I was saying to Mom that I couldn't find lemongrass at the market with roots to grow them in the pot. Interestingly, I place these 4 in the plastic bag & viola... roots in just 7 days. I have planted them & hopefully they will grow well. So needed to make the lemongrass drink every now and then. The leaves add better flavour & colour to the drink.

Ayu Bowan!

Sam & Lisa have finally arrived in Sri Lanka. After lunch at home, we went to the seafood market, then headed straight to Icebear Guesthouse for a nice cold beer.

I showed them around Negombo a bit, and Lisa singled out a wood carving with quite a character. Then, it didn't take us too long before we made another stop at Lords for another beer.

We'll be travelling from tomorrow, hopefully the cyclone we had today would have calmed down.

It's always not easy to find the produce or whatever stuff I want easily here in Negombo. For instance, I have been searching for soya beans for a while now (3 years in fact).  I usually buy these back from Singapore or Thailand.

So, when I found these beans (supposedly soya beans) at the market, I was really excited. That'd mean I would only need to get gypsum powder to attempt & make Soya Bean Curd again. This is probably the one dessert that I will never get tired of. 

I have recently followed Sinner's & Mr Redneck's blogs & they have some really cool videos as well. Here's one on how to make Soya Bean Curd. I have pasted the recipe below, which I am determined to make once I get gypsum powder. I also agree with Sinner that using too much gypsum powder can cause backache. A personal experience or perhaps pure indulgence on my part. 

Recipe for Soya Bean Curd from The Waitakere Redneck's Kitchen

Ingredients

1 Litre boiling fresh Soya Bean Milk (extremely easy if you have a soya bean machine) 

Setting solution

1 tbp corn flour

½ level tsp gypsum powder (calcium sulphate)

¼ cup (63 ml) cold water

Here are all the dishes my sister Zoe cooked for dinner today, this vegetable dish is my favourite as it has all the vegs that I know I will miss a lot. They are simply not easily available in the Sri Lanka vegetable market. Bell pepper, snowpea, asparagus, brocoli to name a few.
Squid with sambal chilli, the dish was executed well.
I keep forgetting the name of this dish (above)...

but the fish soup below was just superb, the broth was so good that I helped myself with so many servings.

Thanks Zoe! :)

Finally, a picture of Mom & I posing with my favourite dish that Zoe had cooked for dinner. :)

My favourite Inguru Auntie (above)

and there's my Garlic Boy...

Maxies is the usual place I would buy my poultry stuff. And this guy and me are 'machan' (friends).

Was very surprised to see the bakery production for Nayomi near the bridge going towards Pitipanna. It was no wonder that Alan mentioned the last time we were there, that the bread and the food were fresher than other shops. Mind you, he didn't even know that there was a bakery production unit there.

I brought Rasika there for breakfast this morning, spent Rs140 on a vegetable bun, a ketchup cheese mini-pizza, an egg pastry and 2 drinks. I thought it was a good experience for Rasika to see what the people were doing, and how they got to be successful at doing what they do.

This is a project in the making, so hush hush for now...

Inguru Auntie

Finally a chance to show you another of my favourite aunties at the Pola, my Inguru (ginger) Auntie. As usual, I find it rude to ask for her name but I always address her as Auntie.
Every Wednesday & Sunday, she would travel some distance to get to this market to sell ginger, coffee beans, pepper seeds. She hardly makes USD 4 per day, it makes me feel really sad how average SriLankans try to make a decent living in this country.
At one stage, I was buying so much ginger from her that I couldn't use them up fast enough. I was only hoping that I could help her by buying her produce so that she could go back quickly instead of basking in the hot sun till 5pm.

Now, I am just buying what I need but giving her a bit extra money. Guess what? She now doesn't want to take my money but insisted that I take the ginger for FREE. I can't do that, especially not since she did not grow the ginger but buy them from farmers.
I love her to bits, I went to the Pola today to give her a small red packet for Christmas. I feel so much like a Santa today... It warms my heart. :)

Again, I have gone way too passionate about passionfruits. I bought over 3o of these, the fruit auntie is definitely happy about her sales today I must say. Each passionfruit is about US 8 cents, while the bigger one are at US 1ocents. I can't complain as well, I think I got TWO good bags of passionfruits home too.

I have planted some passionfruit seeds in the shaded part of the garden, will post some pictures soon.

I probably haven't put up a picture of Milton, Alan's driver. He's our first and the only driver that we have all this time we are in Sri Lanka, he's trustworthy and reliable. He only took ONE sick day over the last 2 years - an impressive record for someone at 55.

Oh... I snapped this picture because he did something I would never do - parking in front of the sign that clearly indicated "No Parking". Even though I have asked him to park the car elsewhere, he insisted on having the car right where I could simply jump in after my shopping. he pampered me too much... LOL

At the seafood market, there's heaps of different types of dried fish.

Though not really preserved well, they are still quite tasty when used in cooking.

Nope, I have not been adventurous enough to try this type.

Anchovies is the most common ones that I used for my cooking.

I visited Prawn Auntie's place today with Rasika, after buying some prawns from her.

She reminds me so much of my Mom, independent and strong yet kind-hearted.

Bought lots of fruits at the pola today, 17 passionfruits for abt Rs10 each; a bunch of bananas @ Rs50/kg; 4 mangosteens for Rs50; and limes were 4 for Rs10 for the small ones while the bigger ones were sold for Rs20 for 4.

Prawn Auntie - again, I should have asked for her name and addressed her appropriately. Well, she looked upon me as her son. It feels good... it feels home.

That was dinner for us at home -

Beef Tenderloin with roasted potatoes & beetroots in pesto & cream.

I made two jars of pesto in the afternoon, but wasn't sure if I could use it with fresh cream. I am not a fan of cream-based items, but Alan made this really yum-yum.

A better picture of the fishmonger boy, and his family...

From the boy, I bought 5 strips of stingray (1 inch thick) at Rs300.

From Prawn Auntie, I bought 22cm long (average) of 26 prawns for Rs 1400 - they weigh about 2kg. A customer asked Auntie for the squid but she said it was sold already. Then she put that into my bag (a 50cm squid) for free, but I refused to take it for nothing. I gave her some money and hurried away as I know she would insist on giving me back some change. I was happy with the purchase I made today. :)

Like I would usually buy prawns only from my favourite auntie, I would buy fish and squids from this boy. What I like about him is that he is honest and friendly, he doesn't charge me foreigner's price and he would source for me the items I wanted from other vendors. I would rather that he gets the profits than to deal with some guys that charges me ridiculous price. That's him and his mother at the stall, sorry I should have asked him for his name instead of just calling him "Ma-Le" which means younger brother.

Bananas which I bought for Rs13 (each piece), and the papaya from our very own garden.

Wednesday at Pola...

A rare opportunity to see Anees, and his father at the pola as well.

The bananas in Malaysia are superbig, elbow length (about 30 cm). Not sure about the taste, but I know these are really good for banana fritters (goreng pisang).