At a time like this, when you’re cooped up at home, it pays to have general know-how of cooking. It also helps to be a little creative in the kitchen.
What started as a call for help has shown me that with a little ingenuity, you can do wonders with what you have in the pantry.
It started the day after the Movement Control Order (MCO) announcement. My cousin called mum with a problem.
This young man just started selling pineapples in the neighbourhood and would order supplies for three to four days.
On that day, he received a huge load of pineapples and was stuck – he couldn’t open his stall and had to try and sell what he already paid for or lose a lot of money and waste all those yummy pineapples.
This is where a strong community of good neighbours stepped in. As soon as we started sending out messages to our neighbours and friends nearby, the orders came in.
Three days’ worth of stock cleared up. To make sure he didn’t waste any, my cousin juiced the remaining pineapples and gave each order one big cup as a thank you for helping out.
He managed to cover his cost and no pineapples were wasted.
That is how mum and I ended up with about four pineapples and nowhere to go.
It was fine for a couple of days, eating them as is. Then mum being mum, got bored and decided to make a few things.
She grated one and made it into pineapple jam for tarts so we have some teatime snacks.
The next day, she cut some up to make the yummiest pineapple lemak that we had for a few meals (we just finished the last batch actually).
She was contemplating modifying the lemak into a base for otak-otak, but we finished it before we could attempt the experiment.
We still had some pineapples left in the fridge, so she ran some ideas by me, to make either acar timun (jelatah), asam pedas nenas with ikan masin, pineapple fried rice, muffins or pineapple salsa for fish. Everything sounded really good and I’m just happy to reap the benefits.
Just listening to her ideas made me realise there are many possibilities when you have imagination and are not afraid to try.
The four walls do not have to do you in. You can actually break the mind barrier and experiment and if you don’t know how, mum always says “Ala, YouTube ada”.
This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Twentytwo13.