KOTA KINABALU: Eager to diversify her income, an event organiser from Sabah has turned an experiment in the kitchen into crispy snacks which now line supermarket shelves nationwide.

In the past three years, Dayang Khatija Datu Bachtiyal has refined her seaweed crisps through research and development.

"My husband is from Semporna on the east coast of the state where there is a lot of seaweed. We had talked about creating a food product out of seaweed.

"I felt that I should try making seaweed crisps. It all started as an experiment in my kitchen."

She set up Khaleeda Food Products and marketed the seaweed crisps in three flavours -- original, chicken and anchovies -- which are sold in 50g and 100g packs.
She gets her seaweed supply from the Malaysian Fisheries Development Board.

The snack is made by mixing seaweed with spring roll skin and pastry and frying it.

The mother of six, who is also involved in the real estate business, said she decided to name her venture Khaleeda Food Products after her fifth child, who helped her in the kitchen.

"Khaleeda was always very excited about the project so I decided to name it after her. She is now in a secondary school in the peninsula," she said when met at her booth at the Sabah Development Corridor seminar here yesterday.

On her latest product, seaweed flavoured with date juice, she said it was being finalised.

She hopes it will hit the market by next week, in time for Ramadan.

Dayang Khatija said she was optimistic about opportunities for entrepreneurs now that the government had launched a number of strategies to boost economic growth.