Food For Thought

Good morning people,

What a feeling to wake up to a beautiful  morning like today. It lifts away all your worries and headaches, for a while at least. Woke up at 5 something this morning, boil some water and since I had prepared some curry puffs last night, I only need to fry this morning for Sara (her school starts at 07:30hrs). Performed my prayer (the first of the five prayers), I sat myself in front of my laptop and started thinking what to write for today's blog.
She (Sara) was ready by 06:50hrs and I asked her to bring some of the home made curry puffs for her friends as well, she pouted. "Do I have to"? She asked.
I replied, "You don't have to, but your friends would be delighted to have something for breakfast prepared by somebody else's mom." She didn't look happy but she took it anyway.

Ahh.. children. I honestly don't understand them. What is so difficult just to carry a few pieces of goodies in their school bags? I am sure many of you had gone through similar situations as I did this morning. I remembered my difficult son, Soffian, when he was in elementary school (I think he was eight or nine years old then), the class teacher had asked them each to bring any kind of food for their class. I can't remember what was the event about. Anyway, I bought some bread and gave him  (Malaysian bread that required gravy to go with it). After school I asked him how was your class party. He said fine. Was there plenty of food around? He said yes. What about the bread I gave you. He flustered a little, then said the class finished it. I dropped the subject. Years later, when we ( all the four of them and me) were talking about school, I brought up this subject. I asked him again about the bread as I was not convinced with his reply before. Did your class really finish the whole bread? He gave me that knowing something-is-up smile. Oh oh, I dread to hear what he was about to say. He said he dumped the whole bread into the school trash can. I don't know if I am shocked or not. When asked why did he do that. "No reason." That was his answer. Mad as I was then, there's nothing much I can do as it was in the past. To this day I still wonder, if he was not my child, what would happen to him. Would he be abused physically or verbally by whomever happened to be his parents? Would he be rebellious? Or would he be better than what he is today.

I am still talking about food. Food is a necessity element of human beings. Each and everyone of us needs food to stay alive. People starve to death for lacking of food and yet in Malaysia and some other countries the food is in abundance that we literally throw food if it didn't meet up our taste buds. People can afford to have and choose what sort of food they wish to eat on that particular day. One can see the waste of plenty of food during Ramadhan month (fasting month for Muslim). We saw arrays of food at the make-shift stalls and it looks delicious and we bought it. Ended up, we threw it as we can't finish it all. We seemed to take for granted that food is within our reach. We forgot about the children on the other side of the world who is less fortunate and that they would grab anything to fill their hungry stomach to keep alive.
I hate to see the food goes into waste. I especially hate some movies that involved car chasing or fist fighting and they deliberately ran into some fruit stalls or broke into huge kitchen with food flying and milk spilling all over the place. Why don't they change the food scene with something else?

Another thing, take for example my family. There were six of us. My main issue for the day is what to cook today. Do you get what I mean? What I am trying to say is each and everyone of them have their own likes and dislikes. One person must have chicken in every meal, the next person would only eat if there's egg involve and another person must have rice and some gravy. Gordon Ramsey, I am ready for a kitchen fight against you any time.
It's a small wonder I got hypertension and migraine!

I know of some people who make a living by opening up a little restaurant or coffee shop. For lunch, they cooked a vast spread of food and line it up on a long table. If there's any balance upon closing time, the food will be thrown into the trash can rather than giving it away to their neighbours or how about charity home. To me, it's a puzzling action. And don't you know it, many hotels practice the same doing as the restaurateurs.

I used to cook extra portion in case any of the kids came home hungry. Nowadays, I only cook for whomever at home and if any of them came home hungry, there would be some cold tuna sandwich inside the fridge or some peanut butter placed on the dinner table. Take it or leave it! They usually eat whatever there is on the table. Once they got home, I am sure they're too lazy to go out again.
And as most mothers around the world would do, I use the leftovers for next meal on the table. They would gobble it down the same without complaining.

Treasure what we have now for we never knew what's the plan He had for us in the future. Sophie did something which I find it heartwarming. You people know, she is now in a college hundreds of kilometers away from us all alone. She told me the other day, as she was walking with her friend after class, they saw a disable man (both feet amputated), sitting by the roadside looking tired. She said let's give something to him. Her friend said okay. The girl had a few bucks in her purse and so did Sophie. They counted the money together, then as an afterthought, Sophie said to her friend, why don't we buy him some food, saved him the trouble to get up and find a shop. And they did just that. Sophie said, when they gave the food to that unfortunate man, he looked at them with the eyes that said a thousand words. She said, " Ma, I felt like I've just won a lottery. It was precious. I mean it's just a little food and he thanked us like we gave him big money." I said, that's why I always remind you children, to always think about others besides yourselves.

Be nice always.Train your heart to be good and caring. Believe me, you'll sleep like a baby contented with what you have around you.

Had to go now. Have a wonderful day!

Rose
13th.Mar '13