Saturday, December 17, 2005

Childhood Food Meme

Ok, I admit. I'm a meme virgin. In fact, I still don't know what it means. Issit pronounced mèh-mee (like what you call that old phat woman pimp) or do you pronounce it meme? Like: What do landmines do? They meme.
Anyways. I was tagged by Felicity. No, I grew up in Seremban. And, being a true-blue missionary school student, devoid of any female influences (aside from family), my childhood was filled with mainly junkfood:

1) Luncheon Meat

Ah. Ma Ling luncheon meat. And which schoolboy did not grow up on this? A processed meat made of pork, tendons, tripe and whichever poor factory worker who was unfortunate enough to fall into the blender, my brothers and I consumed this by the cartons. School lunch was usually slices of this on bread. Also used generously in fried whatever else. I went crazy when I found this in one of the Asian stores here the other day.

2) Mamee

It was THE junkfood of its era. You could eat it on its own, or empty the enclosed sachet of MSG into the pack before eating it, or, like what we did, order a 40-sen bowl of laksa from the school canteen , and when we were done, get extra soup and dump this pack in for a 2nd meal. Clever huh?

3) Grandpa's pancakes

No pictures here. But my late grandpa used to make us his pancakes. Nothing special in terms of taste, I've probably had much better pancakes in the recent years, but this was homemade! By Ah Kong. Made to order. Usually when we were hungry at breakfast time. He'd have the music of his old chinese opera blaring on the radio when he'd make this. Some lady singing about constipation, I suppose, hearing how high-pitched and pained her voice was. Maybe she ate too many pancakes. But yea, this brings back warm memories.

4) Curry Puff

Need I say more? Damn, this is making me hungry. Anyone know of any good curry puff recipe???

5) Dingdang

Ok, I admit, I didn't particularly like this. But the toys! You get toys with this 50-sen snack. Which is an overstatement considering it was just a pack of 8-or-so chewy stool-like bits of chocolate covered biscuits. And no, I'm still not sure why there's a picture of Doraemon AND Popeye on the box. Maybe Doraemon was Popeye's pet? Or perhaps he had a thing with him, behind Olive's back? Geez, junkfood can be so bad for you.

So that's it. And no, I won't tag anyone else with this.