When a child is born…

Among the Chinese/Foochow community here, when a woman has given birth, she is confined to her room/her house to recuperate and revitalise for 30 days during which she will be fed with all kinds of nutritious foods and tonics to ensure her well-being.

During this time, all the friends and relatives may drop by to visit and to see the new born and traditionally, they will bring along a live chicken and a tray of eggs…or a box of Brands’ essence of chicken or even a bottle of Wincarnis or D.O.M. Benedictine. In Foochow, this is called “seng ngang” and during the visit, they will be invited to eat mee sua (longevity thread noodles) in chicken soup cooked with lots of ginger and traditional Foochow red wine.

As they leave, they would be given a few hardboiled eggs which, in the past,  would be coloured red if the baby was a boy. These days, with all the warnings about the dangers of artificial colouring, they do not do that anymore. In fact, they do not even cook the eggs – so you do not have to eat eggs that have been boiled the day before or something like that and can cook them yourself and eat them fresh in any way you want.

Now, if you can remember, I mentioned in a post sometime ago that a friend of mine was learning how to cook kacang ma chicken in preparation for his wife’s confinement. Being originally from Kuching, the wife would want to eat that sometimes for a change. Well, she has delivered on the 20th of October – a girl, so now they have two daughters and the son, as you can see, is quite delighted that he is still THE prince…

Last weekend, they invited me and my missus to their house for this seng ngang customary practice…and of course, there was the kacang ma chicken…

*recycled pic*

…and I must say my friend has indeed mastered the skill of cooking very well – it was absolutely perfect! Very very nice indeed!

And I also loved the black vinegar pork leg that the confinement lady cooked…

Yum! Yum!

As if all that was not enough, there was also this fried chicken marinated with tau-ju (fermented bean curd)…

…this Sibu Foochow-style sio bee…

…and this dish of mixed vegetables…

…among others.

Oops!!! In my enthusiasm and enjoyment of the delicious array of food, I forgot to take any photograph of the traditional mee sua and hardboiled eggs. LOL!!! Well, if anyone wants to see those, they can click here or here or here to have a look.

Congratulations to my friend and his missus on their new arrival. They have given their three children names beginning with A, B and C in that particular order and I wonder if they are actually planning to make up all the 26 letters of the alphabet! Good grief! Hahahahahaha!!!