Thursday, March 13, 2008

Grandma's Talent

My grandma is about 85 years old. She's an all-rounder.

She's our family doctor.
When I was young, I live pretty much like a Jungle girl. We hung out in the forest, played in the rivers, climbed the trees, treasuring all the nuts and flowers and feathers and bones we found there, made certain trees our 'houses', ran away from turkeys, monkeys and wild boars, scared of crocodiles, tigers, pythons and elephants... ate as much durian and smelly stinky fruits as we like... In those times, nature is our best friend, our best source of medicine. Whenever we felt sick, grandma just had to go and pluck some wild leaves and we would try to chew our life away trying to get these deadly bitter greeny into our stomach, and then... you got cured. Just like that... magic.



Grandma's the best cook on earth.
I maybe biased, but the best fish I've ever tasted was cooked by grandma. The best Shark-Fin Soup I've ever tasted was made by grandma. The best Plum flavoured Sweet and Sour Roasted Duck was served by grandma. The best Hakka stew Pork with Yam, also by grandma. I'm most proud of her Zong Zi - bamboo wrapped glutinous rice dumplings. If you've ever witness her making a batch, you'll be found jaw-dropping. Because it's like magic. You see her start up everything, preparing the pork, mushrooms, chestnuts, salted egg etc, then the next ... err... what? She wrapped 30 of them. And... my god... the rice is so soft and tender and white... it's virtually the dumpling version of J.Co donuts!


Grandma's an artist.
She could just made anything with anything. Look at all these little birdy photos I put up. She made them... recently! She used to make for me, using bamboo, beautiful animal shaped lanterns to showcase to at the yearly Mooncake festival at school. She would decorate our homes with beautiful and unique red lanterns for new year using recycle Red-packets. She will just made anything out of anything.


Don't you think these are cute? :-)
I've always said I want to make an effort to learn all that I could from her... but... it's always the same lame excuse...too busy. I've better start negotiating with my ass now... coz it's really hard to get it to go do some meaningful things nowadays... ha!