of memoirs and musings

It's been cloudy all day long. Sigh. it rained like mad in the morning and the blanket of rainclouds have yet to roll away. On a soon-to-be-raining-again afternoon like this...

I am craving for kaya toast!! Or roti kahwin as Hema calls it. Mmmm... freshly made crispy charcoal-toasted bread slices filled with generous spread of sweet and fragrant homemade kaya and sinful portions of salty butter. Take a bite and the butter oozes and drips... ooh heavenly...

One bite and my mind teleports back in time...

I've always loved kaya toast in all its incarnations. I remembered eating long strips of kaya toast from the kopitiam near the Pekeliling flats in KL when I was really little. Back home, kaya toast is made using the long fluffy white bread, toasted over charcoal fire till crispy and brown, spread with kaya and butter and then sliced into half, length-wise. Sometimes, they'd squash the bread too so it'd have a penyek look. In Singapore, most of the kopitiams use Gardenia bread and the normal electric toaster... eww... except Killiney Kopitiam at Killiney Road, which is where I go to get my kaya toast fix nowadays...

I love my kaya toast with kopi peng or teh peng... the really kau type. My all-time favourite is served at Ahpek's kopitiam down the road from where Amah used to live. I've always had the feeling that no matter how old I grow up to be, when I sit in those shaky wooden chairs, under wooden ceilings decorated with spider webs and dangling yo-yo cocoons, eyes round and mouth agape waiting and watching the ahpek's every move... I'd be ten years old all over again...

*Sniff sniff* I love the traditional kopitiam. The aromatic wafts of brewed coffee always remind me of Grandpa; of his thermos flasks filled with delicious addictive black coffee- thick and sweet. Most of all, of days gone by when some simple kaya toast redeems a rainy day, every single time...