Loving leftovers

Cold rice, fish heads, small shrimp, and wild vegetables are the definition of meager meals of poverty

Photo by Conscious Design on Unsplash

When I was eight years old, my family moved into a new house. It was our first concrete home, built with all my parents' savings after ten years of marriage.

We started our lives all over again in this new, big, and sturdy home, even though there was no glass on the windows to stop the rain from intruding into our cold nights. Some nights, rainwater sneaked under my bed as I woke up to go pee. It was cold and the wind flushed through the empty space inside. My younger brother cried. He was afraid when he heard the wind shrieking through the hollowed windows. 

Beyond those dramatic window-lacking moments, we had very little to eat. We didn't talk about food. We were quiet about how hungry we were. Our food was meager, but Mom insisted that we eat more rice to keep us full. In poor families, rice was the essential staple, and there was nothing else to eat with it - just rice. We didn't like the new home and kept talking about the old home we left behind, where there was plenty of food and no rain-flushing window.

*

One afternoon, as I was about to head to school, I was craving the crunchy sesame sweets sold by the school gate. I asked out loud: “Mom, could I have some small changes for candy?” - My mom put her finger on her lips and whispered, “My love, I don't have any money left. Could you go to school today without candy?” 

I walked out on the blazing hot asphalt road. My eight-year-old brain struggled with Mom’s answer. Does it mean that we are now so poor? I don’t like the new house. Why do I need to live there and can't have candy? Why do I not have any friends to share candy when I don't have money? The questions swirled in my head like an annoying swarm of buzzing mosquitoes. I couldn’t shut them off. They followed me to the class, biting me relentlessly. 

I stopped asking Mom for small changes.  I stopped craving sesame candy, ice shaving cups, and red syrup-coated fruits. I looked away from all of them while walking to school. 

About a week after the conversation happened, I was writing some homework when my mom called my name from the kitchen, “Come here, call your brother!” Her voice was buzzed with some strange excitement so both of us ran into the kitchen. 

She asked me to close my eyes and open my mouth. She put something warm and hard on my tongue. I sucked it. A tingling sweetness with some sesame seeds melted into my palate. "Sesame sweet!" I shouted out loud. My brother couldn't say anything, he was crunching the whole thing into small pieces. 

"I made it, does it taste like the one you like at school?" 

I nodded excitedly. Mom handed me a small ceramic bowl with a cap, with many of them inside, round and covered with lightly browned sesame seeds. It turned out she bought brown cheap cane sugar in the market, and our old lady neighbor gave her sesame in exchange for some help with the garden. 

Mom made the candy from what she imagined I would want. She melted the sugar in the frying pans, using a metal spoon, and rolled the sticky brown liquid until it became a small marble. While the brown "marbles" were still sticky and warm, she threw them into a bowl of toasted sesame seeds. Then she left them near the water tank until they cooled off and hardened into "candy". The candy lasted us two weeks. Both of us treasured each sweet marble and only ate once every two days. I didn't have that many craving moments like that afternoon before school, but toasted sesame was nutty and savory. 

*

My parents paid the last penny they had for the house. My father worked far away from home and he brought home almost all his income. But it never seemed enough. A new home meant we kids learned to live without insisting on having allowance or lavish snacks we used to have from mom's grocery days. 

Once, Dad didn't get paid on time. His company just refused to pay that week. "This week we do not have money," said Mom. My brother and I nodded. 

Surprisingly, she made all this delicious food.

She made fried rice with salty fish head, fried rice with fish, fried rice and eggs, and salty fish. Then she moved to small dry shrimps. Steamed rice with small shrimp. Steamed rice with a sauce made of dry shrimp and green onions. Steamed rice with vegetable soup with dry shrimp head. Slow-cooked shrimp with vegetables and steamed rice. There were always two plates of wild vegetables she collected in our small garden and the neighbor's garden. She even made a big bowl of sauce and kept it in the kitchen cupboard, so in case we got hungry at night, she could quickly heat up some rice with that sauce.

*

Years later, Mom deconstructed those meals for me. While she needed to buy salty fish, their heads were free. Most mothers asked the sellers to chop the fish heads off. She bought some salty fish and asked for some more free heads. The lady owner was more than happy to get rid of them. 

Shrimp was not cheap, but little shrimp sat at the bottom of the price list, almost as cheap as vegetables. She could buy quite a bit with little money. "And they are rich in calcium and protein, good for you kids," Mom smiled. 

We always had plenty of vegetables because they were the cheapest in the market and our neighbor was generous enough to give us whenever she harvested. She made us full meals every day out of $3 of expenses per week those days. 

"I had to learn. I borrowed books that explained protein, calcium, carbs, vitamins, and whatever you needed to grow. I bought the cheapest food with enough of those things. And rice. We always had rice. You know when you understand what nutritional components each kind of vegetable or meat carries, you can make nutritious food with very cheap ingredients. You don't need something expensive or delicacy on the shelf to shout at you that they are more nutritious than other cheap stuff," She winked at me.

Her secret recipes in the seasons of hunger drove us through the dramatic years without many bumping spots. We ate, studied, and grew up mostly healthy and content. We didn't get hungry besides some first days moving to our new home. We just didn't have allowance money to brag with our classmates. It was her pride in making her kids what they craved without having to spend much. 

*

Mom never felt inferior because we were poor. It was just the time we had little and we needed to try harder. Trying harder means learning and finding immediate solutions and long-term solutions to get out of it. Food was her immediate solution. She ensured that her kids had enough to eat. Later on, she found a job to help my dad earn a living after a year of hardship.

Simple knowledge about nutrition from the books she borrowed from our teacher neighbors empowered her, and it continues to do so today. She was confident in planning and deciding how to feed her father and keep him healthy in his later years with dementia. She made her kids delicious meals when we showed up at home. Maybe food knowledge is one important thing that an adult needs to navigate their life even in difficult situations.

"Every age you grow,  you desire or wish or like something. Those things will pass. If I don't give you some joy from what you wish, you will never have it again when you grow up and forget, that little joy can't be redone, " She unfolded the part about the sesame candy that took her a lot of effort to make, which was not an important part of our nutrition at all. 

*

Our family gradually got better and we could afford most food we wanted. I worked in a big city and often came home for a visit, either late at midnight after a working trip or at five a.m. in the morning before I headed out for another trip. Mom walked into the kitchen with her sleeping gown and took out all the leftovers in the cupboard and fridge. "I make something up for you," she yawned and turned the stove on. 

She made up something. Cold rice heated in slow-cooked pork. Quick-steamed vegetables with fish sauce, super fast noodles with her already-made chicken broth. Mixes of all leftovers with soya sauce. Burnt rice with spring onion and fish sauce. She took pride in being a master at turning leftovers into delicious meals, creating something nice out of almost craps. 

I learn to respect food crap from her perspective, craps can be a good meal if you learn about it enough.

* 

Last week I was walking in a market in Bogota, Colombia. This magical country of fruit and vegetable abundance mesmerized me with its colorful fruits and strange vegetables. My mom asked me to take some pictures of the fruit on my phone and showed her. She pointed at the price tag of some colorful fruits, "Just buy them, they are cheap, and this kind is full of vitamin A. Cook with little heat, don't kill the vitamin." 

I realized Mom's principle of cooking is her way of living. She cares about meals because those are the major parts of life that other important qualities will come after. Being smart, working hard, being successful... whatever you are, you still need healthy meals to feel content with your body. Being healthy requires one's effort to create one's meals to serve their body's interest. Learning about your body and its needs takes time and care. She doesn't think that if we work hard and earn a lot of money we can buy people's cooking talent and time to make food for us. Maybe you need more salt, but maybe I don't need it that much, and the cook can’t feel those delicate facts of your meals. All factors are different with different bodies and different states of mind. Cooking one's own meals forces that person to nurture and to be aware of small changes in their body from day to day. To love living. To acknowledge our body changes. To become better people.

She grew us into healthy people. Understanding food is her way of navigating the moments of life without getting crushed by the anxiety of poverty or humiliation.