Road to being happy cont...

One article says one way to be happy is to cook or eat something you liked as a child.

Before I get that food, I must remember what was it that I liked.

What I remember is that my Mum did not keep much food in the house. Both Mum and Dad came from poor background so I guess the habit of not eating much had stayed with them forever.  We always have the 3 meals of the day, occasionally some sort of kueh my great grandma would make for tea, that's it.  No pantry laden with biscuits, chocolate or cakes.  Our snack would be from the 'Bai Roti' who would come by in the evenings. He announces his arrival by a little horn that goes 'pot-pot', 'pot-pot'.

This 'Bai', I think it means, 'brother', this  Brother Bread would come on his bicycle  carrying a big black 'canister' with a heavy cover on the back, that holds the fluffy white bread. My Mum would buy bread for breakfast the next morning and we would sometimes get 'Roti Kaya', 2 thick slices spread with kaya from a metal container the Bai hooks on the handles of his bicycle. The loaf though, only when bought, would be trimmed of its crust.

The first person who started asking Brother Bread for the crust was Mariam.  She would cycle up to him and ask for the crust and soon, we all did.  There were 2 sets of children then, the English speaking and the Malay speaking. Mariam is of mixed parentage. English and Malay so when she got the crust for us to nibble on, we Malay medium ones thought it was called 'Keras'  (hard), since it was the part of the bread that was hard. It was much later that I realized the 'keras'  we so much enjoyed at the playground in the evenings was actually 'crust'.

Anyway, no one could tell the difference then. Certainly not the Brother Bread.

When we were young even crust was delectable, especially shared among friends. But where would I find those crust/keras these days.