Little man helping

We had dumplings yesterday, made by Grace's mom who's here for the coming wedding of Stanley and Grace. Yums. Sorry, too delicious to take any photos.

Today, we shelled the husks of ginko nuts and Jon was fascinated by what we're doing. Especially when grandma and Ah Ling, our helper, went cracking at the nuts. After watching for a while, he decided to help out too. He would pick some nuts and passed to grandma for her to crack them.

Then it was a matter of time before he decided he would have a go at cracking them. He just tapped on the nuts with the pliers. He dare not hit too hard, which was a good thing, coz I am sure he would have hurt his fingers.We spent an hour or so cracking about 1.5kgs of nuts. I was supposed to make him take his nap. But with all the cracking and peeling, I was sure he would not sleep. Thankfully, grandma did the honours, while I continued peeling at the nuts. True enough, Jon just drank his milk in the sarong and babbled away at his duckie, most prob telling it about his nuts experience!

Grace's mom then went to boil the nuts to help remove the skin, and after a short break, we proceeded to poke out the seed with the help of a toothpick. It was like removing giant black or white heads!!! Not an easy job....this whole preparation of gingko nuts!

Watching telly and helping with the gingko nuts

After a short 30mins nap, Jon woke up and was again playing with the nuts. I would passed him a nut with the toothpick in it, after the seed has been removed, and he would take the toothpick out of the nut, and put the nut inside a container. I would then take the toothpick and attack another nut, all the time working with a few toothpicks, as the process will be slightly delayed at Jon's end.

Slowly removing the toothpick

I'm done, next nut please.

We're going to make barley and ginko nuts soup tom...YUMS!