Triple Five Meme ~ School Day Meals and Childhood Cuisine Experience

Yvy had generously tagged me on a meme about our childhood food experience. As such, I have, over the weekend trying to recollect my first experiences as well as some of my childhood favorite grub be it in school, home cooked or dining out. I’ve listed five food items in each of the five categories. Here are some of them… as I remembered……….

Canteen Hot Sellers ~ As any anyone will tell you that as a kid back in school, when you get to buy the grub that you really like, that means that stuff that is usually not at all healthy. Hey, was fun to eat, who cares about health anyways. I recalled one of my usual purchases will be the mamee krunchies, yep, the yellow packet of freeze dried noodle that you’ll crush the packet before eating and another frequent purchases is the keropok bantal. As a kid you can actually survive on this, amazing.

Sometimes, when you’re pretty bored with the usual lunch, you’ll never fail to find goreng pisang and fried popiah available, again, quick fun food. My top hot seller on the list will be the canteen 20 cent karipap, it is the THE food for any kid in their school days. I can’t seem to get enough of those cheap karipap, don’t really care if you are actually eating more air than fillings, it’s just taste sensation. You can actually taste the sunny fun happy feelings when you are munching down that bit of karipap. Brilliant.

Daily School Diet ~ When I’m not busy stuffing down junk food for lunch, my normal diet consists of the 30 cent roti canai, usually eaten when you need more time to play during lunch. The 30 cent nasi lemak and 50 cent fried noodles are the usual school lunch, I take the noodles with a spoonful of sambal mixed into it, love that kick.

Sometimes you wanna save a few cents, I’ll bring my own lunch, my favourite is the FOC kaya butter bread, I love the salty sweet taste of the mix and I usually make it triple deck, I did tried a quarter deck once, but not practical, can’t fit into my mouth. Why I needed to save the lunch money? Well, to purchase the very expensive but delicious RM1.20 fresh chicken burger, yep, fresh vegs and fresh off the grill, hot and tasty chicken burger. This bit of a meal can only afford once a week but well worth the wait.

Home cook Delights ~ Nothing beats home cook food, it’s the taste and quality that makes the difference. Among the dishes, include the stew pork knuckles with vinegar; I hated this dish as a kid. One day, out of curiosity, decided to sample some, I was hooked since then, a good stew pork is when the meat is totally soft and all the vinegar juices is in the meat.

One of my all time favourite is the clay pot stew pork in soy sauce; the pork bits must have the nice layer of fat in them that makes it a bonafide stew pork. A key part is also the clay pot bit; food cook in them gives a better flavor to the meat compare to the aluminum pot. Another dish is the clay pot curry chicken. As a boy, I had the duty to pound to chili bits using a mortar; we didn’t have a blender then. Yes, we do it the traditional way. What I like most about this dish is that I get to drink the curry, like soup.

A simple dish that you can’t go wrong is the fried chili padi ikan bilis with onions. There is another version with sugar but I prefer the former, you can have an entire meal with just this dish. My favourite and ideal lunch as a kid will be fried luncheon meat with Campbell chicken soup. I always had this vision back then, that for lunch you have to have this dish. I guess when we traveled on trips and we always have fried luncheon meat with bread for lunch. This was a heaven sent lunch meal then.

Exotic Adventures ~ When we are going out, it’s treat now and then to have some exotic dishes. The earliest I can remember was rabbit soup, nothing to shout about. I thought it was a bit of a bore, it was a healthy dish that’s why. The meat tasted like chicken too. That reminds me of the time I had ostrich burger, it is lean and quite soft, I remember I had that only once.

Another so-called exotic dish is BBQ spicy stingray but nothing beats the time I had some stir-fried snake, yep, tender but a bit bony not much meat, you can also eat the skin, which they deep fried as well. My specialty is the oven BBQ lamb, I was the designated lamb-cooking guy of the house. A simple bit of marinating the meat for a while and throw them into an oven, out comes piping hot sizzling lamb meat, I remember we used to have lots of this.

Weekend Selections ~ on weekends, I will have my favourite char kuey teow or wan tan mee, like my noodles fried or soy sauced. There was also once in a while treats of pandan chicken, whenever we are having Thai or an upscale Coliseum black pepper steak, yeah, this was before the time of Chili’s. My all time kiddy favourite treat was the deep fried yam with mix nuts, can’t translate this in Cantonese, but I think those had the dish will know. I like my yam fried. There you have it, some of my childhood food experience and school meals. Any of this is your favorites? Cheers!

Those who have been meme-ed by Yvy:-
1) Hedon
2) Cmos
3) Helen
4) JoeC

I shall in my meme duty tag the following people:-
1. Wingz aka Rojaks
2. Fishtail
3. Belacans aka Buaya 69
4. Lynnee aka SpicyLife
5. Winnism

(Belacans replaced Lilian, she was tagged earlier, brrrr)

Rules are simple, list down five types of your favourite childhood grub. At the end, you will list the people in your group that's been tagged and list out three or more people you want to tag. If you wanna take the extended version like the above, list out five categories with five food items in each. Good luck then. Challenge!