Virus outbreak life hacks

Vegetables in 4-6 days, just add water

Growing bean sprout

While doing an inventory of my food supply, I came across some mung beans I bought about 10 years ago.  So I grew some bean sprouts from following this website. It is very nutritional and a low effort alternative for fresh vegetable during a food shortage.  I use the webbing from a pack of garlic to use as the mesh and tie it to the bottle with some solid wires.  I soaked the beans overnight and then rinse it twice a day.  Other than that, it requires very little efforts.  I had to stop after 4 days when the bottle was getting too full.

Stir fried noodles with bean sprouts

Here is one recipe for a stir fried noodle.

Egg noodles from scratch

Ingredients: 1 egg, 1/2 teaspoon of sodium carbonate, flour and water.
Tools: hands, pasta machine, measuring cup, flat surface e.g. baking pan.

Sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) can be made by heating sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3).  It is also available as washing soda, however I don't know if they are food grade.

https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/9072/what-flour-and-technique-do-i-need-for-hand-pulled-noodles

Without sodium carbonate it's possible to have hand-pulled noodles with any flour. The downside is you will have to knead the dough for 45 minutes and leave to rest for 2 hours until you can start pulling your noodle strands.

The alkaline dough also help to discourage Salmonella, but hey you are going to boil the noodles at some point anyway.

1. Add 1 large egg, fill water to 1/2 mark, add 1/3 teaspoon of sodium carbonate.

Egg,, water and some sodium carbonate

2. Top it up the same measuring cup with white general purpose flour to a bit above the 2 cups mark. Why wash when you could use the same cup?

Add flour to same cup

3. Stir it around with a spoon until all the liquid is absorbed.

Stir a bit

4.  Pour contents into a surface.  I use a baking pan to contain spills. 

Lumpy mix from cup

5. Knead the dough until your hands  are clean.  It is a very tough dough, but it is a good exercise.

This is the time to stop

The clean up isn't too bad.  Leave the pan for now as you'll need it later.

Now it is time to clean the cup

6. Store the dough in a container and keep it in the fridge for about 3 hours and let it "rest".  Make sure you wash your hands after this as the dough is alkaline.  

7. I roll the dough with my manual pasta machine starting from the thickest setting.  I also trim the rugged edges and patch up holes in the dough.  Go one setting at a time to reduce the thickness of the dough sheets. Trim the length when the sheets gets too long.

This dough can be used for making wonton wrapping.

8. Cut the dough with the attachment.  Here is the finished product.I don't bother adding dry flour as the noodle is not sticky.

9. At this point you can put it in boiling water and it cooks in a minute.  Rinse under cold water to stops the cooking.  The noodle is very chewy.  Serves 4-6. The stir fried noodles was done with 1/4 of the dough.

10. I put it in a plastic container and freeze it.  I put a layer of food wrap between servings so that they don't freeze into one lump.  It take less than 2 minutes to cook in boiling water from frozen as there is no need for defrosting. 

Flat hook for DIY mask

I made a HKMask for personal protection.  I am not a arts and craft person, so I had to make do with what I have.  I modified the design as I don't have any thin elastic bands.  I do have a lot of fat ones from my grocery.

I use the I core from old transformer to make a flat hook and a AWG10 solid wire (household wiring) for the loop. The rubber band is very strong, so it is important to have the right cord lengths for comfort and fit. I crimped the 2mm paracord gently during length adjustment.  Once the adjustment is done, I crimped tightly to hold it in place.

DIY flat hook

Hook material: stamped I/O bracket cover for a cheap PC case or transformer cores