2 Things That I Want in 5 Years

(source : pinterest)

 

A Beautiful Garden

Having a wonderful garden is one of my dreams. Beautiful landscape, shiny greenhouse, modern utensils, hidroponic farm, and colourful plants included in one large yard around my dream house. It would be nice, relaxable and comfortable, not only for me but also for my family. In colonial gardening, peoples usually choose the vast they want to plant in their garden. In mine, I prefer to put every plants with such organized pattern. Such as Perennials, shrubs, climbers, trees, grasses, ferns, bamboos, bulbs, fruit, hedging, Mediterranean plants, bedding plants, and roses. 

Green garden (source : pinterest)

Making several changes is needed to bring a gorgeous garden landscape. Adding elevated steps to the front of my house door to add another dimension and texture, framed with bright-color flowers and plants. When colonial gardening is well known because their labyrinth path, I would rather build winding path, formed by white rocky road and snaked borders. In the middle of the front, there will be round medium-size fountain which functioned to reflect the sunlight. Well-conditioned bushes, small trees, rounded stone, and small pond on the left side of winding path. The opposite side will decorated with floral variety border arranged with roses, catmint, delphinium and rare plants.   

An Enjoyable Farm and House

Farm and Houses in Switzerland (source : pinterest)

Beside of having a garden, there's no other way to keep in touch with the nature, except by adding more creatures like animal. In certain way, they are better than the plants. It can move and has relaxing sound. I love to hear the sound of clucking chickens, mooing cattles, chirping grasshoppers, quacking ducks, barking dogs, purring cats, and many more. That's why I really want to have a farm someday.

Dining room with vintage nuances from Teak woods (source : pinterest)

As I live in the farm, there are two ideas for the housing style : modificate the barn into housebarn or build it separately from my house. The first idea is reflecting the housing style in american country and rural area such as Ohio, Texas, and Alabama. By modificating the barn, the advantages are my family and I as the owner doesn't have to walk outside while feeding or watching a medical issue on the animals such as birth of young animal. But the disadvantages are the animal noises, which often can be disruptive when an animal has sick and there are unwanted pests like mice. In the contrary, when I decide to build it separately, it maybe easier to control the noises, house or barn expansion, but it's getting harder to protect the animals. Consider to the problems that may caused by the condition above, I prefer to build the house with normal housing style and build the barn at the outside.

Antique bookcase looks so elegant (source : pinterest)

Despite build a normal house, I still want to build it with housebarn style, but its function just like the other houses. Through the solid and strong structure, the house will be exposed with dark green teak woods for indoor installations. Bright dining room with open layout, light colored walls, and a vintage poster of cow hanged on the wall. In the bedroom, there will be two large antique beds and oil lamps from the early of 1900s to bring more historical nuances. Right in front of my room, I put a floor-to-ceiling bookcase which holds a collection of farming vintage books such as the history of the farm, instruction, list of the tools we have, harvesting record, and marketing. All of those are based on our farm experiences.

Bright bedroom with two beds (source : pinterest)

Never Follow Your Desire, Just Follow Your Heart

Every person always want to start the day with happiness. Doing every little thing that can make them feel happy. Such as enjoying a cup of coffee in the morning, having a conversation with someone they love, watching tv together with their family, etc. But while we get the happiness, we forget if some of us, somewhere outside is never have the same chance. Ignoring, is the only reason why we can't get the true of happiness. 

What is the true meaning of happiness. Smiling or laughing? No, that's only our expression for a short time. When we stop smiling and laughing, we can't get the happiness anymore. Because smiling and laughing won't stay longer. As a human, we never feel enough with ourself. Feel sad and disappointed when we can't get what we want. Get jealous on someone's achievement but we pretend to be happy for them. We never get enough because we set our life just like a perfect masquerade. Not like it supposed to be.

(to be continued...)

Weekend with My Buddies

On last saturday I had a duty to brought 3 of my friends from UMS Malaysia to Mojokerto, I ask Ahong and Jono to come out with me. My malaysian friend will take on the job training course in PT. Multi Bintang Indonesia (MBI). The days before, Mr. Jadid as my lecturer ask me to bring them there by using Uber as our transportation. However, it may cost more than the budget that he given to me. Therefore I borrow Jono's car and luckily he also has a schedule in Mojokerto on that day, so we can go together. 

Following the instruction from Mr Jadid, I decide that our first destination is Mr Sutrisno house because it would be their inn for 1 month. After reach Mojokerto, we are looking for Mr. Sutrisno house which located near the factory and that's true, the home is next to the factory. The house looks fabulous, rocky road along the way, so many threes as far as i can see, and there is paddy field in front of the house. First look, the house has big door which can accomodate a buffalo. Get inside, a traditional housing style was presented with modern materials and furnitures. It has 8 bedrooms in first floor and 2 bedrooms in second floor, musholla, three bathroom and one kitchen as well. Room space is wide but there's only few furnitures. Each bedrooms has its own 2x2 window, fan, shelf, and bed. The two-way stairs is placed on the opposite of the bathroom. The bathroom is clean, wide, has big tube and shower. Dining room is located in the back, just right before the kitchen entry. 

After check the inn condition, I ask my Malaysian friends to fill the payment for 1 month to Mr. Sutrisno. I'm so worry about their further communication with the housekeeper, that's why I finish all of their administration fee on that day. Then we pray ashar together and have a conversation with Mr. Sutrisno and his family for a while. On the evening, Jono ask me, Ahong, and our Malaysian friends to join a dinner together with his family in a restaurant.

My Culinary Experiences

Hello guys, come back again with me. Now in this post we gonna talk about foodie. On the earlier post, I already told you about eating as my hobby. Now I want to share my experience in exploring the taste of many foods in Surabaya, my lovely hometown. There are so many recommended culinary spots here. Therefore I dare to try every single food, especially traditional food which can be found only in Surabaya.  

Actually, I don't have any favorite food so I can try every food that I want but I prefer to choose the food with umami flavor or some food which has broth on it, such as Soto, Bakso, Rawon, etc. I still have to avoid some food that bad for my health. Like the food with high cholesterol content or food which can affect my body glucose level.

I really want to post an article with a short story and review of the food based on its flavor, price, spot nuance and the service. I can’t be sure that I can post each single moment of my culinary experience. Because I'm gonna be so busy with my new job. So I will keep this post up to date only with photos and the review from me, I feel so sorry for that. However, I will keep trying to resume the post when I have a time. If you want to know more about any specific food I’d post or maybe if you want me to try some kind of food, just let me know by send me the email at adzimhilman@gmail.com. I will take my time to read your email and reply it as fast as I can.

Before I start the review section, this is the explanation of my rating system :

Sate Kambing Sedayu
(K.H Mas Mansyur Street 90)

Sate or Satay is a grilled goat meat (chevon) stabbed with thin stick. Added with beans and soy sauce then roasted for a while. The taste is overally good, but they miss the meat maturation so it tastes like raw meat. One stick consist of 4 cuts: shoulder cuts, forequarter cut, liver and lard. The price is more expensive compared with the other grilled chevon (it's cost IDR 50.000, the normal price is around IDR 30.000 - IDR 35.000). The food stall open from 18.00 PM until 01.00 AM.

My personal review for this food is gonna be like this : 6.5
Taste     : ✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮ (good: delicious, still the best Sate i've found so far)

Price     : ✮✮✮✮ (below average: more expensive than the other chevon Satay)

Nuance : ✮✮✮✮✮✮ (above average: small traditional stall, but it brings middle-east nuance)

Service : ✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮ (good:fast, polite, and good looking staff)

Martabak Sekar Sari(Kusuma Bangsa street, right in front of Hi-tech Mall)

Martabak is one of my favorite food. There are two kinds of Martabak, Egg Martabak and Sweet Martabak. For the Egg Martabak, it's made of chicken egg, small cut beef, wheat flour, onion, garlic, scallion, pepper and salt for the seasoning. While the sweet one is made of wheat flour, salt, milk, chocolate powder, sugar, chicken egg, margarine, and baking soda (Sodium bicarbonate). The difference of these things is in the ingredients and how it's cooked. 

Basically, Egg Martabak need three steps : 

1. Prepare the Martabak skin from the wheat flour and oil. 

2. Make the mixture : put the seasoning, beef, onion, garlic, scallion, and pepper in the egg batter.

3. Fry the skin in fully boiled oil, put the mixture on the skin, fold the skin until covering the mixture.

Sweet Martabak also has three steps :

1. Make the batter by adding the milk, egg, sugar, salt, and wheat flour.

2. Cook the cake on frying pan with margarine and spread it around frying pan. 

3. Prepare the chocolate, bean, and cheese powder. Then pour it over the cake while it cooked.

The reason why I explain the process is to make sure that you 'll understand what i said in my review.

Mekar Sari Egg Martabak
It has ordinary size but it's thinner than the others. There are two possibilities : first, maybe the beef cube cut is too small, it will affect the size. Second, it could be that the egg is too small or maybe they lack of egg because normally it needs three until four eggs for medium size Martabak. The skin also too thin, they surely need to add more flour and egg to make thicker skin instead of making the wider thin skin. It's not well cooked, showed by scorched skin on its surface. The taste is good overall, but maybe it will be better if it gets saltier. I suggest to add a teaspoon of salt in the batter or the most extreme way is change the chicken egg with duck egg which has saltier taste.

Mekar Sari Sweet Martabak  

The cake is thick, soft, and well baked, almost perfect. It's full of sweet chocolate and bean sauce but lacks of cheese. The milk taste is not over there, they should add more milk in the batter. The full texture is good but after they cut it, the texture is not the same. There are shorter, longer, smaller and bigger pieces. 

My personal review for this food is... 6.3
Taste     : ✮✮✮✮✮✮ (Not good enough, but it's still above the average)

Price     : ✮✮✮✮✮✮✮ (Very cheap : The price is IDR 20, normal price IDR 25-35)

Nuance : N/A (Sorry but I can't give any rating for this because I bring it to my home)

Service : ✮✮✮✮✮✮ (Fast enough)

Bakso Buto

(Kalasan st. 34)

The name of Bakso Buto refers to giant bakso (buto is giant monster in javanese myth). This food is one of many product which served in Kalasan st because there are so many food stalls along this road. Just like the other local bakso, it consist of beef meatballs, bihun, siomay, tofu, fried wonton, fermented soybean and its soup. The different of this bakso is its name and the meatball size which is bigger than the ordinary meatball. They also cut the meatball from the top to the middle to create flower-like shape, looks good. The fried wonton, siomay and tofu is a little bit tasteless while the big meatball has better taste but the texture is not compact enough. The price is still too expensive for 1 bowl (it's cost IDR 20.000. Normally, it's only cost around IDR 10.000-15.000). I think they need to add toasted onion over the soup for an extra smell and taste.  

My personal review for this food is... 5.25
Taste     : ✮✮✮✮✮ (Average)

Price     : ✮✮✮✮ (The price is IDR 20, normal price is IDR 10-15)

Nuance : ✮✮✮✮✮ (wide space is good for consument but too many street performers here)

Service : ✮✮✮✮✮✮✮ (Fast service and polite staff)