Changed…

I felt like having some mee kua aka mee sanggul that day so I went and bought a bag of it. I blogged about it here once and it was RM4.80 a bag then in 2010 but now it has gone up by 50 sen, to RM5.30 but I do think that’s all right considering that it was so many years ago and since then, the prices of flour and everything else have gone up. Still, with 11 pieces in the bag…

…that works out to less than 50 sen each so it is still rather cheap especially if one compares that to the noodles sold outside.

I remember how they used to have these noodles in big rattan baskets outside the grocery stores and anyone buying would pick the number of pieces he or she wanted and have them weighed and pay the total – it was only 50 sen a kati then. I also remember how there were boll weevils in them and these would float up in the water in the process of cooking and one would have to sieve these away.  But somehow or other, they tasted much nicer in those days compared to these that I had bought. Maybe this particular type was not so nice and I should avoid it in future, I don’t really know. But the pieces of noodles were bigger than usual and I was quite disappointed that they were not round like a sanggul (hair bun)…

I cooked some…

….and I felt that the fragrance that this type of noodles usually has just wasn’t there…and somehow, it did not seem as nice as when my mum cooked them during my  growing up years.  I remember that she did not use a lot of ingredients – just soy sauce and msg and in those days, everyone used Ve Tsin but everytime she cooked it, I would enjoy it to the max. Ah yes! Perhaps it was the lard that she used to toss the noodles – I do not have that in the house as I do not use it in any of my cooking.

But still, it was quite good. I fried some sliced shallots in a bit of oil (my mum never did that) and used that to toss the noodles and other than the soy sauce and a bit of msg, I also added a spoonful of my missus’ pounded chilli and some chopped spring onions…

…and I would say I did enjoy it and one thing’s for sure, it was a lot nicer than the more expensive noodles at some of the places outside but somehow, like it or not, things do have changed. Despite the fact that my mum did not do all those little extras, hers did seem a whole lot nicer…

Could it be that it was all so simple then,
or has time rewritten every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again,
tell me, would we…could we?