The night market

 

Hi Natty!  How's your back?  Go lie face down on the floor Honey, I'll give you a massage.  After that, we can figure out what you want for dinner.  Oh we're not cooking dinner tonight, Honey.  Today is Monday, and we are going to buy dinner at the night market.  Hm, nice weather this evening.  I guess Allah is being nice.  I spent more than I usually do tonight. I bought some "satay" which is basically meat skewers served with spicy peanut sauce.  Yes, the same type of sauce you get with prawn fritters.  I bought 10 skewers of satay.  Also I got a beef  "murtabak", which is kind of a stuffed paratta flat bread.  By themselves the portions are measly for me, so I put them together and that turned out quite filling.  Putting them together gave me heartburn, though.  It's a good thing I have lots of roasted peanuts.  Peanuts or sunflower seeds are excellent natural remedies for heartburn.  What would you like, Honey?  I'm sure you will find something to your taste.  I have a feeling you are ready to try anything and everything.  If so, please don't get bloated and beware of sugar.  Oh dear, it's starting to rain.

How brown the peanut

 

Hi Natty!  How are you, Honey?  I hope you are not too lonely.  At least you have friends.  I am very lonely without you.  Loneliness is a fact of life for me, I don't know life any other way.  We will be married soon inshaAllah.  Please be patient and pray.  I want you to know that I love you with all of my heart.

It's Sunday over here.  Sundays are always busy for me, but at least the afternoon was quite pleasant so I was able to take a nice nap before Mary Unknown7 started singing.  In the evening, I made a fresh batch of peanut butter.  When I was at the supermarket the other day, I checked the prices on peanut butter.  It takes me RM 5.50 plus labor to make roughly 12oz of peanut butter, while a 12oz jar of peanut butter costs about RM 12 at the supermarket.  Skippy was about RM 15.  That's an extra 10 bucks more than making it myself!  I roast the peanuts in a covered pot with a glass lid, and pick up the pot and toss the peanuts around with the lid on to stir it.  I guess I should have roasted today's batch longer, because my peanut butter came out white.  It still tastes like peanut butter, but it's white.  I guess I got white confused with brown.  Next time, I'll make it REALLY brown.

Roast beef

 

Hi Natty!  How are you today, my love?  I hope you are healthy and keeping safe.  I'm doing OK over here.  Not much going on, just the usual.  Oh, I made a fresh batch of my generic roast beef!  The ingredients are so simple.  I don't really want to go into the details of the procedure, though.  As I mentioned before, I don't want people selling ¥500,000 bowls of Zam-style ramen.  Well, this is roast beef.  I will reveal one important ingredient: beef.  What's so hard about roast beef, anyway?  Just slow cook it in a covered pot until done.  If you like it rare, then you must use the best cuts of beef.  In my roast beef the gristle and fat are the best parts, so I don't want the expensive cuts.  There's a snapshot of today's batch above, swimming in the drippings.  I use the drippings to make my world famous Cowboy beans.  Famous among cats, that is.

Qur'an 20211030

 In the name of Allah, most Gracious, most Merciful.

32.  Say, "Who has forbidden the beautiful of Allah, which God has provided for God's servants, clean and pure, for sustenance?"  Say, "They are, in the life of this world, purely for them on the Day of Judgment."  Thus do We explain the Signs in detail for those who understand.

33.  Say, "The things that my Lord has indeed forbidden are shameful deeds whether open or secret, sins or trespasses against truth or reason, assigning of partners to Allah for which God has given no authority, and saying things about Allah for which you have no knowledge."

(The Heights 7:32-33)

One

 

Hi Natty!  How are you today?  I hope you are well, and having a blast.  Today is Friday over here.  The morning was pretty chill.  I did my laundry, then had ramen for lunch as usual.  Oh my God, I'm so serious about my ramen.  Right now I'm using beef neck bones for soup stock.  The chunk I used today turned out to not have any bone in it at all!  It was all meat!  What's up with that?  The flavor was OK, though.  Well, the mind and the stomach have a close connection.  Perhaps the flavor was psychosomatic.  The evening was busy, however.  But I managed to get everything I needed done by sunset, so I don't have to go downtown anytime this weekend inshaAllah.

Wow, it looks like Climate Justice is en vogue right now.  It's because of you, my Precious Princess!  Good job, Honey!  I'm a big fan of Bootsy Collins, especially the stuff he did in Parliament/Funkadelic.  Metallica is a big supporter of Climate Justice too!  Isn't that right, guys?

Stuffed

 

Oh Honey, I'm sorry!  I didn't notice those fashion pictures from Paris were old news until today.  This means you haven't been back to France ever since... well, you know.  I'm still quite displeased at what happened back then.  But it's been a while ago, and I guess there's no need to make a big stink about it now.  As long as it never happens again, and they always treat you very cautiously.

I'm stuffed right now.  I just ate banana fritters, prawn fritters, and a kilo of fries, and I'm so damned full.  I wanted more of those banana fritters that I had last Friday, I thought they were quite good.  My mother didn't like them, though.  My mother is a ruthless food critic.  She gets the hawkers scrambling for cover, while she doesn't even need to leave her kitchen.  It turned out that the banana fritters weren't as good as last Friday's.  The last time was greasier, this time it tasted too cautious.  I suppose I can't expect excellence from such a standard recipe.  My mother liked the prawn fritters, so I thought I would try some.  They tasted average to me.  But anything tastes better in my latest blend of hot sauce, that's why I also downed a kilo of fries.  I used a bottle of cheap chilli sauce, the type that wasn't based on ketchup.  Then I blended it with green hot chilli peppers, chilli puree, and pickled soybeans.  So it still has sugar in it, being the bottled sauce that it is, but now it has so much extra kick to it.  The key to a great savory dipping sauce is pickled soybeans.  I swear by it.

Qur'an 20211028

 In the name of Allah, most Gracious, most Merciful.

28.  When they do that which is shameful, they say, "We found our fathers doing so," and "Allah commanded us thus."  Say, "Allah never commands what is shameful.  Do you say of Allah what you know not?"

29.  Say, "My Lord has commanded justice, and that you set your whole selves at every time and place of prayer, and call upon God, making your devotion sincere as in God's sight.  Such as God created you in the beginning, so shall you return."

(The Heights 7:28-29)