Back home…

My girl is back home for the long end-of-year holidays.

The first morning she was home, I cooked some fried rice…

…but there wasn’t much leftover rice so we did not have all that much to go round. I had dried anchovies…and some pounded sambal udang kering (dried prawns) and bits of pineapple that I found in the fridge and of course, I threw in an egg as well like what I would always do…and I sprinkled some crushed peanut on top and served it with some keropok (prawn crackers) by the side.

Anyway, Melissa isn’t really into fried rice – she got quite sick of it as she virtually had that every day when she was at the teacher-training institute at Sungai Petani, Kedah. She had her meals at the stalls outside right across the road and I told her specifically to only eat what they would cook on the spot and not go for the nasi campur (mixed rice) – I went over to eat there when I took her to the college on registration day and I was horrified at the sight of how they simply left all the food uncovered and what was worse was that one could actually see the flies all lined up on the edges of the food trays like birds on the electric wire! Shudders!!!

That was why when she woke up that morning, we all went out for breakfast and we skipped lunch that day as we were all too full. She did not want to go with me when I went out to meet my ex-student, Julia, and her friend, Alistair, for tea that afternoon as she said that she wanted to cook something different (from the usual stuff that the mum would cook everytime) for dinner.

Well, she made this very delightful salad dish…

…to go with the nicely-grilled lamb…

…and the spaghetti…

Needless to say it was a delightful meal…but there was a lot left over. I guess experience will eventually teach her how much to cook for so many people but then again, the mum will always cook too much as I guess she was used to her or her mum cooking for their family – and they have a big family so never mind if there are only 2 or half a dozen, one size fits all!

While I was out that afternoon, I decided to stop by this supermarket in town that sells all the nice imported stuff to get Melissa some snacks. Personally, I will not go for such things but she will usually enjoy eating them in between meals so I got her these…

Of course, they were by no means cheap but never mind! They were for my little girl and I never had to spend much on her, anyway. Other than on food and books, she would not really buy much else and now that she’s working and earning her own money, she would insist on using her own money most of the time. I was thinking that since I was out on my own, it would be a good chance to pick up a few things for her and pamper her a bit – as they say, old habits die hard! LOL!!!

While I was at the supermarket, I saw a few things on offer…

…and I bought those as well. My missus bought the cookies before (RM7.90 a box) and I thought they were pretty good. Nope, there’s no cheese inside as what you can see in the picture but the cookies have this very nice buttery fragrance and personally, I find them nicer than the very expensive Danish butter cookies. We’ve never had those on the left before though (RM5.90) – made somewhere in the EU…and there was nothing on the packet that I could decipher so I would not know exactly where they were made. Those Kit Kat chocolate wafers were probably made in Japan and though we hardly ever bought any of those, at the offer price of RM9.90 for 13 pieces, I decided to grab a pack and pamper ourselves a bit. We do deserve that sometime, don’t we?

Well, that was the first day Melissa was home – hang on, there’ll be lots more to come, I’m sure!