kerr-row-poke

A few days ago I responded to my friend June's wondering about who eats porridge for breakfast. I told her that I am one of the people who eats rice porridge for breakfast, even if I'm not sick.
My innocent respond led me to crave for porridge (as every little thing often make me crave for something or other... ). So when I had some leftover vegetable soup, I decided to make rice porridge with it.
Smelling the softening rice on the stove reminded me of when I went to visit my sister in Jakarta. I followed her out to get some breakfast one morning. We stopped at one of the many streets in Menteng where I saw there was a small crowd of people in front of a big mansion, crowding around a van. There were also a few huge luxury cars parked along the street.
I discovered that the man in the van was selling rice porridge. He'd pack porridge with some soup , and together with a pack of krupuk (crispy crackers) and some other condiments (I can't remember what.. i think there were crispy fried shallots and chopped parsley or something). His assistant would sometimes take and bring orders to the parked luxury cars. My sister said the porridge seller is doing very very well, coz he owns one of the huge houses on the street. We had porridge with krupuk for breakfast that morning and it was pretty yummeh.
That memory prompted me to fry my own stash of krupuk, to be eaten with my porridge.
I said "krupuk" (kerr-roo-pook) because I meant the Indonesian version, which is usually made of rice flour and vegetable flavours like onion or garlic. These, and the orange shrimp crackers or white fish crackers, can be found easily in the supermarkets here. The Trengganu "keropok" (kerr-row-poke), which is made of succulent fish and sago flour and is often greyish-brown due to being rich in fish, I treasure like gold and save only for special occasions (like when I feel like eating nasi kerabu or guests are coming and I have nothing else in the larder).
From my visit to Indonesia 2 years ago, I realised that just like the folks in Trengganu, the indonesians really love their krupuk. Just like we folks in the east coast of Malaysia like to use our fish crackers as spoons for our fried noodles, the indonesians use them as condiments for their fried noodles. They even have "mee keriuk", and instant fried noodles which comes with it's own small packet of crispy krupuk in the packaging.
Perhaps that's where I got my habit of having to have something crunchy for me to eat all the time. Like eating cheetos with my fried noodles. Afterall, my family do have blood from Indonesia flowing in us.
That also explains why my kids inherited the same liking to anything crunchy and crispy...

Izani and his basket of krupuk