I realized recently that there are foods I simply stopped eating without noticing. One of them was Super Ring, the cheerful orange snack that stains your fingers. I hadn’t thought about it in years until a friend started talking non stop about nostalgic Singaporean snacks. As she rattled off names, and my own memory surfaced. Suddenly, the crunch and the odd taste came rushing back. I had stopped noticing it, but it had not stopped existing.
I remember holding the ring-shaped pieces between my fingers, the dust leaving traces that I tried to lick off quickly. It was messy, loud, but it was also fun, the kind of snack that existed in the background of school canteens and childhood birthdays. Somehow, in adulthood, it had vanished from my shopping list, quietly replaced by more practical or “grown-up” treats.
There is something curious about these rediscoveries. A single conversation, a passing reference, a visit to a hawker centre can pull the memory of food back from the recesses of daily life. It makes me reflect on how much of what we eat is guided by habit and routine rather than desire. The joy is not just in tasting the snack again, but in realizing we had missed it.
I think back to other foods that sit silently on the margins, waiting for someone or something to remind me they exist. And sometimes, it is enough to let these small rediscoveries anchor a moment of playfulness in an otherwise orderly day, a reminder of why I loved to eat in the first place.
