3. THE MUSTARD GREENS
YAP ZHI JUN
The first assignment for my English subject in Semester 2 “Observe a kind of
vegetable”. Our English lecturer, Mr. Nat called us one by one to his table and asked us
to write down a vegetable name. The first vegetable I can think of was beansprout,
because I love it very much especially the Ipoh “Nga Choi Gai” so I wrote it down. But
then Mr. Nat asked me to change another vegetable because there is nothing much to
describe the beansprout. So at last I changed to mustard greens.
This was my first time to write an essay about muster greens. Well, Mr. Nat
wants us to buy the vegetable and capture a photo with it. So I went Sunway Pyramid
with friends and bought my vegetable – mustard greens at AEON. By the way I not
really know how the mustard greens looks like so I searched for the name written on the
package. Finally I found it written in Cantonese “Choy Sam”. It was bigger and longer
than I imagined. I done my mission and the next mission was to observe it.
Once I had reached home, I took out the mustard greens and put it beside my
laptop. I unpacked the mustard greens and started to observe .Firstly, I hold the
mustard greens and I felt it was very dry and rough. Very obviously the mustard greens
was in green color. It has dark green color leaves, the leaves were broad and flat
veined. It also has light green stems that are hard. I don’t know whether was there any
different size for different types of mustard greens but the one that I bought was really
large. Its length was the length of my hand from my fingers to my elbow. When I hit it,
FNBE JAN 2012 - ENGL 0205 English 2 YAP ZHI JUN ( 0310738 )
4. ‘pok’ sound was heard. I could imagine how crunchy the mustard greens was. I meant
the stems part.
After finished observing its physical appearance, I discovered how it smelt. I hold
the mustard green and placed it near to my nose. The mustard greens has a freshly cut
smell like the smell of leaves and grasses. I reared a caterpillar before and I observed it
to grow from small baby caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly. What I found was the smell
of mustard greens was close to the smell of the feces of caterpillar. I know it was weird
to mix these two different things together but that’s the only description that I could
explain. Caterpillar only ate leaves so its feces also smell like leaves. Actually there was
a little bit smell of chinese tea. The smell of mustard greens was very fresh and healthy.
The next step was to taste the mustard greens. As what Mr. Nat said it was a
very common vegetable and it was normally cooked as a dish or mixed with fried rice,
fried mi and etc. It was so common because it was one of the cheapest vegetable and I
bought it only RM 2.80 for 300 gram. As I searched for its vitamin I found that mustard
greens was actually a healthy and most nutritious green-leafy vegetables. It has high
vitamin A, C and K to increase protection from bacterial, increase immune function and
as a protection against heart disease. Furthermore, mustard greens has cholesterol-
lowering ability, so for those people who want to have slimmer and healthier body,
mustard greens was the best choice of vegetable.
I was thinking, hmmm how should I cook this mustard greens? I am not good in
cooking so I decided to use the simplest method, which was boiled a pot of water and
put the washed mustard greens into it for five minutes. After that, I poured the water into
FNBE JAN 2012 - ENGL 0205 English 2 YAP ZHI JUN ( 0310738 )
5. basin, the water turned slightly green and I smelt the freshness of mustard greens. It
was to bored to eat that way to I cooked spaghetti and I ate with it. I think I used the
right method, the simplest method was the best method to taste the mustard greens. It
was fresh and crunchy, maybe this was part of the assignment so I tastes it more
carefully and I found that mustard greens would me in my list of favourite vegetables.
From choosing, imagine, buying, observing, cooking, and finally tasting. Through
these processes for the English assignment, I have learnt how to observe things
carefully and described it out using words. Although mustard greens was a common
vegetable in our daily life but I found out it was difficult to think of the word to use for
description. Well, actually this assignment was quite fun and interesting because I could
fell the beauty of nature. Everything has their own specialities and attractions even a
tiny little thing. That’s the end of the story about ‘Mustard Greens and I”
( 857 words )
FNBE JAN 2012 - ENGL 0205 English 2 YAP ZHI JUN ( 0310738 )
6. PHOTOS
REFERENCES
FNBE JAN 2012 - ENGL 0205 English 2 YAP ZHI JUN ( 0310738 )
Photo 1: Mustard greens and I.
Photo 2: Mustard greens with the
label ‘Choy Sum’.
Photo 3: Mustard greens with my
homemade spaghetti.
7. 1.The George Mateljan Foundation. Mustard greens. Retrieved 26 September 2013,
from http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=93
2.Mustard greens nutrition facts, Retrieved 26 September 2013, from
http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/mustard-greens.html
FNBE JAN 2012 - ENGL 0205 English 2 YAP ZHI JUN ( 0310738 )
