A Banana in China

Known as “Lau Zhi Qing” among the Chinese or Revolution restaurant among the non-Chinese speaking, this franchise has to be one of the coolest themed restaurants I’ve ever been to.

The restaurant’s theme is based on the more positive aspect of the Cultural Revolution i.e. Mao Zedong’s decree for all youths (especially undergraduates) to be sent to the rural areas for a year’s practical education.

From the various movies and documentaries I’ve watched, these young people were to help the farming community with their daily chores and were not paid any wages - only food and lodging were provided to them.

It took me a while (and a few people to explain) to understand this positive side of the Cultural Revolution because the minute I’m in the restaurant, I’m surrounded by

• youths in dressed in Communist Party uniforms,
• posters of youths waving the Red Book,
• props of rural farming scenes (including farming tools, dry grass, earthern pots and other paraphernalia for a truly authentic setting), and
• the sound system blaring propaganda announcements or patriotic songs of the era.

If you were impressed with Beijing Olympics 2008, then you’ll understand how meticulous the Chinese are with style and substance - oh, what attention to detail :-). Ok, enough propaganda…let’s enter the restaurant!

Here’s the brightly-lit entrance to this popular restaurant, which has lines (and chairs while you wait) during the lunch and dinner hours:

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Life has been normal and busy lately that I’ve forgotten all about the typhoons (tai feng).

Until of course about 4.00 pm just now when the sky suddenly darkened and I had to turn on the hall lights. I was in the middle of research for my next article…

Instead, I quickly un-hooked all our clothes blowing to a 45 degrees angle (almost like the man’s hair below)

(Photo from Xinhuanet: “Tropical storm Linfa lands in East China“)

Looking through my old posts, I found one dated July 2008 where I recorded the 4.4 earthquake we felt then. Hmm…typhoon Bilis was scheduled for August then. Guess this year, the typhoons decide to make an early start?

We’re expecting heavy rains from Sunday night till Monday. Several events are happening this weekend:

• A few friends are flying back home
• A visitor is coming over for some ‘fun’ and ‘adventure’. I think he’s gonna get what he asked for!

I wonder if the rains will be so heavy Hubby won’t be able to go to work? That’ll be fun

Whatever happens, I hope that the typhoon or thunderstorm will just pass everyone without causing too much damage. I already hear sirens blaring on the street below…

The proverb “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” describes the fussy or picky eater to a tee because I was one myself

If your toddler is a picky eater, chances are either your or you husband was one too!

Of all the challenges of motherhood, feeding our picky eater is the greatest one of all!

I’m surprised he’s a fussy eater because such a natural, super-easy (i.e. ferocious guzzler), right-on-the-dot baby to breastfeed

When we had McDonald’s for dinner last night, I’m amazed to see how far he’s come from eating boiled, white rice and Chinese dishes ONLY to eating 4 chicken nuggets (which he dipped in tomato ketchup and then a sweet-and-sour-sauce) and a quarter of my Big Mac.

Starting solids at 6 months, he liked

• pureed potato, pumpkin, sweet potato, ripe banana, potato and carrot, stewed pear/apple;
• plain rice cereal by Heinz mixed with breast milk or mixed with stewed fruits and
• and HATED pureed brocolli, spinach, stewed prunes, banana-flavoured rice cereal and NONE of the Heinz or Gerber baby jar foods!

As my Mum was taking care of him then, she thought it made more sense to boil soft porridge for him from fresh and natural rice grains. Home-cooked goodness

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I couldn’t help asking my Foochow visitors what they had on the flight here and almost died when they said nasi lemak (white rice steamed in coconut milk, pandanus leaves accompanied with deep fried anchovies in chilli with onions paste (sambal ikan bilis), hardboiled eggs and cucumber slices!

When I let out a loud sigh, mother-in-law said she didn’t know I was craving for it or she would have happily smuggled in a box for me from KLIA…(she’d brought over some pandan kaya).

I wanted to ask her for some bottled sambal belacan but from my experience, Kuching doesn’t really have good ones

Anyway, one of the nicest nasi lemak I’ve ever had (out of desperation) was on board Air Asia’s flight (KL-Kuching or Penang-Kuching, I forget).

After settling in the tot, I quickly glanced at their menu and found this mouth-watering temptation called “Pak Nasser’s Nasi Lemak” selling for RM8.

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This is a backdated post of my attempt at frying Penang “char koay teow” (stir-fried rice noodles with prawns). As I was craving for Malaysian hawker food during the earlier stage of my pregnancy, I decided, “If I can’t buy it, then I’ll cook it!”

I adapted the recipe from “Malaysian Hawker Favourites” (by Periplus Mini Cookbooks, RM9.90 bought from Popular/The Big Bookstore, ISBN: 978-0-7946-0425-7), where I omitted:

• bean sprouts and
• the self-made chilli paste (I’d given away my pack of sambal belacan i.e. fermented and dried shrimp paste?) and also I didn’t have that much energy lah then!

To our delight, the fried koay teow turned out yummy for Hubby and me - I cooked it for breakfast twice and once for my lunch

Our toddler? He only wanted the prawns!
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