San Jose: A Pancake Breakfast

Waffle with raspberry topping

Side order : Pancake with bacon and sausage

PANCAKES with champagne – how delightful! I was musing over the menu, while a French student dressed in a Japanese costume waited patiently to take my order. 

            Many years ago (in the 1990s), my husband, my son Jason and I, attended  a “Pancake Breakfast” in the Phyllis Forward Simpkins International House (I-House), San Jose, United States. My choice for the breakfast was a banana pancake/waffle with raspberry topping plus a side order of bacon and sausage, a glass of orange juice, fruits and tea. Champagne was served intermittently.

All smiles while waiting for our delectable pancakes

            Twice a year, students from the I-House organise a fundraising event called Pancake Breakfast. It is held on Sunday from 9.30 am to 1.30 pm, for family, friends and the public. Patrons pay a token sum at the entrance. 

            Prizes are given to Residents who bring in the most guests. Residents take on different hosting roles such as chefs, waiters, hostesses, dishwashers, cleaning-up aides, ushers, announcers, performers, photographers and receptionists. 

Students taking on different roles in the kitchen

Students working in the kitchen

            The place took on a carnival-like atmosphere. Flags of different countries where students come from were displayed on the walls. Students - dressed in traditional costumes from other countries - added colour and glamour to the event. 

Flags from different countries displayed on the walls

Students dressed in traditional costumes mingling with guests

 Throughout breakfast, students entertained us: playing on the piano, guitar or flute. Others performed dances like the hula and belly dance. There was an ongoing auction for items volunteered by the students such as portraits drawing, guitar or French lessons, massage or facial treatment. It was an innovative method of raising money! 

A student playing the flute

An ongoing auction

Belly dancing

A guy sportingly belly-dancing with the gals

            
                               
 Some of the students serving us shared their experiences.

The “waiter” from Malaysia said he enjoyed being part of a team working for a cause. “As I take down orders and serve the guests, I also enjoy the music and entertainment,” he remarked cheerfully. 

            A Hong Kong student in a Dutch costume found the fundraising experience enriching. “I enjoy learning the different types of dishes from other countries,” she exclaimed.

A German student said that living at the centre helped him to make friends from different disciplines. “I have become a more balanced person and my English has improved,” he shared.

“After living here for one year, I have a better insight of people from different parts of the globe,” chipped in an American student.

Posing with some of the students in traditional costumes

I-House is a co-educational residential home for American and international students (undergraduates and post-graduate) attending San Jose State University (SJSU). 

International - House, with national flags of different countries

The Residence was set up in 1978, by the late Alan and Phyllis Simpkins, to foster international understanding and to fill the need for foreign students’ accommodation. Students come from all parts of the globe to participate in a truly intercultural environment. 

Alan and Phyllis Simpkins

The centre helps students acclimatise to life in America and adjust to living with a roommate from a different country. It provides some kind of “maternal support system” for homesick students. 

            Students learn about each other’s customs, as well as go places and do things together. Currently there are students from Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Australia. 

The Pancake Breakfast is also like an Open House for guests. After breakfast, Jason, a former resident, took us on a tour of I-House, which was like walking down memory lane for him.

Along the corridors of the basement, the photographs displayed reminded him of his friends and his enriching stay there. He showed us the games room where he played table tennis and the kitchen where he shared midnight “noodle” snacks with other Asian students. 

Photographs displayed along the corridors

One of the charts with photos along the corridor

Chart showing photos of activities for the year 1997

Kitchen and dining room

  
“Whenever we have dinner, it is like a mini United Nations gathering,” quipped Jason. 

Fundraising events are common in Malaysian schools and colleges too. We call it "fun-fair" and patrons buy coupons before or during the event for use on the actual day. Instead of pancakes, the items on sale include fried noodles, nasi lemak (coconut rice), curry chicken, curry puffs, kueh-kueh, sandwiches and many types of drinks. There are also lucky draws, jumble sales and many  challenging games for patrons.

Fundraising events are beneficial to students all over the world. When students work together selflessly for a common cause, they learn to be humble, cooperative and patient as well as gain organisational abilities and discipline. 

          Attending the pancake breakfast in the International-House was an enjoyable experience. It was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday morning.

No chickening out

Turmeric lime chicken (TLC)

NO chicken for four whole weeks! Fear of bird flu has made many people, including me, wary of eating chicken. The national campaign to promote chicken meals, boosted by Cabinet ministers, has resulted in public confidence in chicken consumption creeping back.  

Recently, my friends and I took the plunge and sunk our teeth into chicken again at a local restaurant. Needless to say, our animated conversation was on our favourite chicken dish.

There were varied views on the best chicken dish: roasted, curry, steamed, herbal, soya sauce, barbecued, braised, fried and red-wine chicken. My favourite is turmeric lime chicken. Just thinking of it activates my digestive juices!

 Turmeric lime chicken (TLC) is a curry dish. However, it is not bright red but a mere mellow yellow in colour due to the turmeric (yellow ginger) in it. It has a combination of three flavours – spicy, sweet and sour. This dish is my mother’s specialty – a home-cooked healthy dish that I’ve not eaten in any restaurant. 

Turmeric lime chicken is cooked using natural ingredients. The distinctive ingredient used is turmeric or  yellow ginger (wong keong) in Chinese, and kunyit in Malay. Turmeric gives curry its yellow colour.

Cucurmin is the main active ingredient in the rhizomes. The young leaves and flowers can be eaten raw as ulam. The rhizomes are used in cooking.

Turmeric rhizomes

The tropical plant is easily grown in home gardens, either in a pot (or polystyrene box) or on the ground. It requires full sunlight and is propagated from rhizomes (about 4 to 5 cm long with one or two buds). The sprouted rhizomes are planted 5 to 8 cm deep in well-drained friable sandy clay soil with added compost. Fertilisers of NPK 15:15:15 which has soluble phosphate can be applied at 2 and 5 months after planting. Turmeric rhizomes can be harvested 7 to 9 months after planting.

A turmeric plant grown in a pot

Turmeric plants planted in the ground

Turmeric plant with rhizomes and roots

Turmeric has many documented health properties. Turmeric has strong anti-oxidant properties and has a powerful anti-inflammatory effect on arthritis. It improves brain function, lowers the risk of heart diseases and helps to prevent cancer and Alzheimer's disease.

Coming back to my mum's preparation of TLC: besides turmeric, the other ingredients are chilli, shallots, lemongrass (serai), lime juice and coconut milk. For convenience, sometimes turmeric powder is used, but my mum always uses the fresh rhizome for better flavour.

Turmeric powder

The cooking method is simple. The ground ingredients are cooked in a little oil and the chicken is simmered for a short while before coconut milk and lime juice are added. It is a cooling spicy dish, according to my mother. How?  

 

"Chilli, lemongrass and shallots have a warming nature," she said.  “Chilli stimulates the appetite and aids in digestion. It warms the internal organs and is a good tonic for the blood. Lemongrass aids digestion and reduces the smell of meat. Onion relieves nasal congestion and the common cold”.  

“Turmeric and lime have a cooling nature. Turmeric reduces heat in spices. It strengthens digestion. Used in traditional medicine, it is well known for its antibiotic properties. Lime contains vitamin C and is a remedy for scurvy and other illnesses. It is good for the skin too,” she elaborated.

Why do I like TLC? Let me elaborate a little on the history of this dish. During my younger days, whenever I had spicy food like curry chicken, I would get mouth ulcers the very next day. My mother, who believes that food is classified according to properties of cooling, heaty or neutral, ensured that her children’s diet was balanced according to this principle. Every time we ate heaty food, we had to drink cooling drinks (some of which were bitter) to neutralise the heaty effect!

Mothers of that generation knew very well that “prevention is better than cure”. I grew up on this regular ritual of consuming neutralising heaty food with cooling drinks.

Coming back to TLC, one fine day my mother befriended a Penangite who taught her to cook a dish, called “lime chicken.” “This is the ideal dish for my children,” mother used to say. “it is a balanced cooling heaty dish”. It was the answer to young children who craved spicy food without the heaty after-effects. Remarkably, after eating this dish, we did not get sore throats or mouth ulcers – hence no bitter cooling herbal drinks! Because turmeric is used, I called mum’s dish “turmeric lime chicken” (TLC). This was because I like the acronym. It reminded me of a friend who told me to treat my plants with TLC to make them grow well. He meant ‘tender loving care’! Hence my mum’s dish is called TLC, a dish cooked with tender loving care.  

I remember helping out in the kitchen whenever mum cooked TLC. I pounded the chilli, shallots and turmeric using a mortar and pestle. I remember making a circular cardboard with a hole in the centre to fit nicely onto the pestle – like a Mexican hat. This prevented the pounded ingredients from splashing out, thereby reducing smarting to my eyes.

And I remember getting the coconut milk the hard way. First, my mum used the blunt end of a chopper to break the coconut into two. The water inside was not discarded. She collected it in a mug and divided it into portions for her eager children. I enjoyed drinking the sweet thirst-quenching nutritious water. Mum considered the water “cooling” too and sometimes asked us to splash it on our pimply faces. 

Then I had to straddle a coconut scraper for the coconut meat extraction. The scraper was made up of a metal serrated circular blade mounted onto a low rectangular stool. I would sit on it much like sitting on a rocking horse with the serrated blade as the “horse’s head”. With my two hands holding the half coconut and the meat pressed onto the blade, I scraped out the meat, little by little, into a pile of tiny white strands. I collected the scraped coconut, placed it in a cloth bag and then squeezed out the milk. Nowadays, the shopkeeper uses an electric scraper for this laborious task. And modern cooks use instant coconut milk powder or canned coconut milk.

            

TLC now finds favour with my mother’s grandchildren. During a family gathering recently, my little nephews finished their TLC with gusto, sans coaxing or cajoling. It is a cool dish for all generations.

                      My nephews enjoying some TLC, a chicken dish that's truly finger-lickin' good.

Perhaps it is time for you to have some TLC.

............................................................................................................................................................

This article was published in the Star (Malaysian newspaper) on 1st March 2004.
It is edited and more photos are added here.
This article and the recipe for TLC is published
in my cookbook, "Quick and Healthy Meals".
For more information on the book,
please write to:quickandhealthy@yahoo.com

New Zealand - an Unforgettable Summer Holiday

In Franz Josef for our glacier walk - Group photo: from left: Helen, 
Katherine, Henrita  (navigator), Sio Kuan, Hui Ching (flight tickets),
Sita and Hooi Choo/Margaret (driver).

WHEN I’m 64, a Beatles number back in the 1960s, was a favourite among my schoolmates in secondary school. Now that we’re at this iconic age, whither are we?

Well, at 64 last year, seven of us from Klang Convent (class of 1965) were having a whale of a time in the South Island of New Zealand (NZ), a country we had studied about in geography lessons 46 years ago.

We talked and talked about doing it at 55, then 60, but nothing ever materialised until someone said, 

“We are getting on in years. It’s now or never, at 64! Let’s go to NZ!”

That got us - six of us from Malaysia and one from Australia - all fired up. Luck was on our side – a budget airline launched its inaugural flight to Christchurch and offered a low price for tickets, which we booked instantly. There was no turning back, not even when we heard about the earthquake in Christchurch in February last year!

Planning an overseas trip is not easy - we took one year to draw up an itinerary. Being senior ladies, we'd initially decided to join a guided tour from Malaysia. But we were unable to find a package that fitted our time and budget.

Next we checked local tours in NZ, but the exorbitant price was a great dampener. Finally, someone in the team who had been to NZ before, suggested that we travel on our own. Experienced at the wheels, she also volunteered to be our driver.

We did online research on places of interest and accommodation. After a flurry of emails, we agreed on a workable itinerary that was easy on the knees, without the country's famed adrenalin-pumping activities.

Our 12-day senior-friendly holiday would start from Christchurch, with a Trans-Scenic train ride to Greymouth. From there, an eight-seater Toyota Previa MPV would take us to Franz Josef for a glacier walk, before we headed onwards to Wanaka, Queenstown, Te Anau and an overnight cruise in Milford Sound. After that, it was a free and easy journey to Invercargill, Dunedin and Christchurch.

Bookings were made for the train ride, the cruise in Milford Sound and the guided glacier walk. We arranged accommodation for Christchurch, Greymouth and Franz Josef; as for the other places, we would book our lodging upon arrival. 

All of us had travelled in organised group tours before, with our husbands. The thought of being on our own for the first time made us a little apprehensive about encountering problems on the way. We met up to discuss what to bring along and what precautions to take in case of emergencies.

Finally we were in NZ, a truly scenic country, and we found it an easy place to travel on our own. 

Language was no problem. The roads were excellent, although the west coast was a little mountainous, which required skilled driving. Our driver drove confidently and our navigator, with the help of maps, guided well. Thankfully, we managed to tour South Island and enjoyed its many attractions without any mishap.

We managed to get accommodation for those places where we didn't have prior bookings quite easily. We stayed mostly in motels that were equipped with all the basic amenities. Although it was summer, the weather was comfortable cool, with occasional light showers. The cold nights were bearable with central heating at the motels. One evening, I was thrilled to experience my first hailstorm. 

Our first Motel in Christchurch: all ready to take the Trans Scenic train

The journey on the Trans Scenic train was relaxing. Looking out the window, we saw natural landscapes, snow-capped mountains, turquoise lakes, brilliantly coloured flowers and of course lots of sheep and cattle.We made a brief stop at Arthur's Pass, to stretch our legs and to take some scenic shots.

                                                          Snow-capped mountains


  

Clear skies, clean air, abundant sheep

Cattle in rich pasture

 

Our train at Arthur's Pass


                                                                      

Arthur's Pass

                                                                      
                                                                                                                          

                                                    Our 8-seater Toyota Previa MPV:
                                                                       with driver and navigator

  

On the way to Franz Josef, we visited Hokitika where we were wowed over by the greenstone, New Zealand's nephrite jade (also known as pounamu), and the exquisite works of art of a glass factory. 

                                                               Charmed by greenstone: nephrite jade

                                                                           Greenstone pendants

                               

                                                              Glass display:  Exquisite works of art

                                                   Glass display: bottles, penguins, jewellery
                                                                             
We arrived at Shanty town, hoping to have fun there. It started to drizzle so we gave it a miss, but not before taking a memorable picture.

                                                                     Shanty town

                                   

                                 A memorable group photo in Shanty Town

                                                          

The Glacial Walk did not disappoint.We had a good jovial guide who briefed us on what to wear, what to expect and safety features to look out for. It was very cold, but the thick blue jackets and black boots loaned to us kept us warm, although it was not easy to move with such bulky clothes. We tread along lightly and carefully over the slippery icy path, and learnt how glaciers were formed. The walk was invigorating and we managed to view many significant waterfalls along the way.

                                                              Franz Josef: significant waterfalls

Franz Josef: with our guide,
 after the invigorating walk

 We had great fun in the Puzzling World in Wanaka : the World's first 3D Maze: There were challenging mazes, incredible rooms and buildings with amazing illusions.

 

Toilets with illusions

                                                                                   Toilets with illusions
             

We had only a brief stop in Queenstown, as we were behind schedule to go Te Anau before it got dark. However, we managed to taste the best Indian food (curry chicken/fish, basmati rice, naan bread with cheese) in a restaurant there.

Curry chicken, curry fish, basmati rice  

Naan bread with cheese
                                                     

The overnight cruise on the "Milford Wanderer" in Milford Sound was an unforgettable experience. We cruised along tranquil waters between sheer cliffs carved out by centuries of ice erosion. We watched cascading waterfalls, glorious sunrise and spectacular landscapes. Simply magnificent!

                                                                        Cascading waterfalls

                                                  White waterfall thundering majestically
                                                   onto the deep green-blue waters below

                      

                                                 Beautiful silhouettes reflected in crystal clear waters
                 

 

                                                 The moon above, the sun rising from behind the mountains                                        

                                              The golden hue of the sun on the snow-capped mountain                                                
  

                                                  With our knowledgeable guide, enjoying the sunrise together

 While on the cruise, four of us took a boat trip to see penguins. Amidst the freezing and drizzling weather; with our body shivering and our teeth chattering, we managed to spot only two little penguins from afar!

We also visited the Milford Discovery Centre and Underwater Observatory, NZ's only floating underwater observatory, where we viewed many extraordinary colourful sea creatures in their natural environment.

Our cruise ship Milford Wanderer
next to the Discovery Centre's platform

            

                                                  As we alighted on Discovery Centre's platform,
                                                    our Milford Wanderer moved away

 On board the ship, Milford Wanderer, we were feted with warm western meals, which were most welcoming in the cold environment.

                                           

                                       

             Warm nourishing pumpkin soup with sweet potato                        

                                                

                                                    Delicious pancake dessert with fruits

In Dunedin, we visited Larnach Castle: beautiful gardens, impressive interiors and interesting history.

Larnach Castle

                                              

Then it was back to Christchurch. Christchurch was grey and dusty as it was still recovering from the recent earthquake. We saw the church being cordoned off for renovation and repair.

Travelling leisurely on our own gave us the flexibility to choose our accommodation, to visit what interested us most, and to extend or cut short our stay as we liked. The New Zealanders were friendly and helpful and many were surprised at our courage.

Shopping together was fun, especially without our husbands bugging us to hurry up. As doting mothers and grandmothers, we bought gifts like paua shells, NZ jade, chocolates and manuka honey for our families.

How did we fare in close proximity for 12 whole days?

Well, most of us spent a sleepless first night in Christchurch. The cold, a new sleeping partner, a strange environment and our individual bedtimes and early morning rituals kept us awake. However, once we had adapted to one another, we slept like logs thereafter. 

Touring together in a small group was enjoyable. There was a sense of freedom, especially from family responsibilities! We ate healthily, but occasionally could not resist indulging in the NZ creamy ice cream and delectable chocolates!

                                                          

                                                                    Creamy ice-cream                                  
 

                                                                                  
                                                                           Chocolate-coated ice-cream on sticks

On our last night together in Christchurch, we had a memorable birthday party for Margaret who had just turned 64.

                                                                          Celebrating 64th birthday

Food was no problem. We ate out all the time, except for one night when we had home-cooked curry chicken with roti prata.

                                                        Home-cooked curry chicken with prata bread

Every evening, we shopped for the following day’s breakfast (yoghurt, croissant, ham, sandwich or cakes). We savoured Western (pie, fish and chips, lamb, beef or chicken) as well as Asian (Chinese, Indian, Cambodian or Thai) cuisine.

                                                                                 Carrot cake

 

Fish and chips

                                                                                          Pasta
                                                                                           

                                                       White bait with chips and egg    
                              

                                                                Best beef dish tasted on our trip

                                                               Sizzling venison

                                                                    Steam cod       

 When was our last trip together? I recall fondly that in 1965, our last year in school, we went as a class of 40 to Cameron Highlands, Pahang, after our examinations. Young and carefree, we were thrilled about our first trip away from home. Propped up on simple canvas beds in barracks, we chatted all night long - about boys, ghosts, idols and our hopes and aspirations for the future.

Now, 46 years later, we were re-living those happy times. Although each of us has gone our separate ways in career, marriage and family, we were still the same in character and behaviour, giggling over little jokes. In the comfortable motels, we chatted way into the night about the past, the present and the future.

We shared thoughts and feelings on how we met our husbands, looking after elderly parents, in-laws, grandchildren, as well hair dyes, cataract operations,  anti-ageing creams, knee-replacements, and more.

Travelling together at 64 was an achievement. It also brought out the best in us: our caring, sharing and generous nature. We bonded well and we hope to enjoy many more trips together.

.............................................................................................................................. 

This article was published in the Star on April 4, 2012.  Details on some tour sites and more photographs are added here.