The phrase I use in this context is "teng2-pai2". The "teng2" is probably 頂 (but I appear to have a different tone from you), and the "pai2" is "occasion, time" as in "kui2-na5/7-pai2", "cit8-pai2", "nO7-pai2", "san1-pai2", etc (= "a number of times", "once", "twice", "three times", etc). But perhaps you're well aware of this one (I think my Amoy-speaking relatives say "tieng-pai" (or, more accurately: "ti<schwa>ng-pai"), so it's not unique to PgHk), and you're thinking of another phrase which I don't know.That is also my understanding based on my personal exposure to Penang Hokkien. There is another term that I hear only in Penang Hokkien - tēng-păng or tēng-băng (頂 [?]), which I nornally hear used in the context of "in the past / back then"
My grandparents always had a tin of Quaker Oats in the kitchen - nice that you mention them! I remember clearly the logo of the face and black hat of the quaker painted on the outside of the tin. (I realise now that at the time I didn't know what quakers were, and never thought anything about it). However, we didn't use the brand name 老人麥 - we just called it the generic term 麥. But I have a slightly different pronunciation: we said "bEh8". (Now, I'm unsure whether this is a known PgHk pronunciation for "oats". This is because it was my Amoy-speaking grandparents who ate the stuff, and they pronounced it "beh8" or "beh4" (I'm a bit unsure about Amoy ru-tones). For all I know, my mother might have made the sound association of Amoy "e" to PgHk "E", and hence called it "bEh8" when speaking PgHk.
SimL
P.S. In Mandarin (and in Hokkien too), 幾個 can mean either "a few" or "how many", depending on context. However, I noticed when writing above that PgHk can make an explicit distinction between the two, by saying "kui-na-e" for "a few" and "kui-e" for "how many". Does anyone know how to write this "na" in characters? I don't know its citation tone, because it always occurs non-finally, but it has a tone-3 or tone-7 sandhi-tone.
Also, how does one write the "pai2" above in characters?