Bulk Buying Then and Now

The Wet Market Days
As far back as i can remember, i love to go grocery shopping!!! I remember waking early (around 10am was early for a kiddy owl like me) to follow my mum to the neighbour hood wet market for breakfast and groceries every day!!

In those days, they slaughtered the chickens and you see blood and feathers everywhere. The poultry was so fresh that it came dripping with yucky...blood. You could hear the poor hens clucking at the top of their voices.... to death. It was traumatising.

Then near by the fish was killed by hitting the head with the what u call that??the stone to sharpen the blades of the chopper. Its the Yu Seng or Snake Head fish. Behind were the meat stalls: pork, beef but its the smell of the mutton that made us want to puke. We normally avoid walking near those mutton stalls. Till this day i don't know how cooked mutton taste like.

There were frogs that croaked and the flowers that mum bought for her altar decorations and to bath with. Beside the flower stall was the Tao Gay (Bean Sprouts) stall where my dad buys 2kg of it. (Yes our family often buy in BULK)

Yummy Fish Ball Noodles Anyone???
My dad is a cooked food seller. He sells Teochew Fish ball noodles that comes with prawns and lettuce. Those interested should check out the Su Heng Fish Ball Noodle at 79A Circuit Road. I love it!! Now i miss it!!! As my parents are now holidaying in Taiwan, I've to wait until they are back for our regular doses of fish ball noodles. Rachel loves Fish Ball Bee Tai Mak and Kway Tiao. My husband is a fan of dry mee pok?

Bulk Buying Then
Because of his food business, I'm used to seeing things in bulk. Like 2 -3 cartons of Oyster Sauce, big bags (more than 10kg) of onions, garlics, chilli paste (He made his own chilli sauce that had us choking as kids when we were young children). Now a days, all food is prepared at the stall, the cooking and deep frying of the yummy fish balls and cakes and the making of the secret recipe chilli paste.

Dad buys his ingredients fresh. Pork in 20-30kgs, and sweet frozen prawns and fish fillets. When i was in primary school he actually prepared the fish meat from the giant baskets of fish that he ordered. As early as 5-6am, his supplies would arrive, the yellow fin and another look alike red and black one, all freshly trawled from the South China Sea.

Before my breakfast time, he and mum would be busy removing the entails of each fish and cleaning them thorougly, retrieving the meat to make our favourite fish balls. Our previous flat actually "stinks" with the fishy odour and all the dried chilli etc. Some neighbours even popped by every now and then to buy the fish balls and cakes, cooked and uncooked.

Bulk Buying Now
I do not have the luxury of a maid or a car at this moment. Without my beloved hubby's help it is so difficult to grocery shop with my two year old. She "needs" to be carried all the time. Or her siren will go like a burglar alarm.

Recently, since my husband is so busy, we decided to grocery shop only once a month, buying in bulk. It is 2 trolleys a time at Carrefour, one for perishable food products, the other for household items like detergents. Carrefour will home deliver all the non fresh items while we cab back the rest usually fruits and baby food juices etc. The bill will be close to $400-500 but its far worth the effort and the time involved.

How BIG is your grocery bill?
BTW, the largest grocery bill i ever saw was 1000+ dollars. There was this Ang Moh lady with baby carrier. She handles one trolley while her Filipina maid pushes 3 more at Parkway Cold Storage. How to push 3 trolleys?? One at a time in a Q lor.. Gosh..It took an eternity for them to reach the Grand Total. I saw 4 water melons and a dozen Sunkist Orange Juices. May be they ran a cafe??? Or they were going to quarantine themselves for a month or so. Hahaha

BYOB
BYOB day is irrelevant to me. In fact on the first BYOB Day I bought Garbage Bags. I love the black bags for garbage and white plastic bags for throwing away rachel's stinky diapers. We always lined our bins even the waste paper baskets. I am somebody that prefers the hygenic disposal of rubbish rather than to "save the earth????" Any way, cars kill the earth much faster than a few bags. The current En-bloc craze had resulted in so many still good buildings being demolished, so much dust and mosquito breeding sites. Most of the waste cannot be reused.

Anyway I am going to sell all the Ugly looking Unused Reusable Bags at our estate flea market this weekend. BOY! They are just too Ugly to be used. I'm sure some "environmentally friendly" aunties will buy these that i cant wait to throw down the chute.