My Life, My Child and My Food

The theme for Still Life Food Photography for this month is Celebration. Since we do not do any celebration, it is very hard for me to come up with a set up for this theme. However, a picture of a party can be used for this theme as one friend advised me. Nevertheless, I tried to display some parties theme.

I took these pictures in the summer and forgot all about them. To create a story about tomatoes is hard for me as I do not very fond of tomatoes. Well, I do like them to pose as my object in my photographs but not so much on my plate. They are very charming object because of their appearance and color.

Many people questioned the status of tomatoes. Are they consider fruits or vegetables?
To answer that, I browsed some sites and came out with this answer from AskOxford.com

Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?

The confusion about 'fruit' and 'vegetable' arises because of the differences in usage between scientists and cooks. Scientifically speaking, a tomato is definitely a fruit. True fruits are developed from the ovary in the base of the flower, and contain the seeds of the plant (though cultivated forms may be seedless). Blueberries, raspberries, and oranges are true fruits, and so are many kinds of nut. Some plants have a soft part which supports the seeds and is also called a 'fruit', though it is not developed from the ovary: the strawberry is an example. As far as cooking is concerned, some things which are strictly fruits may be called 'vegetables' because they are used in savory rather than sweet cooking. The tomato, though technically a fruit, is often used as a vegetable, and a bean pod is also technically a fruit. The term 'vegetable' is more generally used of other edible parts of plants, such as cabbage leaves, celery stalks, and potato tubers, which are not strictly the fruit of the plant from which they come. Occasionally the term 'fruit' may be used to refer to a part of a plant which is not a fruit, but which is used in sweet cooking: rhubarb, for example. So a tomato is the fruit of the tomato plant, but can be used as a vegetable in cooking.

I remembered when I was a little girl, I would chop a tomato into big chunks and sprinkle them with sugar. It was so refreshing. Nowadays, I do not eat lots of tomatoes. I only use them when I cook. There are many Indonesian cooking recipes that called for tomatoes.


Last summer, my neighbor gave me three pots of cherry tomatoes plants which I planted in my back yard. I had lots of cherry tomatoes that I needed to give some away to my neighbors. My daughter loves to pluck them but like me, she does not like them.

Tomatoes are high in vitamin C and with the flu bugs going around, I should try to eat more tomatoes. And I guess, it is time to persuade my daughter to eat them with me.

Steamed cupcake or Bolu kukus. I love making them since I don't need to use my oven to bake them. Currently, my oven is a storage for my pots and woks hence it will be too troublesome to unload all my from the oven.
I had tried making these cupcakes many times and there were times, I failed to make them soft. Well, a perfect steamed cupcake has to bloom like a flower as Eliza wrote in her website and it has to be soft. However, my previous steamed cupcakes were either hard and bloomed or soft and did not bloom. Recently, I tried another steamed cupcakes recipe taken from Eliza of Notes from my food diary and the recipe worked. My steamed cupcakes were soft and bloomed.


These steamed cupcakes do not taste like regular cupcakes. They are very light in texture and taste. For more healthy choice, you can replace the coconut milk with regular milk.
I have not found any steamed cakes in the US yet and so these cakes are very special. For those who have not tasted steamed cakes, these cakes are perfect for trying.

Speaking of blooming. Here is a flower picture I took before the winter. Enjoy!

Still Life Food Photography last month's theme was snack and appetizer. I like to snack which I may have to curb soon as my weight is increasing. Last month, I bought a box of pineapple cookies from Dwiana. These cookies are my favorite. And since I was too lazy to make them myself, I thought ordering was a good idea.

There are many kinds of pineapple cookies. I believe many cultures have their own version of pineapple cookies. I found a Chinese style pineapple cookies in the Chinese grocery store in Cleveland. It tastes similar but I still prefer the one made by Indonesian.

Erie has been very cold. Today's temperature is 21 F with some snow shower. Currently, we are under snow storm warning expiring tomorrow morning. Our city has been pounding by snow since before new year. Fortunately, we were away that time.

These pictures were my contribution to SLF # 10 : Snack and Appetizer

This is an over-due story from my travel to upstate New York. We were there last summer and had a nice trip visiting Watkins Glenn and Stony Brook park.
Stony Brook park was suggested to us by my friend, Amie. We went there after the park was closed so we did not able to explore Stony Brook park. That day was also a bit cold and the sunset was almost neared. We though we would not able to enjoy the park at all. Fortunately, the park had nice looking swing, see-saw and some sliders for the kids to play. Amanda and Amie's boy went straight to the playground after we stopped the cars. We agreed to let the children played for a short time while I tried to snap some pictures of the playground.

The most intriguing part of the park was the swimming pools. The swimming pools were created by nature. It was ashamed we could not swim in them.



There were several pools and one of them had an opening which allowed the water to fall as waterfall. I kept looking at the opening and wondered if any of the children swam in that pool had ever went through the opening and fell down.


I really like to visit The Stony Brook park again and will try to swim in those pools. For more information please visit Stony Brook Park.

Cooking book for sale,

Erie had a cold summer this year. I remembered wearing my coat most of the time during the summer. Then autumn came with a dust of snow. However recently, the weather has been nice to us and gave us some sunny days.