As promised in the last post we are going to show you a kitchen gadget.  Here it is - the ice cream / ice cube maker.

I am sure everyone knows how to use it, therefore I am not going to tell you the details here.  But there is a tip… …

It happened years back when my housemate wanted to learned from what I had done using an ice cube maker to make the Milo ice cube.  It was a cube shape ice maker, she did the same thing by putting stirred Milo drink into the ice cube maker, but the outcome was totally different from mine.

The Milo ice cubes that she made were as hard as rock and hardly bite-able, whereas mine were as soft as ice cream.

The tip is to use more concentrated drink instead of adding too much plain water, otherwise the ice will be as hard as rocks.

We started planting mung beans in mid April, until now 3 months passed and it still keeps on producing mung beans, we only harvest it on weekends, and some have dropped onto the ground.

We first started with throwing a palm full of mung beans into a pot.

After the seeds have sprouted and had at least 2 leaves, it was the time to transplant them.

In order to make the seedling to have equal distance with each other, we made holes on the soil and put 3 to 5 seedlings into each hole.

We did it under the hot sun, some of the seedlings could not stand properly.  We watered and covered them with newspaper until the evening.

Not all the seedlings were alive after this transplant, and not all of them were healthy.  I also removed some of the weak plants after they were 1 feet tall.

I put organic fertilizer twice and watered every 2 days except rainy days.  They grew taller and taller.

After about 2 months, it started blooming.

After the yellow flowers drop, little bean pods can be seen and they grow longer day by day.

Some ripen bean pods were in light brown, but some were darker.

We still have quite a lot of unripe bean pods despite our continuous effort of harvesting the mung beans.

With the area  of about 40 cm X 60 cm, how many mung beans do you think it can produce?

After taking care of the plant and waited for 2 months, finally we can start harvesting the mung beans in our garden.

Same as other types of beans and peas, mung bean is also come from inside its pod.  Some are shorter, and some are longer.  Most well grown bean pods have 10 mung bean seeds inside, whereas the poor developed pods have only 2.  The bean pod turns light brown  (or black sometimes) from green to tell that it is ready to be harvested.

This is not the first time I planted mung bean, but it was at least 15 years back when I last planted it.  At that time, I was in high school when we always used mung beans as our experiments in Biology class.

We harvested these mung beans on a Saturday evening but it is not enough to make even a small bowl of mung bean soup, but there are many more waiting for us to harvest next week, I expected that in 2 weeks time, all of them on the plants should be ripen.

We planted mung beans on a small piece of land (about 0.5 meter square), how much mung beans should we expect?  I have heard that in order to remove mung bean pods, it is not necessary to remove it pod by pod.  Just dry it under the sun and the mung beans will be separated with the pods.  In the factory, I guess a machine with fan is used to blow off the dried pod from the beans.

Next, I will show you the entire process of planting mung bean.

While we were exploring Swan Valley, we arrived at a grape farm selling not only grapes but also rock melons, honey etc., it provided parking spaces with shades made of grape vine.  I parked our rented car at the space which is not properly covered.

Whereas, the other side was well covered but no space available.

The exciting part was when we got out of the car, we were welcomed by a big bunch of grapes above our heads.  If I am not mistaken, there was a sign telling visitors not to pluck the grapes, otherwise they might have gone much earlier before we visited this place.

There were a few more bunches of grapes at the adjacent parking space.

Coming up next, I will show you the winery and brewery in Swan Valley.

It was an eye-opening trip when we visited the chocolate factory at Swan Valley, Perth.

Somewhere near the entrance, there is a section to let visitors try the 3 main types of chocolate - dark, white and milk.  I put some in my hand and it started to melt.

The horrible thing that we found was some visitors did not take the chocolate properly with the spoon and dropped the chocolate on the floor, part of the floor was stuck with chocolate.

There were endless types of chocolates behind us.

Let me type out some of the labels - Honey Nougat Crunch, Premium Fruit & Nut, Milk Buderim Ginger, Vine Dried Sultanas, Jamaica Coconut Rouch, Dark Cherry Delights, Dark Buderim Ginger, etc..

It was really mouth watering by just looking at the chocolates.

Many more types of chocolate.

We bought a cone of ice-cream and it tasted amazing.  I was too busy sharing the ice-cream with SiewPeng and forgot to take its photo.

There are some other products related to chocolate - Chocolate Massage Oil, Chocolate Bath Salt, Chocolate Soup, etc..

Chocolate Coated Snakes, Chocolate Golf ball, Milk Chocolate Chicken.

Biscotti.

Next, I am going to show you the making of chocolate in this factory.