Giving and receiving…

On Chap Goh Meh the other day, in the morning, I dropped by my favourite fish & seafood stall here in the hope of getting hold of one pek chio/ikan bawal putih (white/silver pomfret) which, unfortunately, was not available that day. However, I did manage to get an alternative for our steamboat dinner that night and we all enjoyed it a lot.

The nice lady said she had not seen me for a long time and she went and got something she wanted to give to me. She said that her ethnic employees went home for the Chinese New Year break and when they came back, they brought a lot of things to give to her. Yes, I did speak to the boys before and yes, they did appreciate the fact that she had always been so very nice to them and they did like her a lot.

She gave me this tapioca…

…which obviously came straight from under the ground. If you buy this at the market, they probably wash it first so it is nice and clean.

I had to wash it myself, after which I peeled off the skin and cut it into chunks…

Then, I put the chunks in a pot of water, added a teaspoon of salt…

…and brought it to boil. I let it simmer until it was cooked and was soft enough before I fished it all out onto a plate…

Normally, I would eat this with a bit of sugar or gula apong (nipah sugar) but this was so nice that I could just eat it on its own, no need for anything else.

Now, I am regretting saying, “Enough lah! Enough already lah!!!” the whole time she was taking the things from her huge bag to put into a smaller one to give to me. There is this joke about our Foochow social etiquette, how it is considered good manners when somebody is giving you something to say, “Nei ah! Nei ah! (No need! No need!) Enough already!” with the hands outstretched, wide open. LOL!!!

But truth be told, that was more than enough for the three of us in the house to enjoy and other than the tapioca, she also gave me these yam…

Perhaps it would be good to cook these in a claypot with prawns and leek and everything else. We’ll see!