Simple Breakfast, yet Healthy

 

Simple and healthy breakfast - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

What your breakfast today? I would like to eat something simple, quick, and easy to prepare in the morning for our breakfast. Indeed, it is not something special, however, the breakfast menu is still important to start the day. So, what kind of simple and healthy breakfast that easy to prepare without consuming time because basically morning has always in a rush?

I have always mentioned my father because he taught me to eat and choose foods, gardening, drawing, et cetera. What he had believed was eating a half-cooked egg every morning was good for children because they would grow up healthy and become smart. I assumed he often read the news, books, and sharing knowledge with his collages in the office that improved his ability and intelligence including nutrients and vitamins in the food source. Whether a half-boiled egg is can increase intelligence in children or not, it is quite promising since we all know that egg has B vitamins, vitamin D, Omega, protein, et cetera. It is the fact about the egg that rich in nutrients. 

I bet when I was a toddler, eating half-cooked eggs was my routine every morning. I didn't remember about it. 🤨 However, since I grew up I wanted to eat a cooked boiled egg because I found it just not right to eat a boiled egg that looked like mountain lava, eww😅🙄 Since I realized about "lava" I left a half-cooked boiled egg behind my life story. Whatever it was, as long I ate an egg for breakfast whether omelet or boiled egg, my father approved. It is my story about eating a boiled egg in the morning for a long, long time ago. My father was the one who educated me to eat well and healthy.

Breakfast or lunch? 😅🤨 Toasted white bread with tuna, mozzarella, and butter, an apple, and a glass of tea - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

Making healthy breakfast is easy and do not consume our time in the kitchen. Sometimes I boil the egg at night so in the morning the egg is easy to eat. In general, while cooking for lunch box or bento, I boil the egg for our breakfast. Yes, the reason why I wake up early morning is to cook bento not prepare breakfast.😅  Why? Because breakfast in our home is simple, for instance, a boiled egg and banana, or when I buy Japanese sweet potato; we eat boiled sweet potato in the morning. Another menu is white bread with butter or any kind of cakes that I buy from a cakes shop or baked the bread with tuna or mackerel cans.🤗 That's it? YES! My favorite is to drink soya in the morning. Actually, I love cocoa drinks for my breakfast, but this product is not available in hypermarket nearby anymore. So, technically, there is no special preparation to make breakfast. I do remember when I worked a long time ago, I bought a slice of bread or bun while walked to the place where I waited for the bus. And definitely eating my breakfast while walking to the gate of my office.😅😐

We eat the same breakfast menu every day. I think there is a reason why I do not write breakfast recipes on Ichi's Fusion Recipes since the menu has always been the same every morning. Someone asked my husband, "every day eating eggs? you are not bored?" or why I have stock of eggs for at least a week. It is a good food source and can boost our energy in the morning, there is no word "bored."  Of course, nowadays we choose low cholesterol eggs to maintain our health because we are not children anymore. 

I think if my father still around, he would be very happy to see that I still hold this "tradition" to eat a boiled egg for breakfast which meant I learned from him how to eat well. I hope that I can pass down this family custom to my children someday when we have children. Simple breakfast, yet healthy and affordable. That what can I picture about the boiled eggs. 

Note:

• Written by Acik Mardhiyanti
• Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti
• Do not copy this article without permission
• Do not reuse this photograph anywhere else without permission

The Moral Behind "Choco Pie"

 

The Journey of Ichi's Family - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

Looking at the choco pie pictured above, for many people, I think there is nothing special about it; it just a children's snack. However, for me, personally, it has touched my heart and I learned about morality, humanity, on how we suppose act toward others especially those who need our help.

My father had siblings, brothers, and sisters. Among them, only my father had a beautiful success in his career and built a happy family. It was the reason why his parent had been prised him a lot, especially his mother which meant my grandma. My father loved his sibling and everyone who needed help would run to my father especially when they needed money. Without hesitation, my father gave the money to them and had never asked to pay it back. What he believed was by helping his sibling, someday if his children (my brother and me) needed help, his sibling would help me too. Well, I think that a good thought on how family supports each other, right? I admired my father's intention.

There is not always a rainbow every day, sometimes a storm comes; it is how I pictured my father's situation. He lost his decent job and everything, he needed a hand who could hold it. But someone who gave it hand was a stranger who did not have any connection or relation to us. This stranger family gave me a school assistant every month since I was in the first year in secondary school until I graduated and hold Bachelor's degree. With this monthly assistant, my father could think and planned what he could do to survive without worry about how to pay my monthly school fee. And me, I started working at 11 years old and earn some money to buy anything I needed for school such as school shoes, a bag, stationery, books, et cetera. Even though someone helped us, but we still worked hard every day.

After my grandpa passed away, a year later my grandma died. This sad event occur when I was at secondary school. And the next thing that happened was my father's sister and her family had come to my father's house, once a year. They lived in the city on a different island, and what my father proud of her was this sister had a successful life. My father had always been happy every time this sister came and treated them like a noble and we were just servants.🙄

Someday when I raked my father's big yard I found an interesting red plastic. I picked it and I read it "Choco Pie." I knew by looking at that plastic that this snack was tasty and good because I saw remaining chocolate in the plastic. We villager children had never seen chocolate nor eat it. Like a lightning struck my head, instantly I remember something about this morning. After finished house chores and prepared breakfast, I went to the house front terrace. I saw my cousins in the yard and suddenly looked shocked when I showed up from nowhere and saw them. They hid one of their hands and left without saying anything to me, typically the cousins who did not have any interest in villager children like me. 🤷‍♀️ So, this was the snack that they hid this morning from me. Maybe they afraid that I would ask for their snacks. I assumed their mother told them to eat snacks secretly outside the house where my brother was not around, and I had been busy in the kitchen. Well, while I was busy doing house chores in the morning and prepared their breakfast, they ate snacks. What my concern was my brother, what if my brother saw them ate a snack and they did not share it with my brother? What a poor boy😢 My brother loved snacks, cookies, or crackers. He sometimes cried when really wanted something. He was a little boy at the time and he did not speak much. That what I was concern about this "Choco Pie" plastic I found in my father's yard.

Comparing those cousins with my friends, my friends had always been thought about others before them. If you read my article before about the Physalis story, my friends gave me 2 physalises that left in the bush. They let me and asked me to eat it and taste it even though they knew the fruit was only 2 left. At another time, when one of my friends had a cracker, this cracker would end up divided into 5 pieces, everyone ate it and just felt happy. Any kind of food in my friend's hands, without asked they would offer it to others. Thinking about those cousins' acted, what I learned was that we should think about others, and share happiness with others.

Many years later, this "Choco Pie" is just an ordinary snack to us that we could easily find it. In the past, I took a job volunteer by helping one of my father's neighbors to make cookies and cakes when the biggest celebration came. After school, I went to make cookies at my neighbor's house until late at night; usually 9 PM. I worked was not for money but for a plastic cookie that my neighbor gave me after helped her. She did not pay me but offer a plastic cookie instead. Every day I felt happy to do it because I could give this cookie to my brother at home when I came back from work. So, yes, remembering the day when I found "Choco Pie" plastic in my father's yard made me sad because they did not share it with my brother and hid it instead. 

Nowadays, I can buy any kind of snacks that my brother wants. We can also take him to the restaurant to eat something special like a Japanese restaurant. Sometimes I grab too many snacks & crackers for him, until he says, "too much."😂 What a funny thing!😅

The moral behind the "Choco Pie accident" is definitely something that I have always remembered. Instead of hiding our hands, we should use our hands to share with others. Sharing happiness will make our heart feels peace, isn't it? That is the reason why I like to give cakes or cookies to our neighbor for celebration. Before moving to Singapore, I would like to share the food that I cooked with our neighbor. That is how we suppose to live toward others by giving our gratitude.

If we have something today, it would better if we can share it with others. For instance, today we have a good life, sufficient food, a decent house, enough money, what we can do about it is grateful to our lives and help others. Why? Because we do not know how the future comes out, it is a mystery. What we have is today, so we should start to work on it today!👊🙂

Note:

• Written by Acik Mardhiyanti
• Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti
• Do not copy this article without permission
• Do not reuse this photographed anywhere else without permission

Eating Fruit Daily Because We Need It

 

The Journey of Ichi's Family: fruit in our home - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

Do you like to eat fruit every day? Do you eat fruit because following the crowd about healthy lifestyle campaigns or your body needs it? I have believed fruit is good for our health and could support our immune system. And I think many people try to have a healthy lifestyle by eating fruit so that their body will gain the benefits from it. However, in my view is that eating fruit daily because we need it not because of lifestyle.  

Since I was a child, I used to eat fruit that we could easily pick from my father's garden. My father grew many fruit trees in his yards and garden. His house was surrounded by plants, flowers, fruit trees, and commercial goods for instance cassava. We also sold our garden harvests such as jack fruit and pineapple. When the mango season came, we ate mango every day even shared it with neighbors and family because we had lots of mangoes! Sometimes, our pineapple bloomed and we could not eat them all, then we sold them. Yes, our neighbor used to make pineapple jam for pineapple tart. Sometimes bananas, starfruit, guava, rambutan, also bloomed at the same time which meant we had any kind of fruit at home without spending money to buy them all. Papaya plant was easier to grow even we did not need to grow and maintain them, they would grow everywhere in my father yards. Our papaya plant was really amazing when we could pick papaya flower and leaf, young papaya for our dishes, but when it riped we could eat as dessert. Another fruit was soursop. Talking about soursop, it unwanted fruit because no one in the household ate this. This fruit just popped out in my father's yard, without any special maintenance this fruit grew well and produce plenty of fruit! As result, it just me who loved sour fruit including soursop, then the fruit just fell down every day. Some neighbor who wanted it just grabbed it! We were never sort of fruit even if my father did not have money. We had abundant fruit! Thanks to my father who loved gardening!

Besides learning to eat fruit every day at home, at the same time, I also learned what kind of vitamins in fruits that I ate at school. I started collecting my knowledge about fruit, vegetable, and vitamins, since I was at an elementary school, in the second, third, or fourth grade. I read the textbook, I also listened to what my teacher told us in the class. No wonder I knew that papaya is a source of vitamin A and if someone has constipation just eat papaya then the problem will solve. Mango, guava, pineapple, all of them are vitamin C sources which means can boost our immunity. Based on their color, I could easily identify what vitamin inside the fruit that I eat. For example, if the color is yellow then it is the source of vitamin C, red color is the source of vitamin A; it was the way how my elementary teacher taught the students about fruit and vitamin by using color to make the students easily understand and so is about vegetable! I really remember that about it until today. 

What I can learn from my life in the past is our body needs vitamin, so basically, eating fruit routine is because we need it and not following the campaigns about healthy lifestyle.  My teacher in secondary school and the senior school asked the students in front of the class, "Do you study every day because of your duty as a student or because you need to study every day for your future?" Most of my friends said, "I study every day because it is our duty as a student." But when it came to me here was my answer, "I study every day because I need it. I have a dream, without studying it is impossible to catch my dream and have a better life in the future." And my teachers, both from secondary school and senior school told us that we need to study every day because we need it and not because of our duty as students. The word "duty" and "need", well it is hard to make difference and looks similar. However, those words completely have different meanings. "Need" means we do it without any forces and it is under full awareness. Meanwhile, "duty" means under circumstances that we have to obey. No one asked me to study every day for at least 2 hours, no one not even my father. Whenever I had an opportunity to study, I just grabbed my book and started read it. On the bus when went and came back from school, when waited for the bus, in the street while walking home from school, at home while eating dinner or late lunch; everywhere I studied because needed it. Sort of story, I have applied the word "need" when consuming my fruit. I eat fruit every day because my body needs it. It is not because a part of a healthy lifestyle like many people say. If I say that eating fruit daily is a part of my healthy lifestyle, I feel just not right, even something forcing me to do it. And because my body needs fruit, I buy a bunch of fruit every week. Yes, after the coronavirus situation, I buy our fruit once a week, and within 5 days all the fruit finishes; like the picture above, there is our fruit for 5-6 days for 2 people at home. 

The Journey of Ichi's Family: this is our fruit for a week! - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

So, what the benefits that our body gain if we eat fruit daily? I often buy orange, apple, and mango when the mango season comes. Sometimes I choose orange, pear, and dragon fruit. Or it could be orange, grape, and any other fruit such as watermelon, longan, et cetera. I would love to buy bananas, however, the banana that we want is not always on the market.  Orange, mango, and dragon fruit, they are can strengthen our immune system since all of them are vitamin C sources. Dragon fruit can help us to lower blood sugar, orange can protect our cells from damage and heals the wound. How about the pear? Pear can help us to lower the risk of diabetes and anti-inflammatory. An amazing thing is about mango; it has antioxidants and so is dragon fruit. The bottom line is the fruit has lots of vitamins and nutrients in it to protect our body. 

For me, personally, since I have consumed fruit routine, I rarely catch colds and flu. What I can remember is that I get colds or flu sometimes caught after traveling. Usually, when we travel I could not control what I eat since the foods buy from the food stall or restaurant. In general, I can not maintenance to eat fruit daily, why? Traveling has always been in rush; going here, visit there, et cetera, that explains why I do not like traveling.🤷‍♀️😅

That's what I think about eating fruit every day. We eat fruit because our bodies need it. When we realized that how much we need vitamins and nutrients for our health, then we must consume foods and fruits to protect our healthiness without any force or just lifestyle.😊

Note:

• Written by Acik Mardhiyanti
• Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti
• Do not copy this article without permission
• Do not reuse this photograph anywhere else without permission