It was the day Jansen felt better and started to drink and to eat via mouth little by little. Usually, when he just recovered from partial bowel obstruction, he would be encouraged to eat something soft. Often, Jansen would look for soft white bun or bread, or soft pastry. We were thinking where to go for dinner, and parents suggested us here, because just beside the restaurant, there was a shop selling soft buns suitable for Jansen. So let's!

Food Garden

This was a shop owned by my mother's friend, Audrey. They had been friends for years. They just shifted from old place to this new place called Food Garden, apparently, the rental was cheaper. Most Sibu's restaurants do not have air-conditioning to save electricity and usually they are open-air concept for better ventilation. This will help to cut down costs because they sell cheaper. Mother loves to come here to support her friend. Let me share what my parents ordered.

Claypot Pork Belly with Salted Fish

This is one of the many favourite dishes in Chinese restaurants. Pork belly were thinly sliced and marinated with Chinese rice wine, soy sauce and oyster sauce. The pork belly slices were stirred fry with all ingredients and salted fish, then placed into claypot to be heated up.

Aunt Audrey said they yet to get a hold of claypot and hotpan, so they used this stainless steel pot first with fire underneath to replace the 'claypot'. Still super delicious dish, with that hint of rice wine and sesame oil, some spice from dried chillies and the saltiness from salted fish. Omph!

Signature Tofu Dish

Parents love tofu very much. Whenever they dined at Chinese restaurants, they would order the same tofu dish without failing and without getting bored. This one was their homemade tofu, deep fried then stirred fry with minced pork and with savoury sauce or broth. Super fresh tofu and delicious sauces.

'Mani' Cai

'Mani Cai' is in Hokkien language. Cai = vegetables. Mani is the name of this particular vegetable in Hokkien. We do not have this often at Kuala Lumpur unless we purposely went to hunt those Sarawakian restaurants. So, whenever I come to Sibu, I must eat this. So far, parents said the manicai here is the best. Alright, manicai is famous Sarawakian vegetables and we usually cook it with egg. I am not sure what is the exact name in English but some of my Malay friends called it 'sayur manis' which is translated as sweet vegetables (although it is not sweet). Just a simple stir fry with garlic, then adding some eggs to mix together, followed by chicken stock or anchovies powder seasoning, it was tasty enough. Some Chinese restaurants would add in Shaoxing wine but the one served here did not. Still super appetizing. It was wayy tastier than spinach in my opinion.

Sweet Buttered Oat Pork Slices

Due to the pork belly with salted egg was abit spicy for the children, parents decided to add one more popular dish here, recommended by Aunt Audrey, called sweet buttered oat pork slices. Indeed, very yummy. The pork slices were soft and juicy, not dry at all. And coated well with flour to be deep fried and then coated again with butter with little sweetness and coated with fried oats. Very delicious. My eldest son ate so much of this. He said he couldn't get enough of it he almost had the whole plate to himself. Haha!

Husband and I also enjoyed the Milk Tea here with evaporated milk and less sugar. Very smooth cup of tea.

I wanted to give parents a treat for this dinner. They had been paying for everything. Halfway eating, I just told them that I would pay and I walked to the cashier to pay. Felt so good to give them a treat. It was so cheap and affordable eating at Sibu. Total dinner spent for all 4 dishes and 3 rice and drinks was only RM83 around USD18.5. We truly enjoyed the food here at Food Garden.

Soon Kee Cookies

As for Jansen, we bought for him some 'Kompia soft buns from the shop next door called Soon Kee Cookies. Kompia is Sibu's famous pastry buns and many people had since came out with different variation to Kompia. The original kompia is more compact and dense type of pastry bun. Soon Kee Cookies's boss specialises on the softer more fluffy type of kompia and many parents love it because children and toddler could eat it.

Soon Kee's soft kompia comes in different fillings besides the original non-fillings type. The fillings are chocolate, red bean, kaya, peanut, pandan, sesame and butter. We bought chocolate, kaya, red bean and butter for Jansen for dinner. He did not feel like eating rice and meat yet, so we respected his gut feeling. No pun intended. It was really his gut feeling. His intestines. We were happy that he ate the soft kompia without feeling of regurgitation. Yayyy!!! He especially loved the chocolate and the butter one. I tried one mouthful, oh man, I loved it too.

We were all happily eating our dinner and Jansen was happily eating his soft kompia. Times really flies and we were almost a week here at Sibu. Glad that everything went well despite the past few days of pain in Jansen.

Thank you for reading my life's stories. 😊