Bitter Gourd and Apple Juice

Before we left for Melbourne our bitter gourd was starting to produce many female flowers. For UV protection we recycled papers to wrap those small babies. Too much expose to strong UV rays is not healthy. We teach our children to wear hat, protective clothes and put on sunscreen lotion whenever they go outside, so bitter gourd babies need protection as well. Bitter gourd plants have grown more than 3 metre tall, I can't reached the one at the top.

The paper wrap also shelter other beneficial predators in the garden.

Because they are so many other visitors admiring bitter gourd flowers. It help balance the eco-system in our garden.

The weather is mild now and bitter gourd really love it with so many lush growth and produce. We don't have to wrap the fruit at the moment as it has been a wet week. Don't want the fruit to catch cold wearing wet cloth.

Thanks to Cik Manggis (Madam mangosteen) author of jom masak, jom makan makan..for bitter gourd and apple juice recipe. I discovered that you can make a healthy juice from bitter gourd.
Ingredient: 1 apple, 1 bitter gourd , half a lemon, 3 glass of water and ice cubes (optional sugar or honey if you are not counting calories).

Washed and slice the apple and peria and put into the mixer with 3 glass of water.

Squeeze lemon, stir and add ice cube.

After all the process, add some ice cubes and ready to drink. Rayyan and Ilhan had the honour to taste this juice first while my cousin and I supervised them. Since children at their age don't lie, look at Ilhan expression closely.

Bravo! Ilhan finished a glass of bitter gourd and apple juice.

Instead of half a lemon, I used more than one lemon and add some sugar since I like sourish taste more.

What do you think?

A very healthy juice in the morning.

PROJECT: Save the Bees

Holly the author of Tasty Travels…food talks, I listen blog is hosting a Project: Save the Bees on Sunday, February 6th. This is a very interesting project that I would like to participate and encourage friends to join in too.

To participate in PROJECT: Save the bees, this is what you’ll have to commit to:

1) Purchase a seed packet of bee friendly flowers & figure out how many people you'd like to share with.
2) Announce the project on your blog/website & offer seeds to others on Sunday, Feb 6th
3) Link back to Holly post (to be posted Sunday, February 6th)
4) Mail your seeds to your people
5) Update your original post with a list of places you mailed your seeds to

This time I am offering our bee friendly flower home-saved seeds to 3 people which resides in Australia only. You can leave a comment that you would like to receive this seeds and I will pick 3 blogs randomly if more than 3 people are interested.

This is our top 5 bee friendly flower in our garden last year:

Poppy

Bees really like this flower. Always buzzing around this flower especially in the morning and here a link where I capture the bees playing around new bloom of poppies to show how much bees like this flower. This is the only seeds that I am offering which is not home-saved seeds. I regret so much not collecting poppy seeds last year.

Calendula (Sunshine)

Calendula always brighten up our garden patch in winter. Since it is always blooming through spring as well, the early hungry awaken bees can sip the calendula nectar when other spring flowers is not blooming yet.

Lakspur

Blooms longer and grow majestically tall.
Evening Sun Sunflower

After all the spring season flower ends, evening sun sunflower provide many blooms for the hardworking bees to gather nectars.
Nasturtium

Not only a gardener best friend in the garden but bees as well.
What is your favourite bee friendly flower in your garden?
For more flowers on Saturday visit Simply-Life Photographs.
For Flora and cottage ideas visit Tracie at Fishtail cottage.

Wildlife in Kangaroo island

We were lucky during our trip to Kangaroo Island to encounter many wildlife in its natural surrounding. Wildlife are everywhere in Kangaroo island. Watching the koalas on the tree at Koala Walk which is near to Flinders Chase National Park. There were also many young baby koalas in their mother cuddles on the tree.

My mother would really like to have this Cape Barren goose on her backyard. The Cape Barren goose is about the same size as a normal domestic goose but different characteristics, such as bright pink legs, grey plumage, black bill with a bright green core. Due to hunting, by the 1950s their number were so low (estimated 200 individuals that biologist feared they may be close to extinction. Various initiatives were put in place in an attempt to save this beautiful bird. Although the population of geese is now steady and increasing it still remains one of the rarest of the world's geese (Koala Walk information centre).

 Tammar wallabies are everywhere on the island. Sadly, you always encounter a dead one while driving. Wallabies has a smaller and fine feature than the kangaroo. In the picture, tammar wallaby in front and Kangaroo Island kangaroo which has evolved differently fom the mainland is at the back of the wallaby. We saw many wallabies beside the road, be sure to be extra careful when driving at night because they are attracted to the light.

Due to island isolation, the echidnas in Kangaroo island also have evolved a bit differently from the mainland like the Kangaroo Island kangaroo. Echidnas are very shy animal.

Don't miss out watching the New Zealand Fur seals at the Admiral Arch basking in the sun.

I saw this little beatle walking on the sand at Little Sahara, remind me of 'The Mummy' movie.

The highlight was walking on the beach watching the Australian sea-lion playing and relaxing on the beach. They are simply adorable creatures. Although the male or bull looks like it has so any extra fat on him, he can run very fast so be careful and listen to your guide tour.

You can see emu along the unsealed road from farm.

This is a sibling of Fairy Penguins that were waiting for their parent to feed them. They were noisy bickering over food.

Don't get accidently spurt by squid black ink ;-).

This is my last post for Kangaroo Island. Thank you for joining the trip with me :).

Kingscote district

Kingscote is the main town in Kangaroo island. There are several things you can do there but if you are not having a long visit in Kangaroo island, I think you can visit the main attraction there and complete in half-day.  If you are from Penneshaw you can drop a visit first at Emu Ridge Eucalyptus Distillery to see how this eucalyptus oil is process or how the operation of eucalyptus distilling been done. They sell cute puppets of emu and you can see an emu from close range.

If you are a honey lover, drop a visit to Island Beehive and you can sample different  organic honey for free.  It taste like what in Malaysia categorise as 'Madu Hutan' (Jungle honey). Honestly, I don't really like honey but the one sold here was really nice. I certainly recommand to eat their home-made honeycomb ice-cream it taste really good ( a bit expensive though for a small portion of it). If you need a nice break and let the kids entertaint themselves, there is a cafe and a secure play area where you can keep an eye on the kids.

If you are famish and like to eat fresh seafood drop by at Kangaroo Island Fresh Seafood & Takeaway, a family restaurant that sell fresh seafood as well to bring back to your accomadation. We ordered for 4 person meal but with 5 adults and 2 kids we cannot even finished it all. The King George Whiting Fillet was almost double the size sold in Adelaide and the yabbies was half the price perkilogram compared to Adelaide price as well. Kangaroo Island is a heavan for seafood lover and fishing enthusiast. This family restaurant is very near to Kingscote jetty. Since we have time to kill waiting for the ferry back to Adelaide, my husband did some squid fishing. We caught 2 squids in 20 minutes (5 minutes each in sequence, actual 4 squids but 2 managed to escape). I saw squid swimming in the clear water and we are very sure it easy to catch squid there with lots of squid black ink on the jetty walkway.

If you are not fishing you can feed the pelicans near the jetty.

Along the beach there are many fairy penguin cubby house. In the day the penguin parents went out fishing for food for their babies hiding in the cubby house and return when dusk. So the guided tour start at night, the first tour start at 8:45PM. You can watch the penguin siblings squabbling over food when the parents come home and how harrass the parents look like. Sometime the tired parents rest for one hour on the beach before feeding their babies.

The lambs in Kangaroo island is lucky it has a wide place to roam. It has been said that lamb meat from kangaroo island taste much better because they are stress free. This view is very common in Kingscote district.

This is how the lamb from Kangaroo island is shipped to mainland. You can smell the lamb at least 20 metre away.

Happy New Year 2011!

May this year bring more blooms and greens in your garden.

Flinders Chase National Park

On our second day to Kangaroo Island we visited Flinders Chase National Parks which have the island two most popular landmarks ~ Remarkable Rocks and Admirals Arch. There was a bush fire on 2007 cause by lightning strike and the results of that can still be seen today in this National Park.

Before reaching the Admirals Arch, we passed by Cape du Couedic Lightstation which is very closed to this site.

We can see many revegetation area in this park.  The Admirals Arch magnificent archway sculpted by wind and sea for many hundred thousand or million years. There were many New Zealand Fur Seals relaxing on the shore and we can observed them from the platform.

It is very interesting that the sea lion colony here is a different species from the ones at Seal Bay Conservation Park which is located not that many kilometres away.

The Remarkable Rock viewed from a far to soak the sight of nature. It was raining, if it was sunny it will be more magnificant to look at.

The Remarkable Rock.

Do not attempt this when it is raining and slippery. The rock formation from this view looks like a giant parrot head.

While we were driving out from the park, we were lucky to spot 2 wild echidnas crossing the road. Echidnas is not the same as porcupine. Although both are mammals and resemble closely to each other, echidna lays egg.

If you like to see many koalas in one area do visit Koala Walk which is very close to the Flinders Chase National Park. The entrance fees were only $2. You will see not only koalas but wallabies. The money goes for conservation.

Kangaroo Island

Last weekend we went to Kangaroo Island and stayed there for 2 nights. This is our first trip to this island and we stayed at Seal Bay Kaiwarra Cottages, the nearest accomodation to one of the island main attraction ~ Seal Bay Conservation Park. It is supposedly summer but the weather was like winter. Fortunately we brought many warm clothes along to this trip. This is the cabin that we rented which is connected with a farm and many bottlebrush plant growing here. We did saw some wallabies hopping at night at the surrounding area of this accomodation.

The closest grocery shop and petrol station from this accomodation is Vivonne Bay Store & Bottle Shop. I highly recommend to bring many food stock to Kangaroo Island as not many shops around and place to eat. Most of the shops close very early about 5 PM and of course the price are more expensive. Luckily we brought along many snacks and food to prepare along this trip as our rented cabin is fully equipped for cooking.

Since most of the attraction is closed at 5PM, on our first day we went to Vivonne Bay which was proclaimed as the best beach in Australia. Although it was cloudy and sometime raining, the water was still very clear at dusk. Since the water was cold and we cannot swim in the water, we did some fishing instead.

 We managed to catch a calamari in just 5 minutes after we started fishing and the most fun thing is I can actually see the calamari swimming try to catch the bait because the water was so clear. That was the biggest calamari we ever caught. Not all place in Kangaroo Island are permitted to fish so do check the fishing guideline of Kangaroo Island. I think we were the craziest tourist that did fishing when its raining and windy. Vivonne Bay jetty and a lone fisherman (my husband).

In Kangaroo Island there is a place called Little Sahara where you can do sandboarding.

As it was raining on the second day of our trip in the morning, we went caving at Kelly Hill Conservation Park.

The highlight of our Kangaroo Island trip is the visit to Seal Bay Conservation Park where we took the guided tour walking near Australian Sea-lions at the beach. Seal bay is one of the few places in the worlds where you can closely obseve sea-lions swim, play and rest on the beach.

A big male and its harem.

A sea-lions mother can swim to the sea for 3 days without coming back to land to feed herself 30% of its weight for her baby milk supply during this duration the baby is left to defend for itself. A very tired mother sea-lion just came back from sea.

Rayyan was sleeping half through the tour initially but when we heard a mother and a baby sea-lion calling and searching for each other, Rayyan woke up. The mother and baby sea-lion can recognised each voice and that is how they reunited again. A very hungry baby sea-lion suckling. Did Rayyan understood the mother and baby sea-lion communication?

 Two very adorable juvenille.

One happy family.

Keeping warm under the bush protecting itself from the cold wind.

There is also a boardwalk for self-guided tour but it is not accessible to the beach. So I highly recommend the guide tour it is an experience you won't forget.

Even though we had a wintery like weather during this trip, we had so much fun. This is our first family trip after giving birth to Rayyan. It is not easy travelling with 2 very hyper active small boys but with my mother and sisters together it was so much enjoyable. Our trip started with Ilhan had a black-eye when he banged his face to the chair when the ferry was rocking so much due to the weather. Before that he was saying 'pirate ship' many times and running around won't sit down even though I tried many time to catch him. Ilhan started to cry and then he became sea-sick, it was a bit stressful during the ferry journey to Kangaroo Island for the little pirate. However, after reaching Kangaroo Island and a few minutes drive we were greeted with beautiful scenaries.

Happy Holidays!