Ah Yen's Acar

Ah Yen is my grandma. She makes the best acar, the yummiest and cleanest acar, I'm not bluffing. A lot of people order from her, but she cannot promise if she can make it or not, since we have a big family and family is first priority ^^

Chinese New Year is coming, so a lot of families are busy making New Year foods.

Since last year, I'm interested in making the festival foods with my grandma. I've made dumpling, tang yuan and now acar. She really makes good dumpling, acar etc etc that's why I wanna learn from her. Also helping her at the same time because making acar requires A LOT of work, and she doesn't have a maid. Seriously, I cannot imagine how long she's gonna finish doing the acar with one pair of hands. That's the reason why acar is expensive.

How good she is? Even reporter also want to interview her. But she rejected. First, accepting the interview means photos are taken, so going to the salon to have hair-do is troublesome for her. Second, she thinks the reporter will disturb her progress of making the foods. "Jin ma huan (hokkien)" she said. 

Then I realised every time I help her, making all these different foods for every Chinese festival, she has to remember what each family member likes to eat. For example, my uncle dislikes peanuts, so she will not peanut for some dumplings. My aunt likes lap cheong, so she will add lap cheong for another set of dumpling. Some members are vegetarian, so the ingredients are different. It really takes A LOT of work for just preparing the ingredients. I really 佩服 my grandma. My No. 1 idol. 

No one will ever know how tough these works are until we really experience ourselves. We need to wash and cut 100 kg of cucumber! She said last year she bought 400 kg wtf And there are more ingredients to make. I can't imagine she can tahan and been doing all these for....50 years? And never stop a year.

Then my grandma will always story her history. All are very interesting like how we ended up in red I.C. because back then, Chinese are afraid they cannot go back China, so they wrote Place of Birth in China instead of Brunei. 

Then how they escaped from the wars. How the Indonesians burnt their houses. How they lived before electricity is invented. How people pooped in buckets. Then I'll feel how lucky we are to be born in a high technology world. 

She's a humorous and interesting grandma. 

Luckily this week I only have one lecture, so I've been helping my grandma, and gonna help her whenever I'm free. 

Kinda busy these weeks as I have a part time job, and I need to fried seaweed for Chinese New Year too.

Then need to beautify my whole body before Chinese New Year >< and clean up my room.

And need to attend a friend's wedding. 

Full of prayer sticks.

Excited for Chinese New Year :D