Food, Glorious Food?

There’s a certain irony to seeing lavish buffet spreads and ramadhan bazaars sprout like mushrooms during the fasting month. I mean, this is the month when we’re supposed to eat less; not fast during the day and gorge all you can after sunset. But hey, that’s just me.

Abang is starting to understand what ‘puasa’ means. Of course I don’t let him fast now, he’s only 3 and a half years old and the sugar-low induced tantrums would kill me and I might just take him with me. But he knows what it means. Just the other day I was trying to get him to take a shower when he got back from kindergarten.

“Come Abang, let’s mandi. You’re all sweaty from kindergarten.”

“Don’t want to mandi. Abang ‘puasa mandi’ so I will only mandi at night.”

I think Adik will have a tougher time with fasting when he’s older. The boy just LOVES food. Not just what I put on his plate, either. He’ll go for everyone else’s meals (even if he’s had his already) plus anything he finds on the floor. Which is fine if it’s at home but not at, say, Kizsports. Hypothetically speaking, if he were to find, say, dropped fries on the floor of Kizsports 1Utama, he might, hypothetically speaking, just pick one up and put it in his mouth. I’m not saying he actually did that one time during the last school holidays when I took him, Abang and Cuz to play there. No, no, this is just a hypothetical situation.

Anyway, back to those bazaars. We usually avoid it like the plague because everything looks so good when you’re hungry. All the more when you go in the evening just before breaking fast when you’re really, really hungry. My auntie wanted to go to the neighbourhood bazaar one day, so I obliged. She didn’t exactly buy up the whole bazaar – although I could tell she wanted to – but add what she bought, PLUS some other stuff our maid bought as well, to the home-cooked food that had already been prepared for dinner that night, and you have a recipe for too much food.

The next day, she wanted to go again and I said no. Actually, she said “Let’s go find some kueh.” and I said “No, thanks.”

Same goes for the ramadhan buffets. As a family, we never go. Firstly, it’s expensive. Secondly, it’s tiring. When you have to wake up at 4:30am the next morning, early bedtime is key.

Thirdly, and I feel, most importantly, is the fact that this month of all months is when we shouldn’t be stuffing our faces. I don’t see how we can possibly ‘empathise’ with the poor and destitute who struggle to get a decent meal when we pay RM30 and up to put as much food on our plate as we can and then not finish it.

And if you’re not going to eat that much, why go to a buffet?