Merepek

The coffeeshop was full with lunch-time crowd and all the tables were taken. As I was alone, I asked permission to share the table occupied by 3 young ladies.

While waiting for my order to arrive, I decided to be nosey a bit and observed my tablemates tablemanners lah. Two of them were heartily tucking into their chicken, char siew and roast pork rice. Hmmm.. quite untidy eaters, I should say. Apparently, these two don't do skins - the crispy roast pork skin and chicken skin were carelessly scattered on the table together with a few pieces of bones and chicken feet from the free soup. The 3rd was not any better. She was busy stirring up her bowl of noodles and picking out every stick of taugeh and every tiny piece of spring onions and leaving them on the table too. No. 3 suddenly noticed that I had been observing her and she gave me a smile and said, "Hehehe... I don't take vegetables wan." I just smiled back and gave a knowing nod.

This reminded me of my grand-nephew (is this correct, this boy is my brother's daughter's son?). This chubby 9 year-old absolutely loves pak-cham kai(white steamed-chicken) skins, pork skins and everything else meaty but abhors all kinds vegetables except for taugeh. Despite all the soft approaches as well as the use of cane by the mother, this boy just won't touch greens. So now each time whenever somebody commented on the boy's eating habits, the mother will just shrug and say, "He pantang anything green colour wan lah."

Luckily, my children have no problems with most types of vegetables. Both of them don't do leeks, brinjals and raw garlic (no problems with raw onions, though). The elder boy does not like lady's finger while the younger one will just not have enough of it steamed, fried or in curries. As for me, raw, cooked or juiced, all also can sapu. A friend once jokingly called me a cow as I enjoy eating raw greens. I am a true-blue nyonya lah.