Since young, I've always liked to drink. (Not drinking alcohol!)
I like to eat as well (my grandma gave me the title 'the rat in the house' because I would check the cupboards in the kitchen for 'new arrivals', cookies that she had just bought home for me).
Back to drinking, I guess a good way of putting it is that my parents are thrifty. I don't think we were very poor la, but now come to think of it it's a bit sad haha.
For example, as kids we didn't know there were choices. So breakfast, we had bread because dad would always buy a loaf of Gardenia bread and we would eat it with jams. I liked peanut butter a lot for my bread but my dad would say they were expensive compared to just having fruit jams. But anyway, once in a while, I still succeeded in convincing him to get me peanut butter for breakfast.
So back to being thrifty. So, I have always envied people in the supermarkets who could get whatever they wanted into the shopping trolley. Perhaps as kids, we were always curious about how things would taste (never thought bout cum though). I liked checking out the 3-in-1 drinks section. Coffees, teas, herbal teas, 4-in-1 brown rice drinks, they all looked so yum..
And I've always told my mum my dream, I said to her that in the future, I want my kitchen to be filled with all these drinks so that I could pick whatever I want, so that I never have to just look at them but own them! haha
I had never actually been allowed to consume coffee when I was young till I was in secondary school. Because my parents had always told us that kids shouldn't drink coffee, coffee is bad for kids.
Because my maternal grandparents live in a village about 600km away from my hometown, we would always travel on the North-South Highway during school breaks to visit them. And my parents being really careful drivers, would make stops throughout the journey to rest and to eat and to let us pee.
As kids, we liked travelling and having stops at R&R (rehat and rawat in malay?) because we got to eat something different! (coz usually mum would cook when we were younger) and most importantly we got to order drinks from the Malay stalls.
My parents would always get themselves Nescafe (hot with milk, usually sweetened condensed milk), and because I wasn't allowed to drink coffee, I would order teh tarik (the malaysian milk tea). Little did my parents know that the milk teas actually contained as much caffeine as the coffees they had.
Fast forward to my days in secondary school, my parents finally lifted the ban or they probably relented as I had the excuse that I needed coffee to study.
Since then, I would use my pocket money and go to the local supermarket myself and buy 3-in-1 coffees. We had nescafe Gold and probably some 3-in-1 nescafe at home but I wanted to try the other brands haha. And then, 3-in-1 White Coffees started to get popular. I could probably write up an article on the evolution of 3-in-1 coffees in Malaysia.
And then when I came over to Sydney to study, I discovered the 'wonders of' real coffee made by espresso machines. We could only get that in Starbucks in Malaysia during the my Subang Jaya days.
I fell in love with the Flat White here. I wanted so much so make my own flat white in my own room. I learned how to froth milk on Youtube. And then I bought my first espresso machine.
Not good enough because it was the cheapest among the series. I bought the second one, a better one.
And then I told my mum over skype the wonders of it. And over the summer break, when I went home, I bought one for home. I wanted my parents to have real coffee not powdered coffee. I taught my mum how to use it, but now it's sitting nicely in the kitchen at home.
After having 3 espresso machines in less than two years, I got to know about the Nespresso Machine. I guess, by now, most people, even Malaysians would know what Nespresso is. But anyway I was one of the early adopters of Nespresso I guess.
I am still using my Nespresso machine but sometimes when I run out of the capsules, or when I am in a hurry, I would resort to having instant coffees.
From left to right.
Moccona (3-in-1. From New Zealand)
Nescafe Gold Decaf (just bought it today)
Nescafe Gold
Nescafe Azera (new product from Nescafe, bought it last week, similar to nescafe Gold but much more intense)
The Condensed Milk (The design is so smart! It comes in a toothpaste-like tube so you can store it easily and don't have to worry about it getting contaminated with germs in the fridge!)
And finally my Nespresso Capsules.
Mmm, coffee: I'll take mine black please :-)
ReplyDeleteI will only have long black or americano when i m lactose intolerant
Delete;-) My niece agrees with you and uses "Almond Milk" since we are lactose sensitive. I raise my cup of black, no sweetener, and allow each to their own preference :-)
Deletei'm glad to met a coffee fan here,i'm a coffee addict!used to drink 1 litre of coffee daily and now reduce it to 2 cups of coffee.currently i drank tesco fairtrade espresso and another arabica coffee i brought at jusco organic section.have you tried the jamaican blue mountain coffee?
ReplyDeleteYes, once only I guess at TCC Singapore. It was good and I had it without milk.
Deletei should try that:D
Delete