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First time cooking rendang!

August 19, 2026

A couple of months ago, a very good friend of mine, mbak Rizky, shared with me some tips for cooking rendang. She told me to cook it using a slow cooker. I honestly thought that would be too good to be true, because what do you mean all I have to do is to throw then mix everything up , give it a good stir for a moment, then call it a day? I grew up believing that rendang is one of the most labor-consuming dish, alongside with peeling a kilogram of shallots, so when mbak Rizky told me with such conviction that yes it’s doable to cook rendang in a slow cooker without worrying about split coconut milk, I got intrigued.

I have a pack of instant rendang seasoning in my pantry, so I decided to mix them up with 1 kilogram of beef (topside and cubed 1.5 inches) and 800 mL coconut milk in a slow cooker then set it for 8 hours/overnight.

Just now, after breakfast, I opened the slow cooker lid and yes, the rendang looked great. Then, I stirred them. However, I found it difficult to stir them in the slow cooker using the Sautée/Stir option since I couldn’t control the heat. I then moved them to a big wok so I could continue stirring while adjusting the heat.

Directly from the slow cooker

This is where I made the rookie mistake. On the rendang seasoning package, it only mentioned the steps of mixing together the seasoning, meat, and coconut milk. I noticed this a LOT on prepackaged seasonings from Padang. For some reasons, all the uni-uni Padang, with such mad skills and god-tier expertise in cooking, thought that everyone would just know how to cook rendang 🥲 I’M SO SORRY, UNI, I’M BORN AND BRED JAWA. I didn’t realized that it needed oil to heat and put everything together, so I spent 10-15 minutes stirring the half-done rendang while wondering if I missed anything. Once I realized that I needed to add oil, which I immediately added a dash of oil to the rendang, the rendang cooked quite fast and looking great!

Had I realized that a bit of oil is needed, the rendang would definitely cooked faster, hahah!

Also, thanks to the slow cooker, the meat retained its shape nicely. Thank you, mbak Rizky, for the tips! I feel more confident now in cooking rendang!

Food Stuffs, Friends and Family

Indonesia, nomnom, rendang
Merdeka, merdeka

August 17, 2026
I once wrote here that sometimes I forgot about August 17, the (supposedly) Indonesia’s independence day had I didn’t checked my social media timeline and saw videos of folks doing the flag ceremony or kampung festivities.

Why “supposedly”? Because I don’t think we ever truly merdeka. At least for now.

Today, I wanted to forget about it, because I honestly feel that there is no point of celebrating something so hollow, so rotten, and so broken beyond repair. The land where gods and goddesses’ whispered their stories, hopes, and fears, is now imploded in real time as we speak. The guardians of the mountains, forests, and seas are receding away and the only thing left in the land of Indonesia is her people gasping and grasping for every single inch of hope, raising their helpless hands to the sky, with such frenzy eyes looking at the endless skies covered with smog and pollution, looking in such futile for signs of something big would happen and save us all here.

I do wish I could scream curses and throw every thorn and spew hellfire from my chest, but I have been too angry, and the only thing I can feel is numbness.

81 years old, Indonesia.

Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature.

— David Hume

Might be useless or seemingly like screaming into the void, but I highly recommend these books if you want to know what happened, what is happening, and what will happen in Indonesia.

Clockwise: The Jakarta Method (Vincent Bevins), The Killing Season (Geoffrey B. Robinson), Pretext for Mass Murder (John Roosa), From Jail to Jail (Tan Malaka), and The Invisible Palace (Jose Manuel Tesoro).
Writings and General Commentaries

Indonesia
Another one for my arsenal…

August 17, 2026

I once was this kind of person who looked at house cleaning videos and thought to myself, “what a difficult process and such tricky equipments! Who needs a water/wet vacuum?!”

Let me introduce you to Hetch. Their full name is Hetch V10.

So, since I became a full-time housewife (please don’t confuse me with a tradwife. I still love money, okay?), I found a new fixation on cleaning videos hashtag so satisfying. One day, I saw this video from China, a CCTV recording of a family sleeping in the master bedroom. The wife got woken up abruptly with a pained look and her hands over her stomach, and when she ran to, I presume, the bathroom, the husband got woken up too and realized his wife got her period and the blood leaked into the mattress. He took care of their young child, then he took off the bedsheets to replace them. Before he replaced the bedsheets, he took a small handheld vacuum, then pour a cup of what seemed to be liquid detergent and water, scrubbed it for a minute, then vacuumed the water from the mattress which now clean. The wife came back, looked much better, and the husband asked her to go back to sleep again.

Of course, of course, in-between the praises to the husband, some questions popped: “WHAT VACUUM WAS THAT?!”

I scrolled the comments section with frenzy, and I saw someone shared a link: “Might be not the exact brand and product, because the one on the video looked smaller and square-ish, but this is the only one I can find on Shopee. Size-wise, still okay kan? Not too big. Bukan macam industrial grade-vacuum. Suitable for personal houses.”

If you are in Malaysia, you can click this link

With the Indonesian spirit of “GASKEUN!”, I got the vacuum and I am so pleased to tell you that I finally got the opportunity to test it on my bed topper.

AND YESSSS, IT WORKS AS PROMISED. The stains, unfortunately, have been around for quite some time, so I couldn’t clean it as best as I wanted to (also, not the vacuum’s fault. Cleaning out stains would be the detergent’s job), but maaaaan, the feeling of seeing the water sucked out along with the debris? Best thing in the world.

Also, I just realized how dirty the bed topper is. I thought because I always use bed sheets, it wouldn’t be super dirty. I was wrooooong.

EW.

I’M SAYING THIS WITH THE SATISFACTION OF BILLION SUNS IN THE UNIVERSE BURNING THE ZIONISTS AND EVERYONE IN THE EPSTEIN FILES TO ASHES AND NOTHINGNESS: EWWWW. Duuuuude. Look at that! What a beauty! What a disgustingly satisfying result!

Also, since I used vacuum, it took a relatively short time for the bed topper to dry and I can immediately change the bed sheets.

Forget about the newest iPhone. THIS, my friend, if you are one of us, The Noble Cleaners, The Guardians of The Hearth and The House, The Knights of The Homestead, THIS is the best purchase ever.

The Firmansyahs in a Nutshell, Writings and General Commentaries

Hetch V10, homestead

💬 status.cafe:

The Blogger

Nindya. Kapkap. she/her. Indonesian in Malaysia. Millennial. Lo-fi. Post-Rock. Gregorian. Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Murder mystery genre. “Love is Love“.