Almost piling up my recycled photos ideas; so gotta share now and hope this helps our next generations to recycle, reuse, reduce waste and upcycle for better fresher environment to live for!

• Simply cut open our emptied water container when we used to buy our water from the supermarket before. I got the chance to recycle or reuse most of the containers into pot plants, water rain catcher as our roof don't have gutter yet when our gutter service man did not come back and took off the old gutter.

• Planted a Gotu Kola herb (Hydrocotyle Asiatica) - very useful hanging plant or herb that I bought from Bunnings Warehouse here in Australia. Make sure when your Gotu Kola over-crowded roots, you can separate some of your rooted plant on other containers or on your garden space. Gotu kola is regarded as perhaps the most spiritual of all herbs in India. That will be for another topic to list the benefits of Gotu Kola herb, interesting plant!

Feeling messy in the digital age? Then organise effortlessly!

1. Conquering your husband's messy cables inbox becomes a problem if you're looking for something right in front of your eyes yet you could not see it!




2. Sorting idea using toilet rolls and label them when hubby gets home if you are not sure which is which :)




3. Conquering every drawer of mobile phone chargers, camera cables, and wires..., Labeling.




4. Labelling your recycled toilet rolls; very handy to locate when you needed them straight away instead of digging till dawn :)



Or you can upcycle into mini journal or tags http://www.queentulip.com/p/recycle-upcycle.html

One of my childhood's memory plants in our backyard garden was Ampalaya or Bitter Gourd (Goya). My dad used to make a canopy or fence climber for some varieties of Bitter Gourd. Some of the fruits let it ripened for church members to get for free when the red seeds popping up, as we live in the pastoral house just one meter away from the church building. Our front yard often planted with either Bitter Gourd or climbing Tomatoes besides my mum's flowering plants.




Long, at last, Queentulip's first Bitter Gourd plant (Bitter Melon or Ampalaya or Goya Plant) in the colder part of Down Under here in Ballarat, Victoria. Successfully the Ampalaya fruits I bought from the supermarket were matured enough and let it ripened a bit more before slicing out its seeds and planted it for experiment and ta-dah - very generous leaves and flowers for the first time in early Summer 2012 throughout mid-Autumn! Just before cold Autumn or pre-winter season in 2012, it's dying off :( so sad to let it go. Bitter Melon thrives in cold Ballarat during the warmer months in a year but will die when it's too cold and frosty. If it were not too cold, this plant would have thrived for more years and expanded robustly as it should!

When I first arrived in Ballarat, I never saw Bitter Gourd in the supermarket at all until 2009 when it appears in the local supermarket. After a year, I decided to have it a go and plant from its seeds. Since no seeds or seedlings available from Bunnings Warehouse and I doubt that they will since no one would eat such stuff except Filipinos, Africans and other Asians or nationalities like me. Yet I have watched in some tropical gardening TV show of Australia that some Australians plant the Bitter Gourd that's why it's available at the local supermarket after all. Ironically what is cheaper in our native land is expensive in the west like the bitter gourd, the cost is not encouraging for westerners to try the bitterness of it, right? I'd say.

Next season, try to plant this yourself and make a climber for itself as it climbs profusely like no tomorrow!




First fruit ever and lots of flowering buds after that. Unfortunately, the last fruit I wanted to leave its seeds for next season planting was harvested by black birds who love my garden veggies, they ate most of the seeds and just left me two seeds. Besides the Bitter Gourd plant was a prolific squash from my organic home gardening with love! I feed most of my veggie plants with organic seaweeds tea that can be bought from Bunnings Warehouse all-year round.




For some recipes go here Bitter Gourd's Recipe and enjoy cooking your bitter gourd or share us yours.

You can use the leaves or fruits as your Bitter Gourd Tea as Vietnamese calls it Goya Tea.

Not making a Bitter Gourd Tea today but cooking the fruit instead. For those who love bitter tea, why not try Bitter Gourd or its leaves as tea.


Bitter Gourd or Bitter Melon or Bitter Squash:
"Ampalaya" in Filipino term. Ampalaya, I used to eat and grew up with from our backyard garden. In my two dialects, Ilocano and Kankana-ey call it "Parya" while the word "bitter" say it "napa-it" in Ilocano and "manpa-it" in Kankana-ey.

Wikipedia: "Momordica charantia often called bitter melon, bitter gourd or bitter squash in English, has many other local names. Goya from the indigenous language of Okinawa where there is a large US military presence and karavella from Sanskrit are also used by English-language speakers."


Surprisingly from the year 2010, the Bitter Gourd or Ampalaya turned up to be one of my hubby's favourite Filipino vegetable foods after I cook for him for a while for his night shift lunch break sometimes. He likes it with beaten eggs.

Filipino Bitter Gourd Recipe (Omelette Style):
1 medium size Bitter Gourd
2 Eggs
pinch of salt to taste

Cooking Method:
Cook on fry pan with sprinkle of Olive Oil or Rice Bran Oil

Serve it with cooked plain Jasmine Rice. Sprinkled with roasted Sesame oil and naturally brewed soy sauce without MSG in it.

Japanese Bitter Gourd Recipe:
Use Tofu
Eggs
Roasted White Sesame Seeds
Sesame Oil
Fresh ginger
Sugar
Soy Sauce

Mix beat eggs with your bitter melon or bitter gourd.

Other suggested Filipino Recipe:

We cook the young leaves, not just the Bitter Gourd or Ampalaya fruits. My mum and dad in the Philippines used to prepare ampalaya leaves or fruits as our backyard plants generously fruiting all year round.

1. We half cook Ampalaya leaves on stew chicken meat or pork meat and also great with stew goat meat. 
2. Since the Ampalaya leaves are great mixed with stew goat meat, it would also be great with stew lamb meat or lamb soup bones!  
3. Bitter Gourd or Ampalaya Tea: Steep or infuse tea with hot boiled water and drink as tea. 
4. Saute beef meats with Ampalaya fruits, add a slice of onions, a pinch of salt to taste and serve with cooked plain rice.
5. PINAKBET RECIPE: Pinakbet originated from Ilocos province in the Philippines from my dad's region, so I used to eat Pinakbet as my Ilocano favourite menu.  Since I don't have all the ingredients in hand living in the colder part of Australia, I can link you to some Pinakbet recipes from others websites. Although there are slightly way to cook Pinakbet if it did not originate from Ilocos; be the great judge and share the best recipe or Pinakbet with us.

• 5.1 Pinakbet: an Ilocano pork and vegetable stew with shrimp paste by Connie Veneracion
• 5.2 Pinakbet Recipe (Tagalog) by Panlasang Pinoy
• 5.3 Pinakbet by AllRecipes.com 

How we eat mango back home in the Philippines and enjoy the sour, sweet taste of munching it crunchy green! Not only eating it fresh green, but we also dip it in our simple spicy concoction sauce. Living in Down Under especially in Victoria limits us to buy and eat green mango from the supermarkets when we Filipino women craving for green mango whether you're pregnant or not at all! They usually sell ripened mangoes coming from the tropical side north of Australia in Queensland or in the Northern Territory. I don't know why the Australian mango market missing out the majority of multi-cultured Asians to sell green mangoes for us; not only Filipinos eat a green mango - you know.

In quest of green mango and concoction ingredients, we have to drive to the Asian market at Sunshine, Victoria or Footscray, Victoria to grab just these green mangoes! Thankfully we also have available Filipino shop where I live although green mango is not available.

Unfortunately, this mango I had tasted similar to the mango from Thailand that is often sweet without any sour hint bite when I was living there once in my life. The truth is, only Thai fruits are imported and being sold in the regular Australian supermarkets like Durian, Mangosteen, Lychees, Coconuts, etc. but no green mango yet? I reckon mangoes are more restricted to the Australian custom border security maybe :) though why the only mango when it can be any fruits!

In the Philippines, we do have many varieties of mango fruits to choose from and enjoy every year. We are all aware any culture in the world who have grown up with their native foods often miss their foods from their native land if not available where we live. This is just one way how Filipinos eat their mango without adding any other veggie salads or fruits. You can only eat it this way from the shared ingredients below and photos shown.

INGREDIENTS 1 - Green Mango Snack
(based on the photos shown):

• Green Mango (any variety)
• Salted Shrimp Fry (Alamang or Bagoong in Filipino terms)
• Vinegar (I use Apple Cider vinegar available in Australia)
• Fresh chopped green or red Chilli or Chilli powder

INGREDIENTS 2 - Green Mango Jumping Salads
(based on my memory Ilocano recipe and experienced from the authentic countryside lifestyle by the river):

• Green Mango especially the sour taste or with a bit of sweetness for the sweet tooth
• Fresh tiny shrimps from the river for jumping salads we call it
• Sea Salt 
• bowl or plate

Thankfully to my Aussie hubby for a day out to the Asian market and grab these little green tummy buggers for his Pinoy wife.


Just slice the way you want it. You can slice more presentable like how Filipinos do in the Philippines when they are selling street foods.

Quotes:

"Our world prizes extroverts --
but Susan Cain makes a case for
 the quiet and contemplative." ~ ted.com

"If you look at the most of the world's major religions, you will find seekers -- Moses, Jesus (Yeshua), Buddha, Muhammad, -- seekers who are going off by themselves alone to the wilderness where they then have profound epiphanies and revelations that they then bring back to the rest of the community. So no wilderness, no revelations." ~Susan Cain~

"Solitude is a crucial ingredient often to creativity. No wilderness, no revelation" ~Susan Cain~