Those days…

All throughout my growing up years, whenever we had any leftover rice, my mum would fry it in the morning for us for breakfast. Her recipe was very simple – she just fried some sliced shallots in oil, put in the rice and egg, added the seasoning – salt and msg and that was it. Sometimes, she would use dark soy sauce instead of salt.

It doesn’t sound like much, does it? But we thought the world of it and back in those good ol’ days, we considered having that for breakfast a really special treat, not something we would get every day. We did not have kampua mee all that often either. In fact, it was our weekend treat, only on Sundays after church provided we behaved well all throughout the service. Some of the young ones these days are not thus inclined and would rather go for something else, a burger at one of those fast food joints perhaps. Time sure has changed.

Well, these days, whenever there is leftover rice in the fridge, either we would steam it to heat it up and have it for our meals the following day or I would take and fry it for breakfast. I know people who would not touch overnight rice – it does taste a little different, not as nice but we’re fine with it.

There was a tub of leftover long-grain basmati rice in the fridge that morning so I took it to fry…

Right now, we have switched to this kind of rice as it is less starchy, not so bad when it comes to the hidden sugars and yes, we’ve cut down on the amount too, not so much each meal.

I peeled and sliced some shallots…

…and chopped some peeled garlic too…

…and I decided to throw in all the chopped daun sup (Chinese celery)…

…that we had for our Sarawak laksa that day but we could not finish all of it.

There was still some luncheon meat left in the fridge – I had had a few slices for my breakfast in the morning and I had not finished all of it yet. I decided I would use it in my fried rice so I cut a few slices and cut them all up into little cubes…

We have a lot of prawns in the freezer at the moment and I took a few and used…

Instead of adding salt and msg, I just took a tablespoon of my missus’ blended chili dip…

– that would be good enough.

When it was done, I garnished it with some chopped spring onion from my garden…

…and served.

I had that for my breakfast that morning but nobody else wanted it – maybe they have grown sick and tired of my fried rice, never mind that I try to cook it in so many different ways, and would rather go for those Korean instant noodles, for instance so I finished off the rest for lunch. Nothing went to waste!