This recipe of chicken macaroni soup reminds me of the soup noodles that my mum used to cook for us when we were young. She likes to cook the broth with ikan bilis first, and then use the broth to cook thick yellow noodles, some vegetables, and then maybe some fishballs or fish cake slices. The soup would be bland and so would the ingredients, and I recall I really didn’t like it at all. But it’s still cooked with hardship and love, with the limited amount of time and money she has. So, every Saturday, after I get back home from my art lessons at Jin Tai Primary School, I would sit down in front of the television in the living room and I would I always try my best to finish the whole bowl of soup noodle while I watch the programmes on television. I also remember those Chinese medium kiddish shows shown on the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) with the 3D clay figurines that move around stiffly and are animated to tell us stories from the past – ‘阿公讲古’。It’s kind of boring but back then, with no Netflix and no internet, so I would take comfort from whatever’s showing on tv and try my best to finish the noodles because it’s a big bowl filled with broth. That usually takes me an hour or so.
