Food: Friendly, Fresh, and Flavorful

Friendly? How can food be friendly?

Terraced rice paddies 

As a part of a culture that values time spent being together with others (bersama-sama), food is often shared and enjoyed in that context, as well.

Peppers and tomatoes along the mountainside

Fresh vegetables abound and dishes that I can eat and love are not hard to find. Nasi (rice) Pecel - blanched vegetables with peanut sauce over rice, is my very favorite and there are many different compositions available - some even with flower blossoms!

Eggplant, papaya leaves, cassava - leaves, too, and a litany of other fresh greens, compliment almost every meal and the obligatory plate relishes that can be sparsely dolloped elsewhere become a hunk of fresh cabbage, raw peas, cucumber, or tomato here...in short, people eat their veggies and maybe that's why I am often not the tallest person in the room!

Fresh meal of nasi empok (rice with corn), tempe, eggplant, 
and other vegetables, as well as spicy sambal 

Other traditional and famous foods include Bakso (meatball soup), Cwi Mie (flavorful noodles with diced chicken, sometimes meatballs and fried wanton), gorengan (fried foods including tempeh, tofu, sweet potato, bananas, and many more), Angsle (delicious warm coconut milk drink with bread cubes and noodles flavored with pandan leaf, as well as tapioca pearls), and jajanan pasar (very traditional treats that use coconut, special rices, and usually Javanese sugar - too many kinds to list).

Delicious treats from cassava, coconut, corn (!), types of rice, and other natural ingredients....served with a healthy spoon (or two) of Javanese brown sugar syrup - YUM.

As this is the introductory post for food, it is brief and incomplete. More posts to follow with more pictures, more descriptions, and more examples of the wonderful kinds of food to be found in the Magnificent Bhumi Arema.

Boiled foods including bananas, cassava, sweet potato, mbothe (a root kind of like cassava), and peanuts 

Salam Satu Jiwa