My little vegetable garden: Kangkung, a different story.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Kangkung, a different story.

Huh, am I loosing my gardening touch?........... the earlier attempt at growing kangkung through cuttings failed miserably. Call it zero success, zero luck, or total failure. Kangkung, a new story ends not according to the script. The weather was extra hot the past few weeks, and the little shoots suffered even under shade, wilted and died.

Early of the month, 6th february to be exact, I had something on at Nilai, and on the way back with Nizwan, we made a stop at a nursery. The guy was about to go off for lunch when we arrived. The nursery was at the end of Dengkil town towards Putrajaya. We went home with 3 medium sized cylindrical pots, potting soil and a packet of kangkung or water spinach seeds.

Now the new little seedlings are doing fine,

and will definitely create a new storyline.

New pot, new 5 little kangkung seedlings

New pot of slightly lighter tone,
also with 5 new kangkung seedlings

Kangkung had it's own share of memorable childhood storyline,

and Annie remembered it well

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And after all, when I was very young and in school, my teacher once told my class that eating kangkung was a sign of being intelligent. According to my teacher's story, once upon a long long time ago, the Sultan of Malacca was invited for an audience by the Emperor of China. Malacca was a vassal state of China at that time and therefore the Sultan had no choice but to be present.

The Ming dynasty's court protocols required all those in the presence of the Emperor to bow their head. Therefore, no one knows what the emperor looked like. The Sultan of Malacca had really wanted to see what the Emperor actually looked like and devised a trick so that he could do so.

For the banquet, he asked for uncut fried kangkung to be served at his table. So when it is time to eat, he lift the whole of the uncut fried kangkung above his head, tilted his head backward and slowly started munching at the vegetable dangling above his head from his fingers.

And of course he therefore got to see what the Emperor looked like as others bowed their head throughout the banquet. When the Emperor asked he ate the vegetable that way, the Sultan said "Oh, that's how we Malays of Malacca eat kangkung."

The Emperor knew the Sultan was merely bluffing, but being a a nice guy that he was, he let it passed as he felt the Malay chap running small piece of land called Malacca was such a smart fellow. The Emperor had even decided to marry one of his daughters from one of his hundreds of wives to the Sultan. Well, it pays to be a smart guy like Sultan of Malacca.