Picky eater

I'm not sure if I'm just a very easily contented person with no tastebuds but I seem to find quality food rather easily. On the contrary, Nic seems to be the exact opposite. Few things seem to find a perfect fit to her fastidious tastebuds and only a few dishes 'pass up to expectation' -- the list includes mui fan (rice soaked in thick hor fun gravy with fish cake slices, fish, lean meat or chicken, two prawns and loads of MSG), chicken rice (must be boneless chicken), fried rice (rice mustn't be too hard or sticky soft), nasi lemak (not the $1.50 pre-wrapped types but the ones that the macik serves piping hot from the rice pot in Changi Village with the crispy chicken wing deep fried to perfection), prata with and without egg dipped in vegetable curry and mustn't be too spicy, hor fun (especially the kind with the special orh pek hiok) and her ever popular choice of popiah.

Aside from the abovementioned, only sweet foods (desserts) are able to make it to her list of edible foods. Her favourite of course is the Ah Ball-ling in almond paste and soya bean curd from Selegie Soya Bean stall (which thankfully is a franchise and can be found islandwide). And the latest to make it into her list is Cheng Terng from Teck Ghee market (which I was told by an ex-colleague that it is definitely a stall with a long history and has many loyal fans).

Hence, cooking a meal for such a picky eater can cause a migraine of richter scale 7. Five conditions prevail:

1) It must not be too hard or too soft
2) It must contain egg in some form (fried, stir-fried, steamed)
3) It must not have too much meat
4) Variety in colours and textures must exist side-by-side
5) It must have some form of gravy (or chaph-chaph as coined by Mummy)

As such, canteen fare must really be the pits for her extra-selective tastebuds. Needless to say, getting her to put on weight takes a lot of effort, perhaps more than necessary. Sigh...when will she start gorging on fastfoods???