Food

(an all too long post from Sunday-Monday)

This is likely the last post for this trip. I’m writing it as I leave Indonesia--though it’s been many weeks in the making--and it won’t be published until my return on Monday or Tuesday. As you can imagine, I’ve been thinking about Indonesian food just about three times a day for the last six weeks, even when I was in East Timor.

Indonesian food is so different in the States and in Indonesia. This can, of course, be said about many cuisines, but the difference with Indonesia was dramatic. I don’t know how many of you have been to Thailand, but I discovered that there is no Thai food in Thailand, or at least what was called that in the States (except for sticky rice and green papaya salad). Most Indonesian restaurants offer a lot of diversity, but few are all that different from one another. The selection for me was even less as a vegetarian—far less, in fact—and I quickly realized that I’m used to a very international palate, one that just wasn’t available on a daily basis in Indonesia.

Traveling as a vegetarian is often a real challenge. I decided 15 years ago, after that trip to Thailand, that I didn’t want my vegetarianism to get in the way of experiencing a country. After all, so much of culture is wrapped up in food, and I had passed up so many quirky and popular dishes that were offered to me in Thailand. So I try to at least taste things and now always eat everything that is offered to me if I’ve not had the prior chance to let my hosts know about my vegetarianism.

Indonesia is and isn’t a pretty easy place for vegetarians. For those fake vegetarians who sometimes refer to themselves as “pescatarians”, Indonesia is a breeze. With 17,000 islands, all surrounded by water, seafood is central to many an Indonesian meal. But for the non-cheating, Indonesia still has quite a few options. It’s the home of tempeh, tofu is available at about half the restaurants I visited, vegetable dishes are rarely mixed with meat, and there is no shortage of lovely fruit. But then every so often, I would find a whole bunch of dried fish eyes in my meal, and at other times, the flavor of fish sauce was all too unmistakable. Earlier tonight, I told the waiter at the airport café that I was a vegetarian, and he brought me a plate with a few different treats. It was the fifth place that I had stopped at—none having anything veg—so I was pretty hungry once the plate arrived, and very excited about the braised tofu. The tofu did not disappoint but the fried rice tasted far fishier than it should. It wasn’t until I dug into the peanut dish that I noticed that the little noodles were actually not little noodles but some kind of tiny sea worm or skinny fish since each had a pair of eyeballs. It was a death camp on my plate, and some of the critters had likely migrated to the rice and masquerading as a pilaf. Not vegetarian.

Rice is everywhere in Indonesia, or at least everywhere that I visited. Most Indonesians—as well as their neighbors in East Timor—eat rice in some form 2-3 times a day, and I’d be happy to not see any of it for the next week or two. I did come to like the rice cakes quite a bit and would like to learn to make them at home, but most of the other rice dishes tired pretty quickly. Fried foods were also everywhere, and I’m happy to report that I didn’t tire of those one bit (and had no gut problems to show for it). Nor did I tire of the tropical fruit. When I arrived, rambutan—one of my absolute favorites—was everywhere, and then I got turned on to some other new fruit treats once the rambutan was no more. Durian was not one of them. Not terrible, but not as good as its bright orange distant cousin which seems part jackfruit, part chirimoya, all wonderful. Here’s a photo of it:



Perhaps the food highlight of my trip was the amazing avocado shake that I had one of my first days in Jakarta. It was loaded with condensed milk and drizzled with unsweetened chocolate, and sadly I’ve not had another one as good since that day. I’m also including a picture of that, and am committed to duplicating such an avocado smoothie at an upcoming Frugal Foodies:



One thing that’s very user-friendly about eating in Indonesia is that many restaurants show their food in their front windows. Not a beautiful plastic version of each dish but the actual food in stacked plastic bowls for everyone to see. In some cases, it’s self service, in some cases, it’s ordered and brought to the table, and then there’s Padang-style. Padang-style food is one of the most popular in Indonesia. There’s nothing quite like it in the States—likely for health code reasons—and dim sum is likely the closest thing to it. The way it works is that you sit down at a table with an empty plate in front of you, and literally 15-25 dishes are placed on the table. Fish, chicken, beef, vegetables, tofu, tempeh, soups, curries, noodles, rice, eggs, potato patties, and on and on and on. And every combination and permutation that you can imagine. So you eat and eat and eat, and then at the end of the meal, you’re charged for what’s consumed, and the food plates travel on to someone else’s table, once of course they’ve been recharged with the proper number of fish heads, the rebuilt pyramid of potato patties, and the perfectly sized mound of rice.

Food in Indonesia is also incredibly cheap, at least for someone with dollars. Most large meals cost around a dollar, and I never once spent more than five dollars for a meal on this entire trip…and that includes meals at Western places that included tall beers and side dishes. You’d think that at that price, I’d just throw out the plate of dead noodle worms and look for something else but I still have not evolved (or devolved?) to that point. If it’s in front of me, I’ve got to do my best to eat it.

So here we are at the last paragraph of my last blog entry for this latest trip in my current life, and I want to close with a story of something that I didn’t eat. The food that got away, if you will. As I wrote earlier in this blog entry, so long ago now that it needs to be referenced, I’ve tried to be less dogmatic about my vegetarianism ever since my trip to Thailand 15 years ago. One of the things that I “missed out on” in Thailand was eating dog, and I’ve sort of regretted it ever since. Not that I dislike dogs, but figured that it would be a good thing to try in the same way that I’d likely eat a bite of person if hanging out with cannibals. But something happened on the way to that taste of pooch that surprised even me. I got a heart. While working for my fourth client, CARE Indonesia, we visited a women’s textile cooperative, where CARE was doing a breastfeeding awareness program. The women would arrive at the meeting with food or drink to share with one another, and would spend the whole morning weaving, talking, and eating. One of the women was someone who I had photographed earlier as she carried a beautiful tray of food up a gentle hill. She smiled and laughed, a bit embarrassed, as I photographed her, and then offered me a look at what she was carrying. It was a dark brown meat, chopped quite finely, and within it lay two jaw-bones studded with small teeth. Even though I had my hunch, I wasn’t totally sure that it was dog, but my translator confirmed it a few moments later, and when I was offered a taste, I had to say “no thank you”. I had to decline because, in the past year, I’ve fallen in love with a dog like never before, and it’s my girlfriend’s dog. So I wasn’t sure if she’d kill me if I ate the dog, if Zoe the dog would kill me, sensing that I had eaten one of her own, or if I’d kill myself for eating one of my own. But it did feel like one of my own, and that’s a new feeling for me. So now I can end this trip, knowing that I’ve grown in at least some small way, and isn’t that really the ultimate beauty of travel?