Gosh! Look at the amount of yellow dye they put on dried longan skin!

My hands were a bit wet when I touched some dried longan and I was shocked to see that my hands had turned yellow from the colouring they put on the skins! Then I soaked the dried longan in water. The soluble yellow dye made the water yellow. I changed the water for around 10 times and the water still turned yellow from the dye.
I wonder how much yellow dye they used to colour these dried longans? I hope is is food grade dye and nothing poisonous!
Gosh, these are some of the things they do to make food look attractive! We have to be careful of the food we consume nowadays!

Bingo! Selected Watermelon is ripe, sweet and juicy! LOL!

Further to my post How to Select Nice, Sweet, Ripe, Juicy and Tasty Watermelon, the photo above shows the watermelon that I cut today. It is ripe, juicy, seedless and sweet! I found the selection process that I have listed out worked 80% most of the time.

I bought this watermelon from the local hypermarket at only RM0.99 (USD 0.33) per kilogram. The total weight is around 4.8 kg and I paid RM4.75 (USD1.58) for it.

Going to enjoy my watermelon now.......he he he!

How to Choose (select) Nice, Sweet, Ripe, Juicy and Tasty Watermelon - Four easy steps

Watermelon is one my my kids favourite fruits and choosing the right one to buy is rather tricky. There are not much physical tell tale sign to identify nice, juicy, ripe, sweet and tasty water melon. However you can use this four easy steps to identify a good watermelon to buy!
1) Take a look a the tendril (the stem on top of the melon). Ripe watermelon would have brown and dried out stem. If the stem is still green in colour, then very likely the melon is not ripe.
2) Give the melon a thump (knock). Ripe and juicy watermelon have very dull thud. However, unripe melon have tighter and higher pitch sound when thumped. Although this method is widely used, is is not easy to correctly identify a good melon. It is hard to identify the sound when the melon is thumped.
3) The outer skin of ripe watermelon is not shining and rather dull. It is also not smooth anymore. Run your hand across the skin to test it. Next time when you visit a watermelon farm, see how smooth and shining small unripe watermelons are and you will know how to compare it with ripe ones.
4) The lower part of the watermelon that lays on the ground are normally white or yellow in colour. Since they are not expose to the sun, it will not have much of the green chlorophyll. compound. If this part is yellow in colour, then very likely the melon is ripe.

If you are still not sure or cannot find the right melon to buy, then ask the vendor to cut a small portion out to confirm your findings. This is most foolproof test! ha ha ha!
Happy Watermelon shopping and have a nice weekend!

How to cut and clean a Pineapple (Buah Nenas) – Non wasteful method, step by step

Pineapple (Scientific name, Ananas Comosus) is a common fruit grown extensively in tropical countries. This fruit has high citric acid content and at most of the time a ripe fruit is sweet. The pineapple plant grows well in high hummus content soil or peat soil. Thailand is the top pineapple producing country and you can virtually see many pineapple based food stuff in this country. Pineapple fried rice is one of the most common cuisine in Thai restaurants. I love to add pineapple pieces to my Nyonya acar dish and without it the famous Nyonya Perut Ikan would not taste the same! The best way to cut a pineapple is to cut out the eyes (divits) after removing the skins. This way, it will not be so wasteful instead of removing a think layer of skins with the flesh! I bought this sweet juicy honey pineapple from the local market and here is the step by step instruction to cut it!

1) First remove the top and bottom portion of the pineapple

2) Then remove the skins. Follow the curves of the pineapple when you cut away the skin, so that you will not cut away some of the flesh!

3) Make 45 Deg cut on both sides of the eyes (divits), around 3 eyes at a time. Continue doing this until all the eyes are removed.

4) Cut the pineapple into four and remove the hard middle core. The pineapple is ready to eat. Yum, yum, here I come with some rojak sauce!