Hawker culture reducing people's ability to cook

UPDATE: I'm amused by the interest generated on the Straits Times FB. In answer to questions raised: I do try to grow my own food. Not always successful, but I experiment, any way. My son is trying to cook as much as possible for the family before he starts university in September (see below). I am officially unemployed but I do run a hobby business from home and do a lot of unpaid work for the local community.

What's come out of this discussion is that couples and families are too caught up in jobs. Why? To fund their property. If HDB flats are zero-valued after 99 years, and we live much longer these days, is it worth working so hard, missing precious family times, not eating properly and thus storing up health issues, so that we could … what? I have a vision of guinea pigs in their spinning wheels. Why do we bother?

That said, we have not been on a family holiday for several years.

Maybe we need another model for family life. Perhaps a few mothers or families gather together to provide 'co-operative' childcare, and parents can rotate working so that their skills do not get too outdated. Thinking outside the box ...

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A funny thing happened on the way to the ST Forum page.

My original letter:

Hawker food is not the root of the problem

When I get home to Singapore I binge on hawker food.

It fills me with sadness to learn that hawker food is being ‘nutritionally sanitized’.

On the rare occasion that I eat cheese I want full-fat cheese, not ‘skinny’ or ‘reduced fat’ cheese which tastes awful and is chewy.

The operative word is ‘rare’.

Hawker food was not designed for everyday consumption. It was a treat for me to have a bowl of wanton noodles, for example.

The growing trend however is for individuals and whole families to eat out most days of the week, and then stuff themselves with even more store-bought confectionaries on others.

The effects of this trend?

(1) Kitchens are shrinking. When trying to buy a property in Singapore I found flats with only galley kitchens, with two gas rings.

“How does one cook a proper meal for a family with only two gas rings?” The agent’s “most Singaporean eat out” did not help.

(2) The ‘variety’ of eating outlets is wider because people are tired of eating the same hawker foods.

My issue with such newer foods is they are not ‘authentic’, but made-up and expensive, capitalizing on the punter’s desire for something different.

Economically, no real money is being generated. It is just shifting money from one pocket (yours) to another (owners of these eateries) who then cry out for more cheap, foreign workers, with which the electorate is unhappy.

(3) Young people have lost the ability to cook. People ‘ooh and aah’ at the fact that I cook rice on the hob. No rice cooker. Because I’ve learned from the best: my mum.

It is not difficult to cook a balanced nutritious meal from scratch. When parents do not cook and/or leave this to a maid, reducing cooking to ‘service’ work unsuitable for young sirs and madams, children stop learning.

What better opportunities for ‘enrichment’ then using a cooking experience to discuss maths (fractions, division, multiplication) and science (states of water, physical and chemical change, esters and aldehydes) with our children?

[For me, this is the most important line.] So please do not ‘skinny’ my lardy char kway teow. I want fat on my Hainanese chicken and oodles of coconut milk on the nasi lemak.

Thanking you in advance.

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became:

It fills me with sadness to read recent discussions on making hawker food "nutritionally sanitised" (ST looks at healthy hawker eats in first part of series on diabetes; June 19).

Hawker food was not designed for everyday consumption. It was a treat for me to have a bowl of wonton noodles, for example.

The growing trend, however, is for individuals and whole families to eat out most days of the week, and then stuff themselves with even more store-bought confectioneries on others.

One effect of this trend is that kitchens are shrinking.

When trying to buy a property in Singapore, I found flats with only galley kitchens, with two gas rings.

There is also a wider variety of eateries because people are tired of eating the same hawker foods.

My issue with such newer foods is they are not authentic, but are made-up and expensive instead, capitalising on the punter's desire for something different.

Young people have also lost the ability to cook. It is not difficult to cook a balanced, nutritious meal from scratch.

When parents do not cook or leave this to a maid, reducing cooking to "service work", children stop learning.

What better opportunity for enrichment than using a cooking experience to discuss maths, like fractions, division and multiplication, and science, such as states of water, physical and chemical change, with our children?

Son's first attempt at stuffed peppers (with some help from Mum)

UPDATE: 19th July 2018. Son and I made pizza from scratch. I started a dough early this morning. Son had done the shopping yesterday and he chopped everything that needed chopping today. Took turns to cook the pizza sauce. End-result? Delicious pizzas although one got stuck on the tray as I forgot it is not a non-stick tray. With husband, we had such a great meal (plus apple crumble from leftover apples) and we thought hmmm, we must do that again. Now we are left with chopped up vegetables. These will go into a stir-fry with leftover rice from yesterday. Husband is left with a lot of washing-up to do. :)  

Boosting Singapore football has to start with fans (or does it?)

The title to this letter seems completely incongruent to what I had originally written, below:

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Everyone has hypotheses about Gareth Southgate and the way he had/s brought success to the England football team.

I had stopped watching football for a long time, sick and tired of the thuggery on the pitch.

The last time I saw ‘intelligent’ precision football being played by the England team was a long time ago, under the management of Terry Venables. Southgate was a member of Venables’s team and he famously missed a penalty kick in the UEFA Euro 1996 semi-final against Germany.

Commentators seem to agree that the current young England team have been playing intelligently and with discernible teamwork. My view is that Southgate has managed to transfer some of this intelligent playing learned from the venerable Venables to his current young team.

At post-match interviews after beating Sweden I found the goal-scorers completely without airs and who spoke in good standard English, quite the opposite to the prima donnas that dominated English football post-Venables.

These were young men, intelligent, respectful and skilled, wanting to make the country proud, and they know that the only way to do this is to work as a team, something the aforementioned prima donnas seemed to have forgotten.

What this team has shown is that a game like football (or any equivalent organization) requires not team members that are paid so much money that there is no reason to get out of bed. For so many years, being called up to play for England was an inconvenience to Premier League footballers, not an honour or even duty.

A national team needs a vision (winning the World Cup, or close, as I write), and what could a lowly-paid manager offer players who make so much more money then you?

England had experimented with paying over-the-top incentives to ‘foreign talent’ managers with abysmal results.

Southgate was considered ‘inexperienced’ when he was picked, and he himself pushed the envelope when he picked the current ‘inexperienced’ team.

Southgate’s failure in his Euro96 spot-kick broke him, but unlike Humpty Dumpty, he and those who believe in him were able to put him together again, stronger.

Others who know him better speak of his kindness, compassion and ability to empathize. For me, Southgate is the personification of tenacity, reminding me of an English politician who famously said, “Do not underestimate the determination of a quiet man.”

What lessons might we in Singapore learn from this England team?