Ah Mi popian and a surprise birthday

The ladies are much in love with MIL's home-made popian. They wanted to learn from the Master chef herself and we arranged a date at her home to do so.

Upon MIL's rough estimation of the number of ingredients to be bought, each of us were responsible to bring them over to her house. In the olden days, the folks rely on trails and errors over the years to get the right taste of the food. They do not have any written down recipes passed down from their own mothers or the money to buy a recipe book from the bookstall. Anyway, most were not educated and hence, not able to read even if they have the recipe with them.

Nowsaday, we were so fortunate being able to follow recipes from cookbooks or even on-line recipes to cook o bake stuff.

We have a lot of fun cutting up the ingredients tough. As the process can be quite tedious and time consuming, it is always good to have everyone to chip in to speed up the cutting process. Most of the ingredients for popians needed to be cut into slices, cubes or to be shredded. Most of the popian that were sold outside have less ingredients, Ah Mi's popian consists of many ingredients which made her popian very popular among relatives and my friends! And the grounded chilli padi that goes with it was super spicy which some might find it rather challenging!

It also happened to be Ah Mi's birthday ... we decided to spring her a surprise! I can tell hat she has a wonderful time with my friends. It is a blessing that all them know hokkein and mandarin and it really made it easier to communicate with her. Thank you to my friends who made this gathering such a wonderful one.

Not long before this popian session, Ah Mi has given up on her weekly cooking for the family due to her arthritis condition. This lady has cooked for her family almost her whole life and I thought it was also time that she has some free time for herself. This is also a good opportunity for the rest of the family members to do our part to bring her weekly for dinner or lunch.