Homemade Goodness - Soya Bean Milk

Some people believe that expecting mothers should take soya bean milk regularly during the phase of their pregnancy so that their baby would have fair skin. I'm rather skeptical about it. But what I can vouch for is how delightful, a cup of cold fresh soya bean milk feels gliding down your thirsty throat on a hot day. Ahhh...... 

Making your own soya bean milk is fairly easy, albeit tideous. I can attest to this because I made some the other day :)

I got about 3 litres of milk out of 200gm of soya beans (and 3 litres of water of course). Here's how you do it;

1. Soak soya beans in a bowl of water overnight.

the before

and after, look how the beans expand overnight

2. Throw away water and rinse beans under running water.

3. Place half the amount of soya beans in the blender with 1 litre of water. Blend till smooth.

4. Strain mixture using a muslin sieve. Squeezy squeezy :) Do not throw away the pulp just yet.

5. Repeat blending & sieving process with the remaining half of the soya beans and another litre of water.

6. With the last litre of water, blend pulp, strain and discard.

7. Sieve milk for one final time to remove any sediments.

8. Boil milk in a large pot, keep stirring to prevent the bottom from being burnt. (yes, it sneaks up on you, so keep stirring!) Add in pandan leaves. 

scoop out the foam that forms

9. Bring milk to boil till foaming for 3 times.

* I added sugar as I go along. So am not really sure how much I used.

have it hot or cold, delicious!

Homemade Starfruit Juice

TW & I discovered a cheaper alternative to get our sundries. Forget the cool comfort of strolling through the aisles of air conditioned hypermarkets, pasar malam (night market) is the way to go. Sure, it's like a huge can of sardines there but if you think of it, the price that you pay and the quality of the produce that you get is well worth it. Cheap and fresh, need we say more?

So we've been frequenting the pasar malam near our place, and it's been great so far. We made a mental note on our favourite stalls and started to take note of those cut throat ones too.

We stumbled upon a starfruit stall on our first visit. One big basket of fresh glistening starfruit for only 3 bucks! By now you must believe cheap, if not fresh. :)

There were about 20 of them, some were already ripe while the rest still have that lovely greenish tinge. After the excitement of '3 bucks for 20' died down, the question of 'what the heck are we going to do with it' came to mind. Why, starfruit juice of course!

Here are behind the scene pictures, the making of a 'star'fruit....(ok, it doesn't sound right but I'm trying my best to create a pun here).

clean the fruit, remove the hard ridges at the sides and seeds as well, cut into strips (it's best to wait till the fruit is really ripe before juicing)

dump all of them in the blender, i used about 10 fruits here (you can blend half of the quantity 1st and add in the rest later on)

blend away (add about a tablespoon of sugar + 3/4 cup of water + a pinch of salt)
Use a muslin lined sieve to drain out the juice, squeeze the pulp to drain out every last drop!

voila!! fresh starfruit juice
Pop the juice into the refrigerator for an hour or so before drinking. Enjoy!

Note: it was recently published that starfruit juice can be toxic for kidney patients. Check out the article here.