Real Estate Stalking: Singapore

One of our favorite architectural styles we saw in SE Asia was the shophouses found in Malaysia and Singapore. We were drawn to their colorful uniformity, large windows, and the dual uses of shop and home.

There was a lack of clutter, lack of trees along the avenues and a lack of plants and adornments out front, which we found refreshing. Allows the shop fronts to be visible.

Even though most of the shophouses were all uniform in size, height and shape, some still managed to add colorful touches.

These shophouses are vastly different from the homes and lifestyles of us Americans. It's not uncommon to live in homes with shared walls or spaces, but these shophouses brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "love thy neighbor". We found it admirable. Chinese shopkeepers operating and living next to their Hindu and Muslim neighbors with an understanding of communal space and sense of respect.

Shophouses can be found in older areas of Singapore and cities in Malaysia, where the cultural areas were, as well as being close to the city centers and along rivers. We loved wandering around trying to imagine what the inside of these houses must look like. Were they dark from being sandwiched between homes and what seemed to be windows only in the front and back?

We weren't able to see an actual shophouse residence. We did go into several shops, but they were extensively converted making imagining what the residence portion of the house looked like difficult. However, we did visit a traditional clan house that was converted into a museum, which gave us an idea what some of these homes look like on the inside, as well as the rich history that led to the architectural style.

While daydreaming through innovative and highly acclaimed SE Asia's Architecture/Interior Design firm Ong&Ong on the interweb we came across their design work for several traditional shophouse/cluster homes in Singapore. We were in awe. The interiors of these shophouses were beyond what we could have imagined were behind the shops. Modern Asian aesthetic with lots of wood, tile and glass. Minimal use of the lush tropical flora such as bamboo and banana trees. The green cinder block detail in the kitchen and dining room to main room is spot on!

These images of the second story windows and finally a glimpse into the second floor. The ornate iron spiral staircase is classic Singaporian style.

What really blew us away was the courtyards. Singapore & Malaysia has beautiful consistent weather being right on the equator - the sun rises and sets at the same time basically all year round. The weather is warm and sunny, so outdoor living is essential. These modern courtyards make use of minimal amount of space and light, and still manages to squeeze in pools to keep cool.

These modern updated shophouses have us yearning to live in a tropical balmy location, especially if our home could look anything like these.

Garden Inspired Meal

We try to base our meals and grocery shopping around what vegetables are in season. In the summer that is made easier by an abundant garden at our disposal. So what should we make with this late evening harvest?

As mentioned in the earlier post, this year's tomatoes are slowly progressing, but nothing significant. We are keeping our fingers crossed, but we did find these beautiful heirloom tomatoes at the farmer's market. The black cherry tomato plant is still covered in green unripe tomatoes, but we still managed to hunt and peck several handfuls.

We still had a beautiful selection of garlic and shallots harvested back in June.

And we had bags and bags of swiss chard and beet greens.

We decided all these vegetables were begging to be stewed. Stewed greens is one of our go-to items when deciding on what other vegetable dish to make. Stewed greens is not only extremely nutritious, it's versatile, tasty and easy to make.

However, our stewed greens includes one item that needs to be prepared in advance - roasted garlic. We still had 6 garlic bulbs from the garden and decided to roast 3 bulbs. Roasted garlic is a kitchen item we always have on hand. We roast garlic in large batches and store in the in an airtight tupperware in the fridge. We have never thrown out roasted garlic, it seems to last forever, so we usually do big batches at a time. This time we only did 3 bulbs worth by simply skinning the garlic cloves and tossing in oil. Roast in the oven for about 1 hour at 350 degrees.

Once the roasted garlic is done we are ready to stew some greens. We start by cooking chopped shallots and a spicy chili pepper, finely chopped, in a large pot. When the shallots are soft and the chili peppers are making you cough a little, add the chopped tomatoes.

All the portions and amounts are dependent on how much greens you have. We had a lot of greens so we used about 1 & 1/2 cups of shallots, 2 Jamaican red chili peppers, all the tomatoes in the picture, 2 full salad spinners of chopped swiss chard/beet greens (including the stalks) and all of the roasted garlic (3 bulbs).

Once the tomatoes are cooked down a bit add the greens, a few handfuls at a time. They will need to cook down by turning the tomato/shallots over the greens. Sometimes additional liquid like broth is needed to help cook down the greens. The heirloom tomatoes were very juicy so no additional liquid was needed this time.

Cook the greens down until the chard/beet green stalks are tender, and then add the roasted garlic and stir to combine.

The greens are ready to be eaten at this time. We love how the roasted garlic cloves remains creamy and sweet, but adding a spicy salty flavor to the earthy, tart and peppery greens. The greens go great as a side dish with rice, on a sandwich with spicy pork or in a bowl of raman. But we wanted to do something different with the almost Italian tasting tomato stew. We decided to toss it in the food processor and make it into a sauce.

Which we then reheated and tossed with some macaroni we had in the cupboard.

We found this sauce to be extremely versatile. We grilled the yellow squashed harvested from garden and simply served the sauce along with the squash for an added tang to the dish and for a double dose of vitamins. All grown just a few feet away!

Gardening 2010

This has been a very strange gardening season in the Pacific Northwest. Early spring was going along great, but late spring was colder and rainier than usual. Everything got a slow start. Everything got planted later which meant a shorter growing season. Its been touch and go all summer long. The garlic and shallots planted last fall/winter did do well though!

Late summer harvest plants such as chili peppers flowered later this year, so in order to guarantee they receive as much sunlight as possible we put them on a wagon to keep them in the sun all day long. We think it helped, but the blooms did come late and the weather is transitioning to fall quickly.

This year we tried to grow a few new vegetables we haven't grown before and they did pretty well. There were sweet as can be beets, which provided several rounds of beet green harvests.

We grew carrots for the first time, which looked beautiful. The leaves were green and strong, the tops began to pop out the soil, but when we pulled them, we got tiny nubby little carrots. Maybe we crowded them. Shrug.

We also grew corn for the first time and it was touch and go for several weeks, in fact we forgot all about them when the kombucha squash didn't do much. We haven't tried them yet, we're just happy to see them grow for now.

We planted one cucumber when a corner of our raised bed opened up after the bok choy died, ravished by snails. Cucumbers seem to be a difficult plant to grow this year with all the late spring rain and below average temperatures. We planted our plant a little later in the season and have harvested about 10 cucumbers so far.

We planted some new herbs this year also. We decided to grow two kinds of shisho, the dark purple variety and the leafy green variety. Both plants thrived and looked beautiful with their wide lush leaves.

We planted a wide variety of greens this year as well, from various lettuces to collard greens. Leafy greens have turned to be our staple plant to grow and every year we plant chard, which did well from the moment we planted it. One plant did have a strange growing habit and shot tall, but still provided beautiful large chard leaves. It is an odd sight.

The plants that haven't done well in the sense of fruit production has been tomatoes. We planted a black cherry tomato back in late May and it is now producing some fruit. Now, in September it is producing some fruit, but not ripening at all.