..... of old kitchen appliances

Yours Sincerely ( Y S ) recollects his mother's kitchen, way back in the 50s and early 60s. After the ancestral house was gutted down, it is getter harder and harder to recall. Anyway, Mum's kitchen was nothing to shout about. It was just a rudimentary affair, but not the wholesome and sumptuous food it churned out, two square meals daily, day in and day out, without fail.

Those days refrigerators ran on kerosene and only the rich could afford one. You could literally see a flame burning up the condenser to compress the air from behind the fridge. The doors of these fridges closed solid tight to prevent the coldness from escaping and had claimed a few careless fingers. Without this luxurious gadget, Mum had to go to the market every morning. And that was how we grew up with fresh produces from the farms and sea.

This (pic) was one of the appliances in her kitchen. It was a coconut grater or scrapper. The one Mum had was even better designed to look like a wooden horse. This was where coconut was grated for cooking or as a spread or filling for some "kuih" she made. A few fresh coconuts were always available in the kitchen, and you could never imagine the way Mum cracked the coconut shell - with one mighty chop ! Cracked !!!

Sometimes we kids were treated to the overgrown flesh that grew inside the coconut. And if we were down with fever, the coconut water was collected to be used as bath water to lower the body's temperature. And somehow this housewife remedy worked on us children.

As a gracious lady, you should not sit on the grater astride like a horse. God forbid ! You would be considered crude and unpolished. You had to sit sideway with your legs closed, like sitting pillion on a bicycle's cross bar, and uncomfortably grate away the coconut.

Sometimes Mum would sit astride when she offered a lift on the "horse" to my younger brother who is a few years younger than me. Of course, in Mum's absence, we played " Cowboys and Red Indians" with the grater becoming a "horse."

In the old days, we were always warned of the potential danger of the sharp blade of this appliance. Mum would never allow anyone of us to grate the coconut. She would do it herself, saved my eldest sister who had mastered the skill.


Anyway, progress has come a long way. Coconut grating is no longer a chore for the housewives. You have your friendly corner "Chai Tiam Ma" ( Your friendly sundry shop) to grate for you with this machine. You can even ask for grade I or 2 or 3, depending on what you want to cook and how you want to use the coconut.

So, gone are the days of our "wooden horses."