Ramadhan Datang Lagi

Although 13 days too late, I would like to wish all Muslims Ramadhan A-Mubarak.

I’ve always loved Ramadhan even when I was young. When I was a little girl, I loved the atmosphere and festivity during puasa. Breaking fast, playing bunga api and mercun at night were like the best activities in the whole wide world at the time. These days it’s a little harder to get those wonderful mercun we played during our childhood, I pity my kids. It was sure FUN playing with mercun despite what the government says about the risk that comes with it.

As we get older, we look forward to another aspect of puasa - terawih and ibadah. Food glorious food is undoubtedly the main agenda too during Ramadhan – as much as we try to deny this fact, it’s very much true for us Malaysians. One cannot escape about thinking of going to the many Ramadhan bazaars around town.

Always on the top list are: Murtabak, ayam percik, ikan bakar, the sweet kuihs, pengat (or serawa as we orang Kedah calls it) and the ever faithful bubur lampuk. Yumm yummm!!

My two young sons too look forward to puasa, for that I thank Allah the Almighty. When I asked Kyle what he liked most about puasa he said he loves waking up early in the morning for sahur and he look forward to shedding some weight as well. Daniel used to look forward to the food for berbuka. But not this year. This year we really eat in moderation. We seldom go to the bazaar and I cook everything from lauk-pauk, kuih-muih and the drink. I hope the tradition would continue for years to come. In the past, half of what we bought ended up in the dustbin. So this year, I thought we should try to curb the pembaziran. Moreover, being a fulltime homemaker, I am determined to “homemade” this year’s puasa.

During the recent school holiday, I took the advantage to execute some home project with the kids in my endeavor to keep them occupied before breaking fast. We made doughnuts, karipap and other kuih as a family project. The kids loved it. It was a huge success. I shall try to do this more often during weekends and holidays.

Next week, my other half is leaving for China for a week – I don’t like this! It makes buka puasa definitely less exciting *sob sob*. I foresee that my cooking momentum may slightly decrease during his one week absence.

I say Malaysians are obsessed with food. We take every opportunity to celebrate with food, even in the month when we were supposed to eat less :D.