When I first came to Europe in 1984, my curious western friends often asked me about our diets in my country while we were children. They were often disappointed to hear something they had not expected. A teacher once asked me whether I had eaten bread in my country. In this Age of Semi-ignorance, many Europeans who had never been to SE Asia, believed that we ate only rice and noodle and we did not drink milk at all. (Most Asians have intolerance to lactose and we are not supposed to like milk!) Sometimes I did not want to respond to their question because my answer would not be that simple.
I don't know what my mother fed my two older sisters who died before I was born. Their death must have saved me and my other siblings except a younger brother. He died very young of typhoid and pneumonia. Our parents cared for us well so that we would not die young like the first three ones. One more brother died at the age of 40 of alcohol-induced liver failure in November 2009. He was born and stayed healthy until he discovered alcohol and drugs.
We were breast-fed with occasional supplements of cooked rice and salt before we reached four to six months old. Then we were given duck eggs, white bread, biscuits, butter, lots of condensed milk and fresh cow and goat milk. We were also fed rice with chicken, deep-fried catfish or deep-fried snakehead fish or other river fish. We were not given red meat, vegetables, fresh fruit except delicious baked bananas until we were a year old. Yes!!! We also had lots of baked sweet-potatoes, baked potatoes and cooked wing-bean roots. Then we had lots and lots of beef which we all gave up when we became adults.
Hollicks, Overtine and Milo were our night drinks. Ground coffee and rich Indian tea were afternoon and morning drinks. We also had lots of honey and fruit jam. I love all savoury food but I dislike sugar and all sweet things except sweet-potatoes. So my shares of cakes were always traded. My lunch box almost always contained two slices of bread with butter and jam which I duly traded with whatever I got from my classmates at my primary school. I almost always had bread at breakfast and also before I went to bed. So I increasingly became fed up with bread until I became an adult.
Only when we were about five, we were given Burmese traditional snags like glutinous rice with coconut or roasted sesame seeds or dried prawns or fried fish as occasional breakfasts. My parents believed that snags made of glutinous rice made young children constipated and that babies could not digest fresh vegetables. We did not have processed baby food made of vegetables and meat at that time.
My parents were not rich but they made sure that we were well-fed. His friends also made sure that we had enough to eat even when my father had to live with half of his salary after being demoted from his higher position. The inflation was extremely low at that time and even his half salary (a quarter of the previous salary) was enough for us to survive well. That was in the diamond fifties.
However, my mother believed that only mother's milk was good for very young babies. She did not mind fresh cow and goat milk for babies under six months old; but she disliked powered milk. However, in the sixties, when she produced less milk, doctors advised her to feed her babies with powdered milk as well. We teenagers also demanded powdered milk; so my mother had to buy enough powdered milk for her whole brood.
My parents did not own properties. All my father's income was spent on our education, healthy food, his library (books on history, electronics and espionage) and his laboratory while his colleagues saved theirs to buy houses or land for their secure future. We did not have many clothes. We did not have jewellery. However, we always had good food, good books and good music (a Ferrograph tape recorder, a large radio, a movie projector and all the other gadgets and toys).
We were also given lots of vitamin supplements. My father was attached to an administration of a local hospital in the fifties and he seemed to have learnt a lot from some medical professionals at the hospital. We had free medical treatment from this hospital, the best in the whole country. A male nurse often visited us to give seasonal vaccinations and Vitamin B12 injection which was extremely painful. My cousin would attempt to outrun the nurse and my parents, shrieking like a piglet.
All my brothers and sisters have always loved milk, cream, butter and all other diary products since we were babies. Four large loaves of bread and several pints of milk were delivered by an old Hindi milkman everyday. In the seventies, we could no longer afford fresh milk at all. Cream with fruit jam and flat bread became an occasional treat. We used to have lots of tinned cheese with two hammer brand in the fifties and early sixties. However, when they became too expensive, we could not afford them any longer.
In the fifties and sixties, my wise mother always bought and hoarded one year supply of rice, potatoes, onion, garlic, the best quality fish paste, fish sauce, dried prawns and dried fish just after the harvest when prices were the lowest. This was also to prevent my father spending all his salary on books and gadgets. We did not have any hardship during an acute food shortage in the sixties. She had learnt from her experiences during the World War II and the civil war in her hometown.
Our grandparents had a plot of land in the Delta. My aunt looked after this fruit garden and we were allowed to enjoy our dividends. My mother also had an exclusive right to buy the whole rice harvest from her friend, a widow, whose farms produced the best rice in the region. Having blood connections with Delta farmers and fruit growers helped us a great deal. Relatives visited us with lots of seasonal gifts including lots of fried river fish, grilled large prawns or dried ones in exchange for a free lodging during their visit to the capital city.
However, we did not eat exotic food like turtle eggs or frogs or eels or fried locus. We often had such gifts which we duly dumped on those who enjoyed them. (Now I am aware that this eating habit of several Delta-dwelling millions must have crashed the turtle population in South East Asia.) We were appalled to see my second sister suddenly acquire a taste for fried locus during her visit to the country! Anyway these are harmful but protein-rich pest. The more people eat them, the better.
However, in the mid seventies when my father was out of work for three years, we had food shortage. Once, we ran out of my father's pension before the end of the month. My mother had had a baby brother a few years ago after a five years' break. During this period, older siblings ate less so that the baby brother could eat well. Yes he was fed with plenty of milk powder. Now he is the tallest brother almost reaching six feet.
Of course, there were other children whose diets were more varied and better-balanced than ours. At the same time, there were millions of babies whose diets were much poorer than ours. Millions of poor mothers could not/cannot afford powdered milk or other supplements for their babies; however they believe that mother's milk is good for their babies. In rice growing areas, farmers use cows and buffaloes to till their lands. Some mothers in these areas also feed their babies with cow and goat milk if they can get hold of it. However, I often saw skeletal cows with calves and felt guilty about drinking cow milk, especially after a colleague at the University advised me not to steal the milk from hungry calves who were born out of working cows and not of diary cows.
In the golden sixties, my father frequently brought us food from hotels which catered for State dignitaries. He must have been in charge for the security of these visitors. So he must have been given untouched food or leftovers from these opulent State banquets. Now I can find food with similar quality only in some top Japanese restaurants in London. The chefs in these hotels must have been trained to cook for the Emperors of Japan and China! This opportunity allowed me to cook from my taste. We could not afford such quality food from these exclusive hotels. Sometimes my father bought them for the whole family when there were no State visits. My mother groaned while we were wolfing everything up! So I had to emulate the recipes by identifying the ingredients from my palate alone when I took over the kitchen duty for a few years. This enormously pleased my father who missed his late mother's Chinese cooking and complaint a lot about my mother's Delta cuisine.
Now many brilliant Burmese websites are devoted to Burmese cuisine. Recently, I had a great pleasure in introducing these websites to a friend whom I could not convince that wild asparagus grow in Burma. Now I do not have to respond to their idle stupid questions. I only have to divert the curious to various websites devoted Burmese food and to this blog if they want to know just my childhood diets. Well, do not expect me to cater Burmese food for you. You can have the recipe from these website and cook your supper by yourself.
