Catching Up: A variety of Food and Drink

Bananas
Our driver #2, Pak Rapiudin, has gifted us a large bunch of bananas on two occasions. They come from his mother's yard. Each time he had probably just picked them off the tree the day before or that morning. As he hands me the bananas he tells me exactly how many days until the first ones in the bunch will be ripe. They are delicious bananas! With the last batch we had to cut and slice some of them for the freezer. Banana "ice cream" is in our future!

Yummy Cake
I hosted my Needle Nomads recently and I was extremely tight on time so we purchased a cake instead of me having to bake something. Sometimes while cakes here look pretty, they are less than stellar in the taste department. This was different. Covered in fresh whipped cream, strawberry layers with strawberry filling. Quite good!

I don't know if I've mentioned the cake server situation previously. We did not have, or just didn't bring, a cake server with the silverware set we brought with us. I just used a knife to cut and a large spoon or some other tool to serve cake.  I had not purchased a cake here before so I didn't know what to expect. When you do purchase a cake here you are usually supplied with a fairly nice clear plastic cake slicer/server. After I found out about this a friend gave me a couple of the ones she'd collected. When we purchased this cake, we received an extra package that included a clear plastic cake server, candles and matches in the cake server handle. This is great!

Interesting (?) Food Options

I just don't know about these first two choices. We have not tried them.

Black pizza? Yes, along with black frozen yogurt, black smoothies, black hamburger buns and black lemonade yogurt, we have black pizza. It was one of the menu items at a work party with B. B comment - it tastes better than you think as it is all in your (our) head.

I need to comment on the black lemonade yogurt. In addition to the lemonade flavor, the yogurt also contained something called nata de coco. These are 1 cm squares of a chewy, translucent, jelly-like substance produced by fermenting coconut water. You can buy bags of nata de coco floating in coconut water. They are added to cold iced fruit desserts and drinks. In this case there were some in the yogurt. Flavor wise, not bad. Appearance? I'd give it a 1 out of 10, maybe. The yogurt looked like medium grey deck paint. Wish I'd taken a photo.

At the Grocery
I'm actually a little surprised that I don't see more ants in the grocery. However one day they had placed new rambutan fruit for sale. Apparently ants had been hiding in the fruit. The rambutan is way on the end of the top shelf but the ant trail ran all the way around this shelf. I've been here a while I guess. I thought it was funny and I felt sorry for the staff who were dealing with the ant invasion.  I think I bought a couple of mangoes from below the shelf, but I inspected them for ants. No need to bring them home.

I think it was on the same day as the ant invasion, they had dragon fruit still on the plant for sale in the produce department. It looked like they tied together several stalks from the plant and stuck them in pots. Right next to the buah naga merah ( red dragon fruit) are some small super delicious bananas, pisang mas.

Drinks
Lemon Bush. Had red tea on the bottom and citrus juices on the top.

A carafe of green apple kiwi. It was mostly soda water. Refreshing.

This one was like a milkshake. Called "Green Hulk" it had green whipped cream atop a matcha green tea ice blended milk tea with a caramel drizzle inside the glass.

Catching Up: Batik

I returned to this Batik shop once again. I've probably written about this a couple of times before in case you've forgotten, this is a shop called Batik Hajadi. They offer a small group the chance to hand stamp a batik design onto a small piece of cotton. There are other places where you can actually hand stamp larger pieces of fabric if you wish.

I assumed they would offer the same dye colors as in the past and I was looking for a specific color. My plan was not in agreement with dye choices of the day: brown or yellow only. When they wanted to start the class no one volunteered to go first so I volunteered. I got distracted by the man helping with the wax and left my first stamp on a bit long but it turned out ok. Wax is applied using either a stamp or by hand (drawn) or a combination of both. The stamps are called caps ( pronounced chops). Caps can take 3 months to make if detailed. They are put together using strips of copper and copper wire. Here's an example of a somewhat complicated cap.

The stamp is dipped in wax and pressed onto the fabric. I chose a lionfish cap. There was a choice of seastars, lionfish or a border print. I thought the dye color choices were a bit off for the cap patterns they used. I think I would have gone with blues and greens.

Once the wax hardens, it's put into a chemical dye bath. It might change color at that point, but it might not. The fabric is dried in the sun to activate the dye.

After that it goes into an acid bath.

This is when the true color develops. More drying in the sun (more thorough this time to fix the color) and then a final dip in boiling water to remove the wax. Mine is the brown one in this photo. The lionfish are sideways. I don't have a plan yet for this piece.

When this batik shop manufactures batik is is done on large lengths of fabric in warehouses outside the city. This set up is just for "tourists."

 One of the ladies completely filled her fabric.

During our visit we were shown a video about how the fabrics are created. It's a lot of work and takes time. How much time depends on how many colors are used and how many wax steps are needed. Quite a few of my friends have had fabric made to recover cushions, etc., on their furniture. To some degree you can design your own by choice of pattern and color(s).

Catching Up: Tea Tasting Class

I signed up for this AWA activity to learn all about tea.  Part of the fees for AWA activities goes to AWA supported charities so that's a good thing too. I can learn something and help support AWA Charities.

TWG (founded in Singapore) labels itself as the finest luxury brand of tea in the world. TWG presents teas classified by color: white, yellow, green, blue, black and red. They sell 800 different types of tea sourced from various parts of the world (48 countries produce tea). The largest producers of tea are Taiwan, China and India. I learned all about the tea plant, types of drying, which tea plant parts are used for what tea types and and why all the types. Through the class we tasted several types of teas and enjoying delicious scones, muffins and macarons. Their macarons are made using TWG teas and are delicious. Even the jam served with the scones had a hint of tea.

TWG feels that no tea should be in a bag, but if you must, it has to be cotton and it has to be large. The tea doesn't develop proper flavor unless it has room.

 I had no idea that every tea really has a strict water temperature and steep time for the perfect cup.

Since we've lived here I drink a lot more coffee than tea due to the wide variety and flavor of the coffees available. However, I really like TWG teas as well. At the tasting my favorite was a Yin Zhen White tea. And that's good because I am more likely to have tea in the evening. We were told that the white teas contain less "theine" (tea caffeine) than other teas. The other white tea we tasted is Pai Mu Tan. They didn't serve us any yellow tea, but I am pretty sure they showed some yellow tea leaves to us. It is the rarest and most expensive tea in the world per TWG. Only about 15 kg are harvest each year. I didn't ask the price.  The Tea Menu at this place is probably 10 pages. They also serve lunch, breakfast and dinner. And I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing but this shop is around the corner from where we live.

A prize I won for answering a tea question:
Samples of tea and a small box of macarons.

Catching Up: Ambassador's Lunch and Plant Site Visit

We were graciously invited to enjoy lunch one day with the French Ambassador to Indonesia, Jean-Charles Berthonnet, and his wife. The hosts brought chef Fernando Sindu into their home to prepare the special menu. Excellent menu! Each dish was presented in a unique way.

The guests:

The menu:

B comment - in the photos above, that is our hosts normal kitchen table. Need we say more?

B and the SRI team also had the honor of hosting the Ambassador and his wife at the plant site recently.

Catching Up: Miscellaneous

Clear Sky Day

On an unusual day, I was able to capture the mountains off to the ESE from our bedroom window at a sharp angle looking to the right. And YES, that is a volcano.

Day Spa
As venues have come and gone in our apartment building, we admit we have not made much use of them: mini mart, ATM, barbershop. Recently, Sandeeva Day Spa and Reflexology opened. They ran a 50% discount program and we both made use of this option a few times. For example, during the discount period, a 1 hour reflexology foot and lower leg massage cost less than $7 US. And it was fabulous. It is a very small place, however, and we aren't very good at pre-scheduling appointments so we have to take our chances. ( Sorry no photos.)

AWA Bazaar
In early April the American Women's Association held it's spring bazaar. We were really short on experienced personnel for this event; in fact, we had no leader at all so it was a group effort. AWA's bookkeeper and a previous Bazaar coordinator, now living in Alaska, played major roles. Yes, it's complicated having someone residing in Alaska helping to coordinate a bazaar here. You might remember reading previous posts about B and me helping out with vendor check-in/escort starting at 4 am. This year I also helped on both days of vendor registration and I even made up the vendor badges, silent auction sheets and more...

And yes, I arrived at the venue at 3:30 am and worked until 11:30 am. B unfortunately couldn't join me this year as he is spending much more time in Cilegon now.

A Special Canine
There is a special cocker spaniel in town! She is the first "sniffer dog" in the country to be trained to detect smuggled wildlife. Because of her special nose, she is much better at it than her human counterparts and she is only a year old. According to an article in the newspaper, training a dog to detect wildlife is much more difficult than training them to detect narcotics or explosives. Every time the cocker properly detects a sample, she is rewarded with her favorite doll and a hug. She sounds adorable but at the same time she is doing a really important job.

Car Ballet
On the day we needed to visit the immigration offices to renew our residence visa we arrived extremely early due to an odd lack of traffic. We got a prime parking spot right in front of the door. That's our black Toyota Alphard if you don't remember what it looks like. Also in the photo, the parking assistant is pushing (literally pushing by himself) the white sedan out of the way as the first of several cars needing to be moved to allow someone to park back in the far right corner(out of the shot). After the new car parked, the previously moved cars were all pushed back to their original spots. We've seen this before but it is still amazing to watch.

Traveling Safe?
I couldn't count how many men were in this open truck.

Cilegon and Interesting Drive
It's still raining periodically here, though typically rainy season has ended by now.  Looked like rain would start any minute. And it did. And it was a lot of rain.

My trip back home the next morning was "interesting." I took these photos from inside our CRV (car #2).

Our driver # 2, Pak Rapiudin got me home safe and sound. Flooding worsened as I traveled from the area. Within a couple of hours of when we passed, a small section of the same roadway collapsed.

This has caused significant travel issues.The alternative route is much longer. One day it took B 5.5 hours to return home. B believes it will be 6 months before the roadway is reopened.