Lady's Fingers

The Husband and I are nuts about lady's fingers. I've always liked them even as a child in Malaysia where our family would traipse over to Ampang for yong tau foo. If asked what I wanted, it was always an extra serving of lady's fingers. In my childhood, that was one of two vegetables that I liked. The other was cauliflower. Unlike spinach and kai lan and such like, lady's fingers didn't have long unchewable fibres that wouldn't go down my tiny throat properly. You crunch onto a lady's finger and it obligingly breaks apart into smaller chunks. There is a nice smooth slippery coating on it and a subtle sweetness. Quite unlike the stir fried bitter greens of all sorts that our maids were prone to frying up and serving up and making me eat. Bleah!

I knew I liked them but I only just discovered that The Husband likes them... and very much too! Since we're exactly opposite of each other in almost every way, this is a pleasant realisation indeed. Anyway, to satisfy both our appetites for this delicious vegetable, I now have 7 lady's finger plants. This gives us about 1 large plate of lady's finger stir fry every week.

With such regular servings, I've discovered something else. The rest of the family, including our helper, HATES the stuff. Little Boy describes it as the vegetable with the wet and slimy coating. The Daughter says "Revolting!" And the helper gave us a gentle smile and graciously declined her share of the vegetable. Altogether, they give my seven plants the evil eye.

Heh! Heh! Heh! What they don't know and will soon find out, is that the attractive creeper with pink flower buds is also another slimy vegetable called the Malabar Spinach. And it's about ready for harvesting.

Now... how does one write *diabolical smile* into a blog?