Food Meme

Blast from the past where foods are concerned.

Name five foods from your childhood that you missed.
Link the five blogs that was tagged, including yours.
Pass the meme to another three person.

First the last five:

1. Traveler’s Lunchbox

2. Oswego tea

3. Masak-Masak

4. Babe in the City

5. Samm

6. JoeC

FOOD FROM THE PAST – Childhood memories

Cucur kodok –

Cucur kodok is roughly translated as toad fritter! It looks like an ugly toad with uneven skin and lots of bumps. But don’t worry, it has nothing to do with toads. It is just bananas mashed with sugar and flour into a batter and deep fried.

I could make cucur kodok from as young as 10 years old! Back then, there wasn’t such a thing as ‘home accident prevention’, safety in the kitchen and stuffs like that. Everything goes. And thank God, I survived.

The bananas were grown in my kampong. It is pretty to nice to chop down a banana tree because the trunk is rather soft. After shouting timberrrr (or something like that)….I must have time to grab the stem of the banana fruits so that the bananas did not topple on the ground and got smashed. With a quick chop with the parang, the whole bunch of bananas will be mine.

My kids would scoff at cucur kodoks I made because they say it is ‘b o r i n g’.

Ice-ball

(I don’t have a pic of ice ball. This slurpee from 7-11 stores will do for the moment. But one of these days, I am going to get a kind gentleman who makes ice-kacang to do an ice-ball for me (my kids).)

It is made of shaved ice, flavoured with rose and sarsapilla syrup. Back then, there aren’t any plastic bags (environmental friendly, no?) so we had to hold it with our bare palms. It was fun to suck the syrup out of our palm. Sometimes, we can ask for cooked red beans to be stuff in the middle of the ice ball. I wonder why no one eat iceball anymore?

Salted fish

Times were bad and salted fish was our regular diet. We do not have refrigerator so we don’t get to eat fresh fish everyday. Nowadays, I no longer buy the cheap gelama salted fish because I fear maggots. Yeah, sometimes, there were maggots in the fish guts. I still do buy salted fish but they are really expensive now. Morever due to health concerns, I would rather stay away from them. Salted fishes and other preserved foods are believed to cause nasal and throat cancer.

Kit Kat

It was the imported version (don’t know from which country). My mom sometimes went to the movies with her friends and left me alone at home. I would cry real bad but rewarded with a Kit Kat later. Back then, Kit Kat was very, very rare and a small four fingers bar cost a bomb (to my mom). Nowadays, I can have all the Kit Kat I want but the feeling is not the same as the time when it was treated like gold.

Some history of Kit Kat:

KIT KAT is the number one selling candy bar in the U.K. KIT KAT is a licensed brand from Societe Des Produits Nestle S.A. Hershey Foods Corporation’s original licensing agreement was executed with Rowntree Products in 1969. In 1988, Nestle purchased Rowntree.

Nestum Family Cereal

Yulk, I don’t fancy this anymore because of the sweetish, vanillin smell. But when I was a child, I adore it. So much so that my mom had to stop me from eating too much (due to cost constraints). I would put spoonfull of them into a cup, pour condensed milk into the cup and mixed them into a thick, goey stuff. Then, pour hot water over it but here is the trick….don’t stir the bottom of the cup. After drinking the watery version, the mulched cereals with condensed milk tastes so goooood. Remember, back then, there aren’t muesli bars and luxury stuffs like that.

Pass to three:

1. Bart or Angie of Angie and Bart (because both can cook!)
2. Mr. Kiasi (because he is only 17 years old so I suppose it won’t be difficult for him to remember his childhood food)
3. Lrong (I wonder what this Kedahan in Japan remembers most about his hometown?)