Childhood Obsessions: Part 2: Food

I'm not sure how many parts of my childhood I feel like documenting over the next couple journal entries but one thing I want to make sure I had down were traditions before I forget them. These occured during my childhood that faded away over time either because I had grown out of the traditions or my parents and grandparents didn't see the need to continue them any longer because of how our lives had changed since we came to America.

One thing that I do want to remember from my elementary school experiences was how I treated food. Like in my previous entry, I had a great dislike of Chinese foods because of the huge amount I had to consume all the time yet at the same time adored the McDonald's that my parents fed me twice a day along with the cakes and doughnuts I got for breakfast and snacks. It truly is some kind of miracle that I didn't develop Type II Diabetes but as a result, I do have much bigger problems with digestion and going to the bathroom more than anyone else in my family does, along with other digestive tract problems I won't disclose here.

One of the most magical things I discovered when I was young was gum. I treated gum differently then than I do now. This was because yesterday, I bought a pack of gum that I hadn't tried in the longest time and this was the first brand of gum I ever tried (and swallowed).



After this past year of going through countless packets of the endless flavors of Stride, 5, Dentyne, and Eclipse, the moment I popped a piece of Wrigley's in my mouth, the soft creamy sensation sent me straight back to 2nd grade when I cycled around the driveways of the town houses in San Jose as my super old grandparents stood outside and yelled at their friends in Chinese to stay for a few more hours. It was one of the most nostalgic feelings I had in the longest time and it made me miss a lot of the traditions I had in my childhood, which is totally a whole different entry. So this moment solidified that I will not be satisfied with any other gum unless if it's the cheap 25 cent gum from Wrigley's and it will actually stay in my mouth for more thatn 5 minutes.

The second childhood comfort food that I had was one thing that my mom often made then but doesn't make much of anymore. It was the combination of having Bovril and porridge. Since the whole Mad Cow Disease fiasco in Europe, Bovril had to change the composition of its extract from yeast instead of bovine. The extract would be added to the porridge and I would drink bowls of this at a time like it was water. It was the one Chinese dish I liked as a child, and the repeated exposure to Bovril made it that to this day, I cannot have rice or porridge unless it's been overdosed with condiments.



The next thing on the list was sugar doughnuts and Chinese pastries that my mom often brought back from work because the someone at work always brought too many in, and because my parents really struggled with finances when we first came to the States, all of these sorts of foods were inexpensive and made it easy for us to fill our stomachs up quickly before we could manage to eat out all the time like we do now.

Despite all of the different flavors of doughnuts that I encountered during high school and even the Krispy Kreme phase, my absolute favorite is still the sugar doughnut, followed by the cheap glazed kind. Not the kind that Krispy Kreme kind where the layers were perfect, but the kind where the glaze fell off the doughnut when you picked it up and the layer was barely noticeable on the piece itself.



Then, came the Chinese pastries that my mom often ordered every time we went to Ranch 99 Supermarket. The Swiss roll came in many different flavors like vanilla and strawberry. I was always arguing with my mom at ends about which one to pick because my mom preferred vanilla, while I preferred strawberry. She usually ended up having her way because it was her money.



There are two other ones I signficantly remember: flavored bread and this one cake where one side was chocolate, the other side was white, and was sealed in the middle by a thin layer of vanilla cream. I remember always eating the chocolate side first (or not eating it at all) and then save the vanilla part as the best for last. I never liked the flavored bread that much as a kid so I never ended up snacking on it like my mom hoped I would.

An honorable mention to this list of childhood comfort foods I had was the white pomfret that my mom often ordered grilled from the Chinese supermarket. This is still probably my favorite fish because of the influences I had from my childhood. Chinese dinner would be the best in the entire world when the white pomfret was involved and it was something I always requested from my parents whenever I could.



Lastly, was the classic McDonald's Happy Meal that never let me down. I always had to get the toy that came with the package and the cheery M signs never ceased to make my day. It was the standard: hamburger/cheeseburger, fries, and a small drink that I had for lunch AND after school. I would also go to McDonald's or Burger King for breakfast (although BK was more of a breakfast tradition) and try to collect as many of the Monopoly pieces as I possibly could hoping one day to win something greater than a medium-sized soft drink. That never happened. However, I remember there being this one McDonald's in Sunnyvale that I would go to all the time as a child and everyone in there remembered me by name and had my order ready before my dad could pull the car up to the drive-thru window.



I remember also arguing with my parents every time I ever decided to get the 6-piece chicken nuggets. My parents would only get me Sweet-and-Sour sauce, which I was accustomed to until my friends in elementary school introduced to me BBQ sauce. For some reason, my parents didn't like that and again, they usually ended up having it their way where I ended up dipping all my food in Sweet-and-Sour sauce but when they're not around, the BBQ sauce returns. Another quirk I had as a child was also removing the pickle in the center of the hamburger whenever I could. I never liked vegetables in my sandwiches for some reason, and having a pickle in there disrupted the balance.

McDonald's breakfast was also a slice of heaven especially since I every time I went there, I would have my predictable combination of 1 Apple Pie and 2 hashbrowns or just as many hashbrowns as I could handle. I loved both Burger King's and McDonald's and often couldn't decide between the two, but I was never sold on the pancakes and the Egg McMuffin's. I felt sick when I ate them as a child so my options were pretty limited then and it frustrated my parents seeing that I preferred just a pile of hashbrowns rather than a sandwich, the same way that I preferred a pile of French fries over a hamburger (even though I enjoyed both just as much).



In addition, the French Toast sticks at Burger King was also another comfort food, and those are something I'm sorely missing today, which is why I probably compensate every time I go to Denny's. I always end up ordering French toast no matter how bad it was for me. And I always ran out of syrup.

Native Food

I remember when I was younger (a.k.a. a few years ago, back in high school), I had this immensive dislike for Chinese food because I was often forced to eat my share of white rice, the same sort of wet, drippy cooking that my mom liked to put together every single weekday. What made my dislike of it even greater was of my culturally-ignorant non-Asian peers who would try to convince me that I was missing out on their favorite oriental dishes: white rice, orange chicken, and teriyaki sauce.

I remember there was this one time when I worked in the legal department at Maxim Integrated Products as an intern, the other intern I worked with was absolutely bewildered at my dislike of Chinese food. Again, she, like my high school peers who only knew the world of P.F. Chang's, Mr. Chau's, and Panda Express, said how she enjoyed white (or fried) rice, orange or teriyaki chicken, and California rolls. When the entire department, her, and I went to grab dim sum, she immediately cringed and grew suspicious of all the Chinese food before her. She predictably poked at her Ha Gao with her obvious choice of a fork utensil, and wonder if the shrimp inside was edible. She then asked me if any of this food was safe to eat, and mentally I roll my eyes at every single fear she had about chicken feet, pork buns, egg tarts, and tofu deserts. Thank you for trying to correct my dislike of Chinese food when pork buns seem unsafe to eat.

However, the people who found my initial dislike of Chinese food to be strange had a point. Usually, people from different nationalities prefer their own culture's food more than other ethnic foods. And because I am Chinese, it seemed odd that I disliked my own ethnic food.

But ever since I was young, I actually did prefer my own culture's food over others. Even to this day, my favorite food to have is Malaysian. My whole family is from Malaysia and a lot of the dishes my mom put together when dinner wasn't involved, had Malaysian influences, and those were my favorite dishes of hers at that time. I really enjoyed the variety of sauces and curry and meats that Malay foods had to offer that foods from other cultures didn't have. Of course, because of the Indian and Thai influences, it's no surprise that I liked Indian and Thai food as well despite how spicy they are (but it makes the meal all the more fun to have).

The reason why I brought this up was because this last weekend, my parents and I went to a Malaysian/Singaporean restaurant that has been around since I remembered moving to Milpitas. Banana Leaf has always been my first or second favorite restaurant (Nyo Nya was my first for a while, but its owner lost Nyo Nya due to his gambling habits) and since I haven't eaten there in years, the food brought back many memories of me from early grade school when I could have all the Roti Canai and Beef/Chicken satay sticks that I could want.

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Another thing that I didn't like as a kid but I really love now is the appetizer dish called the Nasi Lemak where a bowl of coconut rice is served with one whole cold hard-boiled egg that's already been diced, a handful of peanuts, and beef w/ curry. It's the best thing in the world. Over dinner, my dad told me that this was the typical breakfast food he had in Malaysia when he was growing up there. His mom would make this for him and he would mix all of the parts together which made the dish end up resembling fried rice, only messier, and not really fried. He would have this every day and I told him if I had this every day, I'd be the happiest camper ever.

The last dish was sort of our main entree along with this other dish that my mom ordered that tasted pretty oily. This one though was the typically good plate of noodles that Malay chefs would drown in sodium, soy sauce, and all that good fattening stuff. Chow Kueh Teow is the dish that my parents have to order every time we go to a Malaysian restaurant along with the Nasi Lemak, the Roti Canai, and the Beef/Chicken Satay.

And lastly, I used to love this stuff as a kid, but my newfound love for Nasi Lemak sort of replaced this. I had this every day for breakfast when I was in Malaysia last summer for 2 weeks. In my opinion, it was better than any Denny's or dining hall breakfast that I had in America but it obviously goes with my preference for my own country's food rather than 'foreign food' (aka that country across the Pacific Ocean). The Hainan Chicken Rice at Banana Leaf is the closest I've ever gotten to my homeland's chicken rice. It falls short by a mile compared to the ones they make in rural parts of Malaysia because the soy sauce in Malaysia has a mix of salty and sweet textures in their soy sauce that I didn't think was possibly good until I tried it.

And I don't consider it real chicken rice if the it tastes like faint chicken and white. It's got to be yellow. White and chicken-tasting doesn't cut it.

Image credits: softrice.wordpress.com, flickr, hungerhunger.blogspot.com, feedmelah.com, newasiancuisne.wordpress.com