My Nasi Lemak Story.

 Once upon a time..

"6 vendors sold Nasi Lemak near my house for dinner. All of them are delicious, but none of the are the same"

 the end.

Nasi Lemak is a fragrant rice dish cooked in coconut milk and "pandan" leaf, commonly found in Malaysia.

Near where I'm living, there are a total of 6 Nasi Lemak vendors. I've been living here for almost 3 years now and I've been eating nothing but Nasi Lemak for dinner since I stayed here.


Even though all six vendors basically sold the same thing, rice cooked with coconut milk and pandan leaves, however, none of them taste the same. The rice, the sambal, the fried anchovies, even the boiled eggs. This one vendor, the rice is so soft and creamy, but the sambal is a bit dry. The other vendor, has the perfect sambal mixture of sweet and spicy, but the rice is a bit....pale. Some has no distinctive taste at all, just plain ol' Nasi Lemak with sambal, but people still get in line to buy it, because the uncle gave a generous amount of serving.


The reason why I'm saying all this is because I'm hungry I just realised that, the Nasi Lemak tasted different because each one of the vendors are different. Even if they all Google the recipe online and all of them choose the same recipe, it will STILL be different. Because they would add extra ingredient to it or did not put any at all. For example, if he likes spicy food, he would definitely add extra chilli for the Sambal. If he is generous, he would put extra coconut milk in the rice so it would have that rich taste.

Now, if we    e  x  p  a  n  d     our horizons on this matter, we can see that there is a life lesson in this simple Nasi Lemak story. The things that was thrown in by the cook, to create his Nasi Lemak, the ingredients, the quantity, the timing, the environment, it combines together to make a great dish.  It is the same with us. All our problems, our tests, our challenges,  it becomes a part of us, a part of  who we are, a part of who YOU are, once you embrace it. Each one of us is unique because of what we've been through. Every heart break, every mistakes, and all the things that life throws at us, made us who we are today.




A beautiful, unique, delicious Nasi Lemak.