Baby Gerber: The American Years
I don't remember much of what I ate when growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, but I suspect it involved copious amounts of bottled Gerber baby food. According to my Ma I use to always ask for “epal jus masuk dalam botol” (apple juice in my baby bottle) and taking great pleasure in pressing the water / ice dispenser on the refrigerator. I have vague memories of going trick o' treating around our safe little neighborhood of Pasadena on Halloween with my Ma, while my sister got to go with her friends, and loading up my pumpkin shaped basket with things my Ma would later regret allowing me to eat that night when I would keep the whole family up on my sugar high.
Fine Dining
Despite having spent a considerable part of my childhood abroad, I can assure you that my culinary taste for the wonderfully foreign and strangely exotic developed at a rather later stage. Adolescent caviar-nibbling sophisticate I was not. My gastronomic awakening for finer foods only happened in my late teens, when I eventually began to appreciate the delicacy of sashimi; the freshness of oysters, the richness of pate.
Prior to such breakthroughs, I was very much a plain eater. Growing up, on occasions when my parents took my sister and I to nice restaurants, my standard order would be a very uncontroversial grilled salmon steak. Lapin, canard or anything with fish roe? Thanks, but no thanks. I recall a family trip to Shanghai and being forced to eat a whole sea cucumber, considered a Chinese delicacy, against my will, as to not offend the host - which ended with me swallowing the quivering, tasteless, gelatinous mass, all the while shooting daggers with my eyes across the table to my dad over the rest of the dinner.
Birthday Cake
I was one of those lucky kids who got homemade birthday cakes made by my Ma every year. Back then while my Ma was into her baking phase, she would design elaborately iced birthday cakes for my birthday parties, the most memorable being a tooth achingly iced Rainbow Brite shaped cake. After a boisterous afternoon of games like Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Musical Chairs, and the spectacular smashing of the candy filled Piñata, would come the grand unveiling of the birthday cake. Oh, how my friends oohhed and ahhed in envy at the beautiful cake as I smugly blew out the candles.
Tea Time
One of my favorite drinks as a kid was hot sweet black Lipton tea. It was a grown up drink for grown-ups to take during tea time at family friends’ houses, because somehow only adults seemed to enjoy taking small dainty sips of the piping hot liquid. Impatient kids like myself had yet to master the skill of taking small dainty sips; we only knew how to gulp. So, like many other Malay kids, I learnt how to drink tea from a saucer. As our mothers sat by the poolside at my friend Bakti's house in Madrid while we ran around, unheeded warnings of not running around the slippery poolside escaping us, the hot tea was carefully poured from its dainty tea cups (by our mothers, of course) onto the accompanying saucers where the tea would spread and cool quickly at an acceptable temperature for young palates. Uncouth perhaps, but it did the trick, as we happily drew the saucers to our mouths, gulping down the sweet tea to quench out thirsts.
Kuih-muih
Accompanying teatime were most often an assortment of Malay sweets and savories, the most ubiquitous being the humble curry puff (karipap). Everyone had a different way of eating a curry puff, depending on its shape, the most common being the half moon shaped pastry. As a kid, I would carefully nibble the painstakingly scalloped edged crusts, saving the spiced meat and potato filled centre for last.
Other perennial classics would include the sweet pink layered Kuih Lapis (my childhood favorite), the spongy lime green rolls of the Kuih Ketayap (my sister’s favorite) the banana leaf wrapped sticky coconut filled Kuih Coci (my dad's favorite), and the sunshine yellow Kuih Bingka Ubi (my Ma's favorite). After picking me up from school, my Ma and I would make our usual stop at our favorite stalls in Ampang Jaya to pick up an assortment of cakes or kuih muih for tea time.
Goreng Pisang (or Pisang Goreng)
A big teatime favorite to this very day was the banana fritter or the goreng pisang (or is it pisang goreng?). Squidgy ripe bananas coated in batter and fried in a vat of boiling hot oil until satisfyingly crisp on the outside and soft and caramelized on the inside. We would often set out at about 3-4pm in the late afternoon to our favorite goreng pisang stall in Ampang Jaya, where we would be greeted by a long line of hungry patrons, steaming their faces over the hot wok of bubbling oil as they waited for their order. If you were lucky, the goreng pisang lady would add extra crispy bits of batter in your bag. My sister and I would impatiently pop the goreng pisang into our mouths during the ride home, burning the roofs of our mouths in the process.
My Ma's Strawberry Shortcake
One of my favorite things that my Ma use to make on special occasions was her lovely strawberry shortcake. A sweet crumbly short crust pie topped with shiny red strawberries, and lovingly drizzled with gently heated raspberry jam. A perfect triangle slice would be served at tea time with a cloud of cream and sweet tea. Over the phone the other day, my Ma was telling me she had made her shortcake in Moscow a few days earlier, managing to eat a few slices of it herself until she eventually had to give it away as there was no one else around to eat it, which really, made me feel a bit sad.
I don't remember much of what I ate when growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, but I suspect it involved copious amounts of bottled Gerber baby food. According to my Ma I use to always ask for “epal jus masuk dalam botol” (apple juice in my baby bottle) and taking great pleasure in pressing the water / ice dispenser on the refrigerator. I have vague memories of going trick o' treating around our safe little neighborhood of Pasadena on Halloween with my Ma, while my sister got to go with her friends, and loading up my pumpkin shaped basket with things my Ma would later regret allowing me to eat that night when I would keep the whole family up on my sugar high.
Fine Dining
Despite having spent a considerable part of my childhood abroad, I can assure you that my culinary taste for the wonderfully foreign and strangely exotic developed at a rather later stage. Adolescent caviar-nibbling sophisticate I was not. My gastronomic awakening for finer foods only happened in my late teens, when I eventually began to appreciate the delicacy of sashimi; the freshness of oysters, the richness of pate.
Prior to such breakthroughs, I was very much a plain eater. Growing up, on occasions when my parents took my sister and I to nice restaurants, my standard order would be a very uncontroversial grilled salmon steak. Lapin, canard or anything with fish roe? Thanks, but no thanks. I recall a family trip to Shanghai and being forced to eat a whole sea cucumber, considered a Chinese delicacy, against my will, as to not offend the host - which ended with me swallowing the quivering, tasteless, gelatinous mass, all the while shooting daggers with my eyes across the table to my dad over the rest of the dinner.
Birthday Cake
I was one of those lucky kids who got homemade birthday cakes made by my Ma every year. Back then while my Ma was into her baking phase, she would design elaborately iced birthday cakes for my birthday parties, the most memorable being a tooth achingly iced Rainbow Brite shaped cake. After a boisterous afternoon of games like Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Musical Chairs, and the spectacular smashing of the candy filled Piñata, would come the grand unveiling of the birthday cake. Oh, how my friends oohhed and ahhed in envy at the beautiful cake as I smugly blew out the candles.
Tea Time
One of my favorite drinks as a kid was hot sweet black Lipton tea. It was a grown up drink for grown-ups to take during tea time at family friends’ houses, because somehow only adults seemed to enjoy taking small dainty sips of the piping hot liquid. Impatient kids like myself had yet to master the skill of taking small dainty sips; we only knew how to gulp. So, like many other Malay kids, I learnt how to drink tea from a saucer. As our mothers sat by the poolside at my friend Bakti's house in Madrid while we ran around, unheeded warnings of not running around the slippery poolside escaping us, the hot tea was carefully poured from its dainty tea cups (by our mothers, of course) onto the accompanying saucers where the tea would spread and cool quickly at an acceptable temperature for young palates. Uncouth perhaps, but it did the trick, as we happily drew the saucers to our mouths, gulping down the sweet tea to quench out thirsts.
Kuih-muih
Accompanying teatime were most often an assortment of Malay sweets and savories, the most ubiquitous being the humble curry puff (karipap). Everyone had a different way of eating a curry puff, depending on its shape, the most common being the half moon shaped pastry. As a kid, I would carefully nibble the painstakingly scalloped edged crusts, saving the spiced meat and potato filled centre for last.
Other perennial classics would include the sweet pink layered Kuih Lapis (my childhood favorite), the spongy lime green rolls of the Kuih Ketayap (my sister’s favorite) the banana leaf wrapped sticky coconut filled Kuih Coci (my dad's favorite), and the sunshine yellow Kuih Bingka Ubi (my Ma's favorite). After picking me up from school, my Ma and I would make our usual stop at our favorite stalls in Ampang Jaya to pick up an assortment of cakes or kuih muih for tea time.
Goreng Pisang (or Pisang Goreng)
A big teatime favorite to this very day was the banana fritter or the goreng pisang (or is it pisang goreng?). Squidgy ripe bananas coated in batter and fried in a vat of boiling hot oil until satisfyingly crisp on the outside and soft and caramelized on the inside. We would often set out at about 3-4pm in the late afternoon to our favorite goreng pisang stall in Ampang Jaya, where we would be greeted by a long line of hungry patrons, steaming their faces over the hot wok of bubbling oil as they waited for their order. If you were lucky, the goreng pisang lady would add extra crispy bits of batter in your bag. My sister and I would impatiently pop the goreng pisang into our mouths during the ride home, burning the roofs of our mouths in the process.
My Ma's Strawberry Shortcake
One of my favorite things that my Ma use to make on special occasions was her lovely strawberry shortcake. A sweet crumbly short crust pie topped with shiny red strawberries, and lovingly drizzled with gently heated raspberry jam. A perfect triangle slice would be served at tea time with a cloud of cream and sweet tea. Over the phone the other day, my Ma was telling me she had made her shortcake in Moscow a few days earlier, managing to eat a few slices of it herself until she eventually had to give it away as there was no one else around to eat it, which really, made me feel a bit sad.
Lunchbox Envy
I was one of those kids who always brought a packed lunch to school. In my tin Care Bears lunchbox, (which eventually evolved into the much more socially acceptable brown paper lunch bag), you would typically find a sandwich (tuna, chicken salad, Spanish tortilla or if I was really unlucky, a slice of Kraft cheese) a box of Joy fruit juice and a dessert of some sort, like a bag of cookies or a piece of fruit.
I was always jealous of the kids who got to buy their lunches, heading straight to the canteen right off the school bus every morning to pick up their little red or blue plastic coins (a system designed to prevent kids from going hungry when they inevitably lost their lunch money later in the day). When lunchtime came, those kids would come to the table with their beige plastic trays yielding oddly sweet tasting pizza or mushy mac ’n cheese, or maybe shepherd’s pie, with a box of milk and perhaps a celery stick smothered in peanut butter on the side.
To mix it up a bit, we often did lunchbox trades, bartering off the contents of our lunchbox to the highest bidder. My iced cookies, you remember those small rounds of biscuit topped with pastel colored hard icing, was a hot commodity. I often traded these cookies, with my eye on the ultimate trade - Kristine’s mom’s soft chocolate cake with white icing.
Vegetables
In all honesty, I can't remember eating a lot of vegetables as a kid without being forced to. Thankfully, as an adult, I’ve grown to love most vegetables like steamed broccoli, stir-fried kai lan and rocket salad. But I wish I could for the life of me remember what great injustice that was done unto me as child by The Carrot that would breed such hatred for the orange root, even to this very day.
At The Stove
My adolescent experiences at the stove were limited to reheating a can of Campbell’s mushroom soup (a favorite back then), and attempts of making a cheese omelet, (more accurately, cheesy scrambled eggs) for breakfast. My Ma never really took a proactive approach to trying to get me in the kitchen. In fact I only really learned how to cook out of desperation in my first year of university, v. much by trial and error (who knew that smothering soya sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce onto chicken thighs would yield such salty (unedible) results). Thankfully I swam more than sank, though there were nights when dinner was defeated and duly dumped into the trash bin, followed by the opening of the emergency packs of Maggi. Eventually, I graduated from Brahims ready made packets of Chicken Kurma, to plain grilled chicken breast to homemade Tandoori chicken. But after a long day of work and coming home to a quiet house, I sometimes find myself going back to the very basics: tearing open a can of Heinz Tomato Soup.
Candy, Candy, Candy
Unless you were brought up by Puritans, no recollection of a happy childhood is complete without the sweet memories of the cavity inducing delight that is: Candy. There are numerous occasions in one’s childhood that would be conducive to the massive consumption of candy, like say, your birthday, your best your sister’s birthday, Valentine’s Day (think heart-shaped candies with cutesy sayings on them), Christmas (candy canes), Easter (chocolate eggs), Halloween (anything goes) etc etc.
Going to American schools, I was exposed to all sorts of weird and wonderful American candy like Bubblegum Tape (a never ending strip of bubblegum in a scotch tape dispenser), Nerds (colorful coated bits of flavored sugar), Tootsie Rolls (chewy candy the color of poo), Big Red gum (spicy cinnamon bubblegum), Jawbreakers (hard balls of sugar that you suck on), Jolly Ranchers (fruit flavored hard candy) and Twizzlers (tasteless but fun chewy red batons). My friends and I would load up on junky candy at our dealer – Toys R’ Us – and have a sugar fuelled riot at birthdays and sleepovers.
Of course there were the British equivalents – a tin of shiny Quality Street candies, a roll of Rowntree Fruit Gums or a sophisticated box of After Eight mints. But they could never quite measure up to the wonderfully tacky superiority of their stateside counterparts.
I could go into a whole other paragraph about other fantastic American inventions like Snapple, Lisa Frank stationary and Bonne Bell cosmetics, but I might scare you by how America-saturated my childhood really was (considering that it took place no where near the North American continent for the most part).
Rice Krispy Treats
Another quintessentially junky American concoction that made regular appearances at birthday parties, Girl Scout gatherings and school bake sales was the tacky but tasty Rice Krispy Treats. Cheap, unbelievably easy to make (nuke a pack of marshmallows and a chunk of butter in the microwave til soft, dump in a box of Rice Krispies, mix well, smooth flat into a tray, refrigerate, eat with relish) and surprisingly versatile; think red and green dyed Rice Krispy Treat squares decorated with sparkly glitter for a really classy Christmas themed treat.
Around the Campfire
The schools I went to liked to organise a lot of outdoorsy activities like hiking, kayaking and camping. After a long day of climbing up and down mountains and rowing up mangrove swamps, camping supposedly taught us kids basic self survival skills like how to set up a tent and how to cook your dinner over a real life campfire. But don’t kid yourself - dinner was more often than not derived from some kind of packaging, whether instant noodles, sliced bread or some kind of soup mix, which required limited skills like tearing open some paper packaging and perhaps some stirring. There would be no skinning of animals or roasting on a spit. At most, there might be a can of Spam available. The best part of camping though? S’mores: marshmallows toasted over the fire that turned crispy brown on the outside and white and gooey on the inside, sandwiched with a piece of chocolate between two graham crackers. Eating S’mores with your classmates while huddled around the campfire made all the day’s hiking worthwhile.
The Sandwich Maker
Growing up in Madrid, whenever Spazlee and I were hankering for a snack, we always knew what would hit the spot: a grilled cheese sandwich. But not just any grilled cheese. Grilled cheese with the ultimate cheese – La Cabaña, which came with a hard yellow rind that had to be sliced off before being sliced thinly. The slices of cheese would be arranged on thickly cut white bread and squished into the amazing newly acquired sanduchera (sandwich maker). Out would come toasted triangular pockets that would satisfyingly ooze gooey yellow cheese once bitten into, and occasionally dipped into a puddle of ketchup.
Ethical Eating
Though I have generally evolved into a try-everything-once type of eater, there remains several greenfields in the culinary landscape that I have yet to tread upon. I don't eat veal and I have never eaten foie gras - more for ethical reasons rather than any real objection to the taste of baby cow and fatty goose liver (which I am quite sure is probably v. tasty). I don't think I can bring myself to eat rabbit, horse, kangaroo or generally any animal that should stereotypically belong on the pages of children’s storybook rather than on my plate. But don’t get me wrong - I'm by no means one of those radical political vegans. I enjoy a medium rare rib eye steak as much as the next carnivore. But I don’t think I can eat Peter Rabbit.
The Taste of Home
Though, as a family, we lived, worked, and played far from home, in a way, we never really felt that we were all that far. Because the home that we grew up in was very much a Malaysian home, not so much in the movies we watched or the slang we spoke in or even the clothes we wore, but more so for the Malaysian food we ate. My mother, bless her, never let us forget where we came from through the many Malaysian dishes that she lovingly cooked and put on the dinner table every night for the family. No matter how far from Malaysia or any semblance of a Pasar Malam we were, my Ma somehow managed to procure enough ingredients to cook every kind of dish that would remind us of home, from Homemade Satay to Udang Nasi Kandar to her famous Nasi Kabuli to her super special Salmon Masak Assam. Of course as kids, my sister and I would sometimes turn up our noses to her offerings in favor of McDonalds or Pizza Hut. But now as adults, every time I take a bite of my Ma’s Nasi Lemak or Ketam Goreng, I am always gratefully reminded of how well taken care of we were as kids, and how I can only endeavor to do the same for my own family someday.
I was one of those kids who always brought a packed lunch to school. In my tin Care Bears lunchbox, (which eventually evolved into the much more socially acceptable brown paper lunch bag), you would typically find a sandwich (tuna, chicken salad, Spanish tortilla or if I was really unlucky, a slice of Kraft cheese) a box of Joy fruit juice and a dessert of some sort, like a bag of cookies or a piece of fruit.
I was always jealous of the kids who got to buy their lunches, heading straight to the canteen right off the school bus every morning to pick up their little red or blue plastic coins (a system designed to prevent kids from going hungry when they inevitably lost their lunch money later in the day). When lunchtime came, those kids would come to the table with their beige plastic trays yielding oddly sweet tasting pizza or mushy mac ’n cheese, or maybe shepherd’s pie, with a box of milk and perhaps a celery stick smothered in peanut butter on the side.
To mix it up a bit, we often did lunchbox trades, bartering off the contents of our lunchbox to the highest bidder. My iced cookies, you remember those small rounds of biscuit topped with pastel colored hard icing, was a hot commodity. I often traded these cookies, with my eye on the ultimate trade - Kristine’s mom’s soft chocolate cake with white icing.
Vegetables
In all honesty, I can't remember eating a lot of vegetables as a kid without being forced to. Thankfully, as an adult, I’ve grown to love most vegetables like steamed broccoli, stir-fried kai lan and rocket salad. But I wish I could for the life of me remember what great injustice that was done unto me as child by The Carrot that would breed such hatred for the orange root, even to this very day.
At The Stove
My adolescent experiences at the stove were limited to reheating a can of Campbell’s mushroom soup (a favorite back then), and attempts of making a cheese omelet, (more accurately, cheesy scrambled eggs) for breakfast. My Ma never really took a proactive approach to trying to get me in the kitchen. In fact I only really learned how to cook out of desperation in my first year of university, v. much by trial and error (who knew that smothering soya sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce onto chicken thighs would yield such salty (unedible) results). Thankfully I swam more than sank, though there were nights when dinner was defeated and duly dumped into the trash bin, followed by the opening of the emergency packs of Maggi. Eventually, I graduated from Brahims ready made packets of Chicken Kurma, to plain grilled chicken breast to homemade Tandoori chicken. But after a long day of work and coming home to a quiet house, I sometimes find myself going back to the very basics: tearing open a can of Heinz Tomato Soup.
Candy, Candy, Candy
Unless you were brought up by Puritans, no recollection of a happy childhood is complete without the sweet memories of the cavity inducing delight that is: Candy. There are numerous occasions in one’s childhood that would be conducive to the massive consumption of candy, like say, your birthday, your best your sister’s birthday, Valentine’s Day (think heart-shaped candies with cutesy sayings on them), Christmas (candy canes), Easter (chocolate eggs), Halloween (anything goes) etc etc.
Going to American schools, I was exposed to all sorts of weird and wonderful American candy like Bubblegum Tape (a never ending strip of bubblegum in a scotch tape dispenser), Nerds (colorful coated bits of flavored sugar), Tootsie Rolls (chewy candy the color of poo), Big Red gum (spicy cinnamon bubblegum), Jawbreakers (hard balls of sugar that you suck on), Jolly Ranchers (fruit flavored hard candy) and Twizzlers (tasteless but fun chewy red batons). My friends and I would load up on junky candy at our dealer – Toys R’ Us – and have a sugar fuelled riot at birthdays and sleepovers.
Of course there were the British equivalents – a tin of shiny Quality Street candies, a roll of Rowntree Fruit Gums or a sophisticated box of After Eight mints. But they could never quite measure up to the wonderfully tacky superiority of their stateside counterparts.
I could go into a whole other paragraph about other fantastic American inventions like Snapple, Lisa Frank stationary and Bonne Bell cosmetics, but I might scare you by how America-saturated my childhood really was (considering that it took place no where near the North American continent for the most part).
Rice Krispy Treats
Another quintessentially junky American concoction that made regular appearances at birthday parties, Girl Scout gatherings and school bake sales was the tacky but tasty Rice Krispy Treats. Cheap, unbelievably easy to make (nuke a pack of marshmallows and a chunk of butter in the microwave til soft, dump in a box of Rice Krispies, mix well, smooth flat into a tray, refrigerate, eat with relish) and surprisingly versatile; think red and green dyed Rice Krispy Treat squares decorated with sparkly glitter for a really classy Christmas themed treat.
Around the Campfire
The schools I went to liked to organise a lot of outdoorsy activities like hiking, kayaking and camping. After a long day of climbing up and down mountains and rowing up mangrove swamps, camping supposedly taught us kids basic self survival skills like how to set up a tent and how to cook your dinner over a real life campfire. But don’t kid yourself - dinner was more often than not derived from some kind of packaging, whether instant noodles, sliced bread or some kind of soup mix, which required limited skills like tearing open some paper packaging and perhaps some stirring. There would be no skinning of animals or roasting on a spit. At most, there might be a can of Spam available. The best part of camping though? S’mores: marshmallows toasted over the fire that turned crispy brown on the outside and white and gooey on the inside, sandwiched with a piece of chocolate between two graham crackers. Eating S’mores with your classmates while huddled around the campfire made all the day’s hiking worthwhile.
The Sandwich Maker
Growing up in Madrid, whenever Spazlee and I were hankering for a snack, we always knew what would hit the spot: a grilled cheese sandwich. But not just any grilled cheese. Grilled cheese with the ultimate cheese – La Cabaña, which came with a hard yellow rind that had to be sliced off before being sliced thinly. The slices of cheese would be arranged on thickly cut white bread and squished into the amazing newly acquired sanduchera (sandwich maker). Out would come toasted triangular pockets that would satisfyingly ooze gooey yellow cheese once bitten into, and occasionally dipped into a puddle of ketchup.
Ethical Eating
Though I have generally evolved into a try-everything-once type of eater, there remains several greenfields in the culinary landscape that I have yet to tread upon. I don't eat veal and I have never eaten foie gras - more for ethical reasons rather than any real objection to the taste of baby cow and fatty goose liver (which I am quite sure is probably v. tasty). I don't think I can bring myself to eat rabbit, horse, kangaroo or generally any animal that should stereotypically belong on the pages of children’s storybook rather than on my plate. But don’t get me wrong - I'm by no means one of those radical political vegans. I enjoy a medium rare rib eye steak as much as the next carnivore. But I don’t think I can eat Peter Rabbit.
The Taste of Home
Though, as a family, we lived, worked, and played far from home, in a way, we never really felt that we were all that far. Because the home that we grew up in was very much a Malaysian home, not so much in the movies we watched or the slang we spoke in or even the clothes we wore, but more so for the Malaysian food we ate. My mother, bless her, never let us forget where we came from through the many Malaysian dishes that she lovingly cooked and put on the dinner table every night for the family. No matter how far from Malaysia or any semblance of a Pasar Malam we were, my Ma somehow managed to procure enough ingredients to cook every kind of dish that would remind us of home, from Homemade Satay to Udang Nasi Kandar to her famous Nasi Kabuli to her super special Salmon Masak Assam. Of course as kids, my sister and I would sometimes turn up our noses to her offerings in favor of McDonalds or Pizza Hut. But now as adults, every time I take a bite of my Ma’s Nasi Lemak or Ketam Goreng, I am always gratefully reminded of how well taken care of we were as kids, and how I can only endeavor to do the same for my own family someday.
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