Homemade Lychee with Sake

Homemade anything excites me.

The Husband is usually not very interested, much less keen, when I attempt to do some "homemade" stuff - like homemade achar, homemade vanilla extract, homemade pickled green chilli etc.

So I was really surprised when he suggested we make some homemade lychee with Chinese white liquor, or "bai jiu". Oh well, lychee is after all his favourite fruit..
We couldn't really find any Chinese white liquor at the first supermarket we went to.. So we decided to add a Japanese twist by using sake instead.

I now have 2 bottles of these sitting in my kitchen. The original recipe says to leave the Chinese white liquor and lychee for 3 months and then you'd get liquor with a strong infused taste of lychee.

I just realised that sake is not really an equivalent to "bai jiu". The Japanese equivalent should be "shoju". Chinese white liquor, or "bai jiu" usually has an alcohol content of around 30% - 40%. Japanese shoju has an alcohol content of around 20- 30%.

The sake we bought has an alcohol content of around 10%. I wonder if sake would work..

Oh well, we'd find out 3 months later!

Golden Ixora

Say hi to my golden ixora!

The colour is just delicious isn't it? I think this shade of yellow is a colour that smiles.

As a child, I remembered reading that the nectar in the "tube" of the flower is sweet and I tried sucking one in the park. My mum almost had a heart attack when she found out and thought I'd poison myself... But the book was right.. the nectar did taste pretty sweet!

I hope this ixora plant would not be killed by me.. If it survives me, I'd start looking for other less common colours like pink!

If you know where to find special coloured ixora - let me know!

Konnyaku with Sakura Blossoms

Konnyaku is a traditional Japanese jelly-like health food made from a kind of plant called Konjac. It is also sometimes referred to as "Konnyaku potato", or "Konnyaku yam". Konnyaku is high in dietary fibre and very low in calories, making it a very ideal choice for dessert for those on a diet. That is, if you don't add too much sugar to it in the process of making konnyaku jelly.

Konnyaku jelly is extremely easy to make.. but for some reason, I've never made it before. I was inspired to make it only because I wanted to make use of my pickled sakura blossoms.

Aren't these pretty? I made them with Ribena for that pinkish red colour because I didn't want to use plain food colouring. I also made sure that I didn't add too much sugar since the Ribena syrup was already sweet and soaked all the pickled sakura blossoms in hot water to remove most of the salt.

My friends say these taste like sweet konnyaku jelly with dried sour plums (酸梅).