Two-way…

I saw on Facebook that Mary’s sweet & beautiful daughter, just like the mum, would be making some cheesecakes for sale for Christmas. I remember she did give me one once with lots of chocolate but no, I am not so into cheesecakes.

A few days later, I spotted another post and this time around, she would be making pies! Aha!!! I would want those! She made me an apple pie for my birthday that day and it was so good – it sure put those miserable ones at that franchise place to shame. Of course, this is partly a matter of giving and taking, a two-way thing or in Hokkien, we say oo lai oo khi (got come, got go)…and considering that they have been giving me things all this while, the least I could do to reciprocate was to show a little bit of support.

I asked for a box of each type, three…

…altogether.

There were these chicken ones…

…with its very nice filling, so generous with the meat…

…and these beef and pumpkin ones…

…which were a little on the sweet side, probably because of the pumpkin…

…in them.

Last but not least, there were those awesome apple ones…

I remember in 1994, when I was at Marjons, Plymouth in the UK, the housekeeper (who looked like Susan Boyle before she became famous) gave me a box of mince pies. She told me that traditionally, they would eat them around Christmas as because of the shape, the pie symbolises the manger where Baby Jesus lay in the stable after He was born. Silly me, I thought there was minced meat in them but no, there was fruit mince instead. Well, we can’t get those here, not in Sibu and I thought these apple pies would make a great substitute, what do you think?

I can’t remember the prices now – they were over RM30.00 per box of 4 so that worked out to around RM8.00 per pie. I paid RM106.00 for all the three boxes, freshly baked, hot from the oven.

Moving on, it was the day after Christmas, Boxing Day, when I got a call from Bubu, my girl’s coursemate. He was posted here in 2013 and has been teaching here since. He and his family could not go home to Terengganu because there are only two “government-approved flights” per week and those that they booked were cancelled over and over again so they just gave up and decided to stay here for the holidays.

I understand that if you go to the airline website, there are a whole lot of flights and you can book any one of them…just that they would not be flying! This is absolutely ridiculous!!! Besides, when they come back, they would have to go through the tests and the 14-day quarantine and these would not be free for non-Sarawakians, RM2,400 per person so for the three of them, he would have to fork out over RM7,000 altogether.

That was why they drove to Sarikei the other day and I did hear them say that they would be going to Kuching the following week, putting the holidays to good use.

They went to this bakery in Sarikei that they said was very popular and they bought me these butter milk buns…

…and this assortment…

…as well, thank you so much.

As far as the texture of the bread went, I would say that it was pretty much the same as most of the modern-day bakeries here in Sibu, not old school like the roti paun I bought at the kampung stall that day. Having said that, I must say that the filling is a cut above many that I have eaten here. The butter milk filling, for instance, is more fragrant and not so dry as some of those here. I loved the custard filling that that nice-looking cylindrical bun and the spicy meat floss on top of the one on the right was really good. I don’t think I ever came across anything like that here. The big one was meat floss and chicken sausages and whatever else, nice too but I think that would not be so hard to find here.

I wanted to give them some made-in-Mukah keropok udang that I bought the other day but I could not see any halal logo on the label so I aborted the idea in the end. I also had some boxes of the Indonesian-made pasta in the house. I’ve bought some more to keep since my girl enjoys eating the cheese bolognese one so I gave those instead. Bubu’s wife said that the son loves pasta so he probably will enjoy it.

HONEYBEE BAKERY (2.130238, 111.518739) is just next to SugarBun Sarikei at No. 75, Jalan Masjid Lama.