what i like to eat as a child

the blur blur one not so humbly tagged me with this meme. since he’s so blur, i excuse him for not being humble, so am gonna take up the meme.

it’s a top 5 childhood MEMEries of things to eat meme.

out of the 5 food that the blur sotong shared, it seems that two food are also my childhood food memories. i will list them as the first two.

to continue reading, please click on ‘more’ below.

1. ‘ah tap chi’ biscuit.
‘ah tap chi’ is in er… hokkien i suppose? until now i still wonder why it is call ‘ah tap chi’. well, this biscuit is small bite size, round in shape. on top of this biscuit, is a swirl of colourful sugar icing. as a child, i love to eat this food for one thing because it is small – just pop the whole piece into my mouth, but best of all is for the sugar icing. i remember many a times, i like to break off the icing, and just eat the icing! that time small small lah, dunno how to be scared of sugar yet. this leaves the biscuits with no icing. my sister would complained and my mum would reprimanded me. heh.

2. turnip rojak
this was sold by the rojak man, who also sell ice-kacang btw. basically this is a piece of turnip (sengkuang) sliced thinly and spread with rojak sauce. to hold on to the piece of turnip, 2 pieces of toothpick is pierced through from the bottom. oh, on top of the sauce, crushed peanut were sprinkled. mmm… very yummy! i especially like to plead with the rojak man to sprinkle more peanuts!

3. kuaci (melon seed)
no, i don’t mean those red ones, where the chinese usually eat during chinese new year. i meant the black ones that came in small paper packet. it was a popular snack for munching at the movies! you know, like how popcorn used to be popular at the movies, kuaci seemed to be the ultimate movie snacks for malaysians that time.

one must have some technique to eating the kuaci. you should be able to crack the husk open with your teeth, then expertly use your teeth to flick open the husk and whoosh!… the teeth draw out the flesh (er… if that’s how you call it)… and you eat it – all in one go, with one hand, without your hand leaving your mouth!

well, i did not manage to master the technique. what i did was after cracking open the husk with my teeth, i took it out, and with the other hand, pull out the flesh, then only put the flesh inside my mouth to eat. sometimes i like to peel out all the flesh first, place them in one corner, then after i was satisfied with the numbers, only i slowly eat them. that way i felt, i can better enjoy eating as i did not have to ‘work’ just to eat one… i ‘worked’ first then after that get to enjoy all!

4. the buah ‘bus stand’.
er… sorry… i don’t know the actual name of this fruit but just remember i used to refer to it as ‘bus stand’. think it was a corrupted word of the actual name! it could be something ‘buah stan’ instead of ‘bus stand’. anybody have any idea what kind of fruit i meant?
this fruit has yellow skin and its flesh is thick and hard… kind of like the apple but much thicker. the taste is pretty bland but ahh… no fear, we have a method to make it taste good. what we did was to take a knife to make slits all round the flesh – horizontal and vertical, thus making the slits with ‘checks’ pattern. then we made our own sauce – a mixture of soya sauce (tau ewe) and sugar. you dip the fruit into the sauce and eat it. so yummy, i tell you! you see why the slits now – it was so that the sauce can sip in the flesh.

5. kacang putih
literally translated it is ‘white beans’ but no, i don’t mean that but i mean the kacang putih that were sold by an indian man on his tricycle. he had lots of different varieties of kacang, even muruku. he used paper to roll up to form a cone shape, then dish the kacang onto the cone. my favourite was the small brown ones that look like a normal peanut. methink the kacang putih man is still around but quite rare. you could find kacang putih selling at some departmental stores though, but here, they don’t give you the paper cone to hold your kacang but give you plastic bag instead.

ok that’s about it. boy, writing on these, reminds me of lots others food i like to eat during my childhood… and also of course during school days there were so many kind of snacks and titbits to blog about. maybe next time.

well now, i’m suppose to tag 5 other people. ok, let’s see who to tag… ahh… ok I TAG YOU! at’s right! you who are reading this right now! so go and get going tip tapping on the keyboard right now, ya’ hear?