[dropcap background=”yes”]A [/dropcap]house needs people to live. Empty, a house slowly decays. In the humid tropics, it decays with a startling quickness. Mak moved out of my wife’s childhood home, temporarily, to start a child-care business at [tooltip text=”Simpang Empat” trigger=”hover”]Four Corners[/tooltip], the small town connecting Bagan Datoh with the rest of the world. Nothing […]
Tag Archives: banana
Lemang Raya
Lemang is quintessential Malay holiday food, impossible to find throughout the year, impossible to avoid come Hari Raya. Lemang is glutinous, or sticky, rice cooked in coconut milk inside a length of bamboo and roasted over an open fire. The work involved in making it is considerable. First, locate and chop down a giant piece […]
Kuih-muih
The fasting month is proceeding apace. This year, I have three children fasting from dawn to dusk, KakUda is fasting from dawn till when she returns from school, and Andak is fasting from breakfast all the way to lunch. With so many earnest young fasters, the iftar spread is of vital importance to bolster their […]
The Yard: Bunga Kantan
The variety of herbs and spices used in Malaysian cooking is incredible until you realize this is where all the spices came from in the first place. Plenty of spices like cloves, cinnamon, and pepper are traded around the world. Some, for whatever reason, are still unknown outside of the region. One of these is […]
G(r)owing Bananas
I couldn’t wait for the rock wall and grading project to be done to start planting up the yard. I decided to grow some bananas along the jungle edge. Six months later, I’ve already harvested my first banana crop, and I’ve got banana trees towering 15 feet tall, swaying in the breeze. The varieties of […]
Strange Fruit pt. 8: Rambutan
It is fruit season now, which means all my discretionary income is vanishing at the roadside market. There are plenty of local fruits available year round – pineapples, papayas, bananas – but the best fruits are highly seasonal, available only for two months or so at the beginning and middle of the year. One of […]