Bon Appetit

Let's talk about food tonight.
It's not about eating, but about the things that we and other people eat. Living in an Asian Country, people would not be surprised to hear what we in this part of the world would eat. But that is not totally correct. We eat 'almost' the same thing as everyone else in the world: McD, KFC, Pizza, etc..etc.. :p hehehe

I guess the main reason that we seems to eat 'odd' things is because of the various type of weather, landscape, culture, and habits. (See, I still remember a bit of the old Geographical lessons). Even in Malaysia, every state has it's own favorite local food that would be regarded as weird by the other states (Except Kuala Lumpur, perhaps, which is the capital of Malaysia, and where people from north, south, east and west reside there. So, there's bound to be every type of food that you can think of.)

It might be a surprise for a Johorean, from the south, when invited to a Northern state friend's house, to see people eating durian or mango with rice (a fresh fruit eaten with rice? Guess they have sweeter tooth than us). The opposite is also true. Our northern counterparts gets the same surprise when they visit Johor: we do cook with lots of hot and spicy chili as well as with lots of gravy on our rice. But the real winner in the 'hot' cuisine competition, would be those from 'N9'. If we were all cartoon characters, you would see smoke coming out from the ears and tears streaming from the eyes, trying to vanquish the hotness of the red chilis used.

In some states, a cow is like a coconut tree. There are thousands of uses for the coconut tree : from the leaves right down to the bark and roots. The cow is also eaten from the leg right up to the head (except for the horns, of course, which were made into deco items). I am not joking. The tongue..(err..you would not eat it if you saw it inside a live cow and you would also not want to eat it when you saw it on the cutting board), with every bit of it's tentacles like form, were boiled for hours until it's swollen and soft, then cut to small pieces and cooked in curry. I was enjoying the meal, especially the tender 'meat' in the curry. And got the biggest surprise in her life when I was shown the balance of the uncut 'tongue' in the kitchen. Luckily the toilet was only a few feet away.

I might be an adventurous person but please do not show or tell me in detail from which part of the animal it was taken from. And no visuals please.

Hmm.. I might convert myself into a dessert eater only :p hehehe if this continues. Jalil Hamid's song the title 'Makan' always make me smile. The song goes a bit like this:

Let's us talk about 'eating': While other countries lack of food, most of our people die for eating too much food.

Our people eat lots of things, be it in the morning, evening, day or night time.
Eating anything and everything: stone, steel, knife and also wood. :p

Bon appetite everyone!