Typical Malaysian Wedding Dinner (usually 40 or more tables!)

From now until to the New Year, I’ve got parties and more parties to attend. A cousin is getting married on Saturday and my dad’s very close friend, we call him Uncle Cheah, is celebrating his 80th birthday this Sunday. My son’s preschool has this really fun 4 day Church camp, culminating with a pre Xmas concert tomorrow. Also, this coming Tuesday is the Chinese Winter Solstice Festival. This is the day when family members gather at the head of the family’s house, in my case, that’s my in-laws house for a big dinner. My little boy is also born on Xmas day, so we’ll definitely have a super duper party.

Parties and big family gatherings are so much fun. And there’s always an opportunity to bring all sorts of tasty food to share at these parties. For example, my kid’s preschool had asked for parents to bring some pot luck dishes for the kids to share. I’ll be bringing maybe 2 dishes to my in-laws house for the Winter Solstice Festival. My sister-in-law will probably bring a few of her fabulous dishes as well. My cousin’s wedding dinner probably calls for a Chinese sit-down affair that probably includes a 10 course meal. Uncle Cheah is having a huge buffet at his house. Meanwhile, let’s not even talk about Xmas party. It’s pretty much a food fest right here.

The problem with food, I realize, is that most of the time, when we buy food, especially pre packaged food, it’s all pretty much laden with artificial coloring, additives, preservatives, all the yucky stuff that can really make you sick; many nice holiday wrapped chocolates for example. How about soft drinks like Fanta, Coca-cola, Dr. Pepper? Yes, even those reconstituted juices at the cold section of the supermarket that tries to pass off as fresh juice. Fresh juice in my opinion is anything just juiced from a juicer or a blender. Anything else is not.

Can you believe this poison sugar water isotonic drink is recommended by doctors for those who have diarrhea?

El Fresco night market juice shop

So anyways, this holiday season, give everyone the gift of love by showing your concern for your friends and family. When you go out and buy food, do stop an extra minute and read food labels and buy safe food.

You could make your own food using natural products, which by itself is free of additives, as presents. What I mean by that? Look at the package labels the next time you go to the grocery store. Notice something as basic as flour has preservatives in it.  The bottom line is, whether it is approved by the whatever government agency, we are still eating bad-for-you preservatives. Buy something that doesn’t have any preservatives if you can help it.

Alternatively, you can buy additive free cookies, cakes and any other food from a place you know serves good food, and I don’t mean, just tasty food. My friend Sui Wei sells preservative free, oh so good, choco chip cookies. I’m sure you probably know someone who does as well. Not only that, lots of gourmet specialty shops sell food that are free of additives, organic food as well.

You see, food is a great vehicle to get everyone closer. And if you show you are concerned about people’s health, they too will reciprocate and take care to feed you healthful food as well.

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More on

• Regular bread is full of additives
• What would you bring to a pot luck party?
• Is food making people around you crazy?
• Flowers, the natural food coloring
• Homemade, handmade butter

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What beautiful flowers.

My grandma used to pick these bright, blue, delicate Telang flowers from her garden and use it to color quite a few things like fabrics and stuff, but she used it to color mainly food. I get mine outside a narrow grassy area at my neighborhood CIMB bank where it’s growing wild.

Back in the old days, women would cook one part sticky rice with plain water, while in another pot, they would have cooked another part sticky rice with bluish colored water. The water was previously soaked with the Telang flower petals and boiled gently for about 15 minutes to extract the colors. Once both the rice are done, they would just combined both the rice, gently stirring it together to create a two tone blue and white sticky rice dessert.

Some people add blueberries in their smoothies, turning it blue. I like to call my blue smoothies “A Very Smurfy Smoothie”. I don’t know why, but my kids think that name is just totally hilarious.

It would really be nice if more people used natural food coloring to color all the things around them, rather than using artificial coloring and food additives like calcium propionate.

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Read about

• Is food making people around you crazy?
• Is your bread bad for you and your family?
• My homemade bread, no preservatives, no artificial coloring, no eggs
• Malaysian bread statistics you may not know

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