractions but extractions are only to remove the debris (face gunk) from the capacious pores the same way I suppose one extracts juice from an orange. To spare you the details, I’ll just say it involved a healthy dose of squeezing.

Imagine me on my back, white flourescent magnifying every square millimeter of my face and Brittany doing a face map. For a scant nanosecond I felt like the earth being scoured over by the google camera to map out an accurate GPS of my features. It took a lot more vulnerability than I thought I had. It was a good thing Brittany was a fount of much aesthethical knowledge for she clued me in on what massage she was going to do, what booster she was going to apply, what masque she was going to paint on and finally, what moisturizer she was going to slather over my over-dehydated mug.

By the end of nearly 90 minutes, my face freshly toweled for the fifth time, moisturized and lovingly massaged emerged more youthful than ever. Alright, it didn’t obliterate the crows feet. I had told Brittany I had earned every single one of my wrinkles, barring the few that were caused by raising my teen.  He caused most of the laugh lines, so I’ll close one eye for the worry wrinkles. The liver spots will need more than an exfoliation to rid. I don’t know why they call it a chemical peel because as a wordmonger, it screams “acid burn” to me.

I liked the way my face smelled at the end of the session. I liked the squeaky cleanliness of a rehydrated, remoisturized, post-extraction-of-blackheads-lurking-since-two-decades face. Sorry…TMI. Cucumbers on one’s eyelids are beneficial (officially Brittany- approved) to remove puffiness and one of the reasons for puffy eyelids is because one eats before sleeping. For those of you reading this entry and having an A-Ha moment, I’ll just wish you stronger disciplinary measures for yourself this Christmas.

Some people have facials once a month. It’s a complete luxury of course. I’m intrigued by this practice and am now certain which ones of my girlfriends go through this millennium old tradition of beautifying oneself. I probably can’t afford to go every month, but when spring comes around, I’ll go for round two with a girlfriend who’s got $60 sitting in her purse. Any takers?