Apart from the nightly tarawikh prayers, Ramadan in our household is almost like any other time of the year. We normally don’t take lunch anyway, only my parents regularly have breakfast, and dinner is usually around 7 p.m. So, the menu for iftar is also almost no different from a normal dinner menu, with the exception of the customary dates.
I am ‘quite’ picky about food. Not exactly discerning, just picky, in the sense that I don’t eat a lot of stuff like cockles, squid, green vegetables, and most of the exotic local delicacies like budu, tempoyak etc. I have even stopped eating durians. All my relatives have long given up any hope of making my palate more Malay.
Once during Ramadan when I was nine or so I returned from school and had a peek under the food cover, and found a few packs of tapai ubi, fermented cassava. I never tasted it before – never wanted to – but somehow I found myself opening one of the packs and stuffing the content into my mouth.
“Buat apa tu?” Mother caught me.
I (accidentally?) ate tapai, YUCK! I spitted it all out; it was so embarrassing, though till this day I still cannot say which was more embarrassing: that I was caught red-handed eating during the day in Ramadan, or that I ate something so gross. Maybe both.
YUCK!
I’ve never had any tapai since.
i dont blame you for not eating tapai ubi. tapi kalau lemang dengan rendang pun kau tak makan, there must be something wrong with your taste buds, man.
ReplyDeleteI don't eat tapai either... and durian... and budu... and tempoyak... but I do eat green veggies and squid :-P
ReplyDeleteNo worries there, mate. I generally have no problem eating fatty, spicy food.
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