When you say nothing at all…

This is an extension of something that cropped up in the midst of some comments made on Monday’s post – that in the traditional Asian society, people usually do not express themselves emotionally in word or in action.

Take, for example, this extract from John Steinbeck’s “The Pearl”:

When Kino had finished, Juana came back to the fire and ate her breakfast. They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway. Kino sighed with satisfaction – and that was conversation.

The couple was most probably a traditionally-wedded one following the customs and practices of the indigenous Mexican Indians – they were not married in church despite the fact that they were Catholics. They assumed their roles as husband and wife and were happy, living a poor and simple life together. Even when the husband beat up the wife, she, typical of the traditional subservient wives, accepted it quietly as being part and parcel of her being married to the man:

Although she might be puzzled by these differences between man and woman, she knew them and accepted them and needed them. Of course she would follow him, there was no question of that…She climbed painfully to her feet, and she dipped her cupped palms in the little waves and washed her bruised face with the stinging salt water, and then she went creeping up the beach after Kino.

No word was spoken, no apology, no expression of love – just quiet acceptance.

Those of you who have seen the musical “Fiddler on the roof” would be familiar with the scene where the husband was wondering what love was. His daughters were all running away to get married to the men that they loved instead of the ones the parents had arranged for them themselves or through a matchmaker. He had never said those three little words to his wife and his wife had never said them to him…and the events happening around him prompted him to ask his wife…

The irony, of course, is that marriages in the past lasted a lot longer than those in this present day and age. Whether they did or did not state in no uncertain terms that they would love one another for better or for worse, till death would they part, they stayed together till their dying days.

So what does everybody think? Is it really that important that we express our feelings to one another – saying I love you, hugging and kissing to express affection? Or is it a time-tried and tested fact that you say it best when you say nothing at all…?

It’s not unusual…

It’s not unusual for people to cook tom yam using sea food such as fish, prawns or sotong (cuttlefish) and so on but usually, the dish is soupy.

My missus bought two of this white pomfret (ikan bawal putih) the other day…

…and steamed one of them in the usual Chinese style. It would be such a waste to use the fish to cook tom yam as it would lose its sweetness in the soup…and being such an expensive fish, RM20-30 a kilo, I would like to savour the flavour and not have it drowned by the tom yam. So, I decided to steam it with tom yam sauce and to prepare the sauce, I used the following ingredients:

– tom yam paste, a bit of belacan (dried prawn paste), two stalks of lemon grass (serai), two slices of ginger and two or three pieces of assam keping (tamarind) plus chillies. I boiled them in a bit of water in a saucepan and leave it to cool. I thought it was a bit too sour, so I added a teaspoon of sugar to it.

Then I poured the tom yam sauce over the fish and steamed it for around 15-20 minutes…

The photo of the fish after the steaming turned out blur, so I’m afraid I am unable to post it here. It turned out to be very nice though and certainly was a welcome change from the usual. The sauce went well with the rice and we could still enjoy the taste of the fish, unadulterated. Perhaps you would like to give it a try?

Please, Mr Postman…

When my daughter was in Sungai Petani, we hardly ever wrote to each other as we always kept in touch via phonecalls and smses. Once in a while, I might sent her some important documents and stuff via poslaju and vice versa, that was all. But she did mention once about how her friends were so thrilled or excited whenever they received a letter from home.

Unfortunately, letter writing is now virtually a thing of the past. With mobile phones and things like Skype and MSN on the internet as well as emails, nobody writes letters anymore. We did, however, receive a letter from our daughter once though…

Around the end of her 1st year, she had to attend a BTN course somewhere around Bukit Jalil, a last-minute switch from the original venue in Klang. Much has been said about those BTN courses and I too have some stories to share…but I would not be doing that here. Whatever that has been said about the course, I particularly like the slot where they asked the participants to write a letter to their parents to express their feelings.

The letter arrived during the holidays and my daughter was home at the time, so I just skimmed through and did not pay much attention to it. But the other day, when I came across it, I read it slowly…line by line – words that came straight to the heart, words that certainly mean a lot to me…words that can never be replaced by any phone call or sms, email or through chatting on the internet.

That prompted me to send her a postcard that day…a Malaysian one with some people in the various traditional costumes. I did not write much – I just stuck a smiley on it…and wrote: “Lots of love, Daddy” underneath. I guess she knows it but sometimes, it is nice to be told over and over again.

I have another one that I may send to her some other day…

Incidentally, in case you do not know, it costs the same to send a postcard these days as a letter, sealed or unsealed. In the past, it was the cheapest and if you send a card unsealed, it would be cheaper than sending one with the envelope tightly sealed.

And talking about postcards, I received one myself on Saturday…

…and it was from Cleffairy…

Thanks a lot, Cleff, for the gesture and the thought. It certainly is nice to know that someone somewhere remembers me…

P.S.:
Just in case anyone of you is suffering from withdrawal symptoms because there’s no food in today’s post, here’s something that my missus cooked the other day…

– chicken and potatoes cooked with soy sauce, red wine and Bombay onions/ginger plus sugar and msg according to taste.

Looks good, doesn’t it? Yum! Yum! LOL!!!

Anyone can do it…

Don’t scoff! It you think that anyone can whisk up a plate of fried rice anytime, think again.

Somebody posted on Facebook that he had cooked some fried rice and was wondering why it was kind of wet. I wouldn’t know the reason – perhaps he added too much water when he cooked the rice or maybe he fried the rice immediately after he had cooked it. I pointed out to him that there were markings on the side of the pot in the rice cooker to guide him as to the amount of water needed when cooking the rice and he admitted that he had not noticed that before! After a few more attempts, nothing more was heard about him frying rice ever again.

So, you may want to give the rest of this post a miss or perhaps you would like to add some pointers of your own here and there…but if you do not know how to cook fried rice, read on!

You will need cooked rice, of course…

…and it is best to use overnight rice that has been kept in the fridge. Otherwise, you will have to cook the rice earlier and wait till it hascooled and has really dried up. Rub the lumps of rice to separate the grains and get the following ingredients ready…

The least you will need to have would be either chopped garlic or sliced onions, if you can’t have both. Chillies are optional and instead of the thinly sliced Chinese sausages, you  can use ordinary sausages or frankfurters, ikan bilis (dried anchovies) or luncheon meat, ham, bacon or even char siew (barbecued meat) instead.

Heat a bit of oil in the wok, throw in the garlic and onions and fry till golden brown. Add the chillies and the Chinese sausages and after stirring for a while, add the rice. Keep stirring, mixing the rice thoroughly with the ingredients.

Next, you have a choice of adding salt and msg…or chicken stock granules…or some kind of sauce such as soy sauce or oyster sauce. I added a bit of oyster sauce to give the fried rice a nicer colour – making sure that it was mixed thoroughly and the fried rice had an even colour. I added a bit of salt as it was not salty enough for me.

Finally, push the rice to one side of the wok and break one or two eggs into it. Stir the eggs till they have cooked a bit and then, mix them together with the rice. The fried rice is ready to be served…

…perhaps with a garnishing of chopped spring onions, fried onions and chopped fresh chillies, if you wish. If you want an all-in-one dish, you can throw in a packet of those frozen vegetables (carrot. sweet corn and peas) which will definitely give the dish some extra colour.

Easy, isn’t it? But do not speak too soon…as I heard recently that in Wellington, NZ, one of the girls – not the one with the burnt sausages – blew up a microwave oven when she tried to cook a half-boiled egg in it!!! And according to her, so far, the girls have blown up THREE microwave ovens already. Lord have mercy!!! The Kiwis must be thinking that these Malaysians must live in trees and have never used a microwave oven before… Duh!!!

Honesty…

The other day, I was walking past a shop and I saw that they had some very nice bananas for sale, so I bought some…

Then, somebody told me that the shop would usually charge more than elsewhere. To me, I am not normally bothered about such things. They tell me their price and I have the prerogative whether to buy or not. After all, I do not see the point in driving elsewhere to buy at a price that is not really that much lower – considering the petrol, the parking fee and all.

However, I was also told that they cut the bananas different from other places. They would usually leave a chunk of the stump that would add to the weight of the bananas. I never noticed that but when I went home, I decided to check that out and true enough, it was exactly as what I had heard…

That, I would consider as being dishonest – tantamount to a blatant attempt at cheating the customers…like in the past, before the days of plastic, where the shopkeepers would use their own-made paper bags and they would have layers and layers of the thick brown paper so that when they use them, that would add to the weight and they would be able to make more out of the customers.

I am not a wise consumer…but I guess I should be more wary from now on about such things when I go shopping so that I would not be robbed right under my very nose in broad daylight without the slightest inkling as to what is going on.

Been there before…

I’ve been there before – this relatively new coffee shop in the vicinity of the Delta Housing Estate here. I had the kampua noodles or was it what they claimed to be the kolo mee special? Whatever it was, it was not nice. The portion was small and it was not cheap plus the service was far from good. Perhaps they had just started their business then so they were not too familiar with what they were supposed to do.

Anyway, CK aka superman went there with his family and published a post on it in his blog. He said that his father liked the tomato kway teow and the fried tang hoon (glass noodles) were good too.  So I decided to go back there again and I had the tomato kway teow…

…but I did not think it was really great. I think the most I would say was that it was o.k. The ingredients certainly looked pathetic with the few bits of meat and vegetables.

My missus felt the same way about the Foochow fried noodles (with sauce) that she had…

In case anybody’s wondering, I would not have the slightest inkling either as to why the sauce/gravy was not completely brown as usually would be the case.

Another point that may be of interest is that CK said that he paid RM4.00 for the kway teow. I think mine was only RM3.00 – RM6.00 for two plates plus RM2.40 for 2 glasses of kopi-o-peng @ RM1.20 each, totalling RM8.40…and I gave them RM50.00 and got RM41.60 change. Maybe it was because I appeared decent and not so rich to them, I wouldn’t know. LOL!!!

And actually I can get the same things but a lot nicer elsewhere for only RM2.80…

Some kind of wonderful…

I was at the car wash at Taman Damai in the vicinity of the Sibu Civic Centre (Dewan Suarah) last Saturday morning and since Louis J was keen on meeting up for breakfast, I asked him to meet me there.

We went to this coffee shop…

…because they say the nasi lemak from the Malay stall there is very nice.

However, when we got there, I noticed that the stall in front had on its menu something that I had not seen before – pandan (screwpine leaves) kampua noodles…

I expected it to be something like the green soba noodles that they have in Japanese restaurants but it turned out to be kampua noodles and they added pandan extract to it. It turned out to be pretty good with a hint of pandan flavour in the kampua noodles, plus a light tint of green in the colour. Incidentally, should you go there and find that you are not given an egg, don’t complain. I asked for the extra – 70 sen for one egg. I love these lor-nui!

Louis J had the tang hoon (glass noodles) in this mixed liver and everything else soup…

…and he said it was nice.

Incidentally, the food from the “restaurant” at the back is very nice too. I particularly like their butter fish fillet. So, if anybody’s interested, you can go there for a bite…and maybe drop by at Aroma Bakery for the chicken pies.

We’ve only just begun…

On Sunday night, I was invited by Mary and Alex to dinner…

The newly-weds tied the knot on the 4th day of Chinese New Year but the wedding reception was in Miri so I had to give it a miss as at that time, I was caught up with all the hassle and the mess over my daughter’s leaving for New Zealand.

Will, a friend of ours, joined us for the dinner and of course, we had to have the butter scotch prawns…

I guess by now everyone would be able to guess where we went for the dinner! LOL!!! I also ordered my favourite – the bean combination dish…

…and everybody loved it!

We also had this dish of pork ribs…

I think they marinated the meat with ang chau – the residue obtained from making Foochow red wine…and fried it. Very nice! And surprisingly, it was not oily at all.

Besides the above dishes, we had another vegetable dish – some Sabah greens…

…and their crab meat soup…

All in all, the bill came up to RM57.00, inclusive of rice and drinks for four persons. Personally, I feel it was a bit expensive – maybe somewhere in the region of RM50 or less would be more reasonable. But we enjoyed the food and I enjoyed the company too.

Thanks, Mary and Alex…and wishing the two of you everlasting happiness and all the best in the years ahead.

Ring ring…

These days, they have branded this and branded that, branded everything. There is branded coffee, branded ice cream…and even branded doughnuts.

One of my friends bought me an assortment of one of the earliest, if not THE earliest, brand of doughnuts on my birthday once when I was in KL attending a meeting but I did not like any of them. Then, more recently, I had the opportunity to sample a box of a more current brand…and I only liked a couple of them but it was all because of the toppings.

As for the doughnut itself, I did not feel that it was really great. I think the little ones that I usually buy from the kampung here are a lot nicer…

…and for RM1.00, I can buy 10 of them!!!

Exactly how much do those branded doughnuts cost? I don’t know what those that I had the first time cost but if I’m not mistaken, the ones that I had the second time were around RM2.00 each. Ok…ok…the kampung ones do not have any topping. No problem at all!

Now what would you like? Raspberry on cream cheese…or grated cheese on condensed milk…or kaya (coconut custard jam) and butter…

LOL!!! They may not look that nice but I must say they all tasted great.

Which one do you think I liked best?

Freebird…

I think Gerrie would be particularly interested in this post. You see, she had always been asking us here to get hold of those free range eggs and send/carry them all the way to Kuching for her.

Free range? Well, for the uninitiated, free range chicken would be those left to run around like those in the kampung (village) and fed on corn and other natural stuff – none of those processed chicken feed…and these chickens would produce free range chicken eggs which are supposedly healthier than other types of chicken eggs. Such eggs were very hard to come by and they came in all sizes…some almost the size of quail eggs, I heard…and they were not cheap either. 60 sen each initially…and the last I heard the price had gone up to 80 sen or something like that.

Well, they have now commercialised the production and sale of free range eggs, otherwise called kampung chicken eggs and they are available at some of the supermarkets in town…

As you can see, they are a lot smaller than normal eggs and the colour of the shell is very pale…

…but it looks pretty much the same inside…

…except that the yolk has a darker shade of orange…and when I fried some that day for my popiah, I found the omelette a lot more yellow than usual.

As for the price, my missus said it was RM5.00 for a pack of 10 at The Marketplace (Delta Mall)…but my sis saw some selling for RM6.80 at a mini-supermarket at Taman Damai. Ummm…I think I’ll take my sister’s word for it – she’s a lot more dependable where money is concerned. LOL!!! I guess that works out to almost 70 sen each.

So, Gerrie…how many dozen do you want? I’ll be going to Kuching sometime in mid-April…