Childhood memories of food

Tehtariksatu tagged me for this meme like...4 months ago...

List down 5 childhood memories of food.

1. Chewing gum
The tidbits stall right outside my primary school gate always made bustling business when school was out. This was before the school was smart enough to build a proper canteen and set up business within the school compound. In those days, boys (of course, only boys do this) who have the munchies during school hours will have to run the gauntlet of prefects, teachers, wandering deans, pak guard etc all the way across the school field, pop out of the gate, buy their supplies, run back and lose themselves amongst the anonymous masses before they were intercepted.

And there was one kind of chewing gum that you can't find nowadays. It's probably illegal now. The chewing gum wasn't very tasty. Nothing tastes better than Wrigley's Double Spearmint. What's special about these gums though, was the packaging.

The gum was moulded into a cylindrical shape, wrapped with a thin white paper with the butt of one end painted orange.

Yes, it looks just like a faggot. (That's 'ciggie', for those of you who don't watch enough BBC.)

Almost everyone buy those and role play with them. Acting like Joe Camel, or the Marlboro Man.

You won't find sweets like that anymore!


2. Greenbean soup with hard-boiled egg
Back in kindergarten, the school served tea for all of us growing children. Nobody packed their own food. Everyone got the same food. It was a social equaliser. That, and everyone wearing the same uniform, same bag design, same pencil-cases, same pencils etc... We respected each other as equals. Except for the fat boys.

It's nasty to say it, but children are born cruel. Nobody taught us that fat is bad. But if someone is huge, our young minds automatically label them as fat, and treat them differently. Like a bull elephant, you don't want to provoke it, but neither will you be too comfortable getting too close to it. Even the boy with the mouthful of dental nightmare got more respect than the fat boy.

Anyways... the tea in school. I use to wolf down everything. Until one unfortunate day when they served green bean soup and hard boiled eggs. I only remember puking out my guts outside the classroom. It left a scar. Was 10-15yrs later before I felt comfortable eating any kind of bean soup and hard boiled eggs again.


3. Fish porridge
My mom left me with a nanny in the next flat when she heads to work.

For lunch, she often makes this porridge with slices of fish.

Only, this is a very bony fish. With all the fine prickly bones that you can never remove completely.

Eating that porridge was like walking a mine-field. You have to be alert, and catch those bones before you swallow. For every bone I caught, half as many I missed. Luckily I never lacerated my oesophagus.

And some magazine somewhere that I read when I was young, said that fish bones is brain food.

So, it's all good.


4. Roast piglet
It must have been 1983 or 1984.

My parents took me to Bangkok on vacation. And my poor sister was still too young to travel, so she was left with some cousins for the whole two weeks. She must've been traumatised, thinking that her family has left her for good.

My most unforgetable memory: the roast piglet we had for dinner one night.

Somehow, olfactory memories are more memorable than visual or auditory ones.

The crispy, succulent skin of the piglet.... Yummy...

It was only more than 17yrs later, that I got to re-experience that dish again, at the random wedding dinners that I get invited to. And it'll never be as good as that first memory.


5. Fried chicken wing
The most frequently bought food at the school canteen ever since I was old enough to be trusted with money. It was 60cts per piece. Nowadays, the average mamak will charge you 2.50.