Top Most On My Da's Shopping List...

An elegant sample of how an Irish breakfast looks like
Please note that my Da's and Nana's portions are ginormous

My Da (Dad) will be going back to Ireland next month, top most of the list of items we would like him to bring back here to Malaysia for us are, a joint of cornedbeef, sausages and white pudding. I can already taste and smell it, as if it were in front of me.

In my Nana’s home, a traditional Irish breakfast consists of rashers (bacon), sausages, black & white pudding, fried tomatoes, fried eggs, baked beans, sautéed mushrooms & toast slathered in butter served with a piping hot cup of tea.

After eating such a meal it is highly unlikely that you'll be feeling peckish come lunchtime. I believe the meal was meant to last all day.  Back in my Grandad and Nana's time, I was told that they were used to hard labour. Some even held down mutiple jobs to make ends meet. So a meal such as this was meant to last until   their tea in the evening.

Nasi Lemak

Fast forward to present day, people eat a meal like this for breakfast (on occasionally surely) people eat  a meal like this and sit at the desk all day. Likewise here in Malaysia, we have a dish called "Nasi Lemak" (which by the way is my favourite Malaysian dish). This dish of rice cooked in coconut milk served with fried anchovies, hard boiled eggs, fried peanuts, slices of cucumber and a spicy sambal sauce. Optional extras include fried chicken, spicy squid sambal & a spicy beef dish added to it. Again back in the time of our grandparents and their parents a breakfast dish like this would be followed by hours of labour in the padifields, rubber plantations, or some other arduous task.

Fast forward to present day Malaysia, a majority of people eat this for breakfast and go to their desk jobs. All this equates to a recipe for heart disease, diabetes etc. Not saying that you shouldn't eat a meal like this but balance is key.

Just as my Nana has her own uniqe style of preparing breakfast.My Da does it slightly differently. Instead of toasting the bread, he fries it in the pan with the fat left over from the rashers and sausages. Also as a family we’ve stopped eating black pudding simply because one of the main ingredients in black pudding is blood. As followers of Christ we are not permitted to eat food that is made from blood

“23 Only do not eat meat with blood still in it, for the life is in the blood, and you must not eat the life with the meat. 24 Do not use the blood for food instead, pour it out on the ground like water.“  - Deuteronomy 12: 23-24.