On 27th June 09, I wrote in my blog about my days in Sheffield Hallam University and I ended with “shall continue soon…”. I have totally forgotten about it!

It was just a couple of days ago, I shared with my roommie that I have booked my ticket to London next month…we started to share our memories when we were in UK 12 years ago! She asked, “Would you go back to our hostel to have a look?” I would really love too…hopefully I can make it!

Anyway, we went on and tried to recall our housemates name…I failed terribly but my roommie’s memory is fantastic! Thanks for reminding me…cheers

To continue where I left since my roommie has been kind enough to refresh my memory, I ended with the usual days we have classes and the time we usually get back to our hostel. Yup, our daily meals were simple.

Breakfast would normally just a cup of hot chocolate or coffee for me. Then we would walk for about 20mins to attend our classes. By lunch, we either have our packed from home sandwich which consist 2 pieces of bread with a slice of thin ham (as thin as a paper size) and a few pieces of iceberg cabbage or a bar of snickers (if we were too lazy to make sandwich). A few occasion, we got tired of sandwich and chocolate bars. We would then spend GBP2.50 for fish and chips. One pack was good enough for 2 of us. Let me share a joke. One afternoon we went to the market to stock up our food. We were hungry and went to pack fish and chips. On the menu, there were a few types of fish for selection. We look through and noticed there was a type which was cheaper than usual. It was called roe and chips. Both of us did not know what the heck was roe. It turned out to be one huge deep fried fish eggs and chips! “Good things don’t come cheap, cheap things usually are not good!”

For dinner, since both of us were deprived from having many ingredients, we keep to 2-3 simple dishes. Usual recipes include chicken with orange sauce, fried iceberg cabbage and ketchup beans. You must be asking why always iceberg cabbage…well, one iceberg cabbage cost 35pence and it can lasts us one week. Other vegetables were quite costly though. Sometimes we did have broccoli and tomatoes. O, I just remembered. We also cooked tuna spaghetti…our own recipe discovered in hostel.

A few times, we had other uni-mates who dropped by our kitchen and made us some good dishes like bak kut teh, soup, roast chicken wings etc. Guess what, those who made good and complex dishes were guys! Gals just wanna keep things simple… :) drinking milk was also part of our diet while fruits were mainly nectarines and peaches. Of all the food that we have, maggi mee was our favourite especially tomyam and curry flavour! I recalled that we called home to ask our parents to courier food stuff over. Maggi mee was a must! Now to think of it, it was rather naïve of us since we were only there for 3 months + and we can’t seem to live without maggi mee. Mind you, we did concern about our hair loss after consuming many packs of maggi mee.. :(

For a couple of weeks, we had an Italian student in our hostel. His name is Enzo. He was studying English @ Sheffield Hallam. His food was even more simple then ours! I noticed that his usual meal was macaroni with green peas most of the time. Before he left, we had a makan party. We cooked some Malaysian dishes while Enzo made a few Italian dishes. I learned how to make cabonara spaghetti and mozzarella cheese with tomatoes and basil leave from Enzo. He is a friendly and funny guy…:) while we were saying our goodbyes, being gwailo he grabbed my roomie and gave her a tight hug and kissed her on the cheek. That kiss surprised my roomie and gave a light scream! He got a shock and apologized immediately. When it came to my turn, he politely asked “Can I hug and kiss you?” hahahahaha….

I also learned how to bake. My roommie’s birthday was a round the corner but to buy a piece cake was rather expensive for a student and it was not enough to go around. While shopping for our weekly groceries, I saw a pack of ready made mixed flour for a cake. Why not?! I bought the ready mixed flour, a chocolate bar and a few strawberries. On that day, I brought all the equipments and stuff to my other uni-mates’ hostel. After an hour of mixing, stirring and baking…wa-la, the cake was done. Then I melted the chocolate bar and spread over the cake. Next was to decorate it with strawberries. I am very poor when it comes to decoration. I just don’t have the clue. I did my best with my imagination and of course the cake did not look like those from the shop! Tasted ok though…hahahaha..from then, many of my other uni-mates also baked cake for birthday and for fun!

At one time, I was so bored with our meals and I thought of making burgers my own. I bought a packed of minced beef. I chose the cheapest pack. I put some pepper, soya sauce, salt and mixed well with the meat. Mould the meat into 6 burger shape and slammed them into the oven. Then I got my other uni-mates and roommie to try them out. “Ting” and I took them out from the oven. The whole tray was filled with cooked minced beef! Gosh…my roomie gave up after a few bites and so did I. Lo and behold my other uni-mate finished it off! I told him to stop eating because it looked bad and tasted so-so. Anyway, I was glad he finished it and not gone to waste…

So, there were many trials and errors in the kitchen. I do not think the gwailo students were as adventurous like us when it comes to food. You should have seen the guys’ kitchen! They got all the types of herbs and ingredients as though they were opening an eatery at the hostel! Later I found out that they often had supper ie roast chicken wings (chicken wings are dirt cheap in UK) with a couple of beers. I only managed to join them once or twice. But not all guys were like them. My ground floor housemate, a guy, would only have rice with sausages for his main meal! He had this like almost everyday. Salute!

Eating out was a no-no for us. Mostly we packed fish and chips. Well, we did have lunch at the pub for one time and it cost us GBP2.50 for a meal. And lastly before we came home from UK, we had a big party where we invited our lecturers to join us. Everyone made a dish and it was a great evening as we took our food in the open during the end of summer in UK…:)

Here I am sharing mostly on our usual meals and some food happenings while I was in UK. Especially for Asian, food is the link to create a better relationship. If you noticed, most festive seasons are related to food and on the eve of the festivals, all family members are encouraged to be home to dine together. I love and am blessed to say “Live to Eat” is motto!