Indonesian Food

December 20, 2010

So food here has been amazing. Since I got over the stomach bug or whatever I ate, and got over the resulting fear of all the food here, I’ve enjoyed it so much.  As some people will know, I was essentially eating rice every day last year in university anyway, so I’m loving the rice. And the food to go with it is always great.  Often we have a vegetable, and then some kind of great meet.  Everything from chicken, to fried fish, to battered prawns (those were amazing), pork on a stick, and pirate chicken (meat on a stick that looks like a chicken leg).  And since we are near a mall, we go to the supermarket and get all kinds of great stuff there too. There are these cheap lemon cookies that look a lot like ritz crackers with sugar on them. They are super cheap and great in tea.  Here in the big city they also have lots of American options.  McD’s is obvious, but A&W was more surprising to me (and they sell twist ice cream cones!) and Wendy’s was also surprising.  Pizza hut has a motorcycle delivery guy.  Baskin Robbins and Yogun Fruz both are in the mall, but they are at American prices.

When we went to the first cell group, they served us all kinds of great food. Fried mushrooms, and tofu, and kasava (a potato like starchy root).  And they gave us chilli peppers too. And they took us out for a traditional Indonesian drink.  Essentially, it was milk, egg, ginger and honey.  Ginger Egg Nog. It was warm and it came in chocolate flavour! So good.  Made me feel super healthy but not everyone liked ginger. 

At the village the food was unbelievable.  The chilli sauce… so good. The peanut and chilli sauce… better!  I can’t even explain how good all the food was. And how fresh!  We met one boy who we fell in love with, whose parents have many different things that they grow: cocoa, coffee, papaya, banana, durian, kasava, avacado. (durian is this crazy fruit which I swear isn’t meant to be eaten.  It is spiny with seeds inside that are covered with this funny white creamy stuff. You are supposed to suck the creamy stuff off the seeds, and Indonesians love it… me not so much). . But I went on a walk with six kids from the village and they showed me all the plants. So I’ve seen all these things growing, which kinda looks like they all grow in the jungle naturally because they are all mixed together but someone is harvesting it and probably is in charge of that land.

Oh, and the other thing was that they served us Asian peanuts.  I don’t know what they are actually called, but I swear they are different than peanuts we get in Canada. They make me think of peanuts from the Philippines, which I have had before, so it was kinda like comfort food to have them again.

There are tons more foods, but if I typed about all the funny sweets and chips and puffy cheetos without cheese on them. Everything seems to be a puffed chip or something. Anyways, that is all the food I’ll talk about for now. Tomorrow we change homes again, but it should be good.