An ode to rice

Rice

When I researched Indonesian food pre-trip, it looked like Indian food. I love Indian food. Tandoori Oven, in Logan, Utah, is possibly my favorite restaurant of all time.

This is no Indian food. Nor is it Tai food.

Alumni also warned me about the amount of rice I'd eat. I shrugged that off. I love rice. I eat rice all the time. There was no way I could get tired of rice that quickly.

In Indonesia, you eat rice with every meal. EVERY meal. Breakfast is leftover dinner with rice. Every meal is rice, tofu, and some kind of boiled vegetable. Sometimes you get meat, sometimes you get an added sauce, but the rice remains. ALWAYS.

Tonight, fed up with rice, I went to McDonalds with my tutors and another student, but I found no refuge there. As a side to your Big Mac, you can have french fries, or you can have rice.

I chose an ice cream cone instead.

Indonesians eat with spoons in their right hands and forks in their left hands. DO NOT touch the fork to your mouth. Use the fork for pushing food onto the spoon, then eat out of the spoon only. This was the first thing my host family taught me. It's a big deal. I don't know why.

For the first week or so, I loved the food. I handled the various tofu concoctions with finesse. Many Indonesian dishes are delicious. I've developed a special liking for rotiboy, bread buns filled with butter and covered in brown sugar.

Other dishes are not as good. For example, my quest for ice cream yesterday brought me to the mall. The food court, hilariously named "Spicy Kitchen," boasts a few ice cream stands. I purchased an ice cream sandwich, which turned out to be a solid block of grainy ice cream on a vaguely fruit-flavored piece of bread. An actual slice of bread.

Yesterday morning, I had my first "I can't eat this" moment. My Ibu served me white rice in a very spicy peanut sauce called pecel with bright yellow tofu chunks and boiled spinach. For breakfast. It was spicy, squishy, and stringy. I ate as much as I could, desperately covering my gag reflex. When my Ibu left the room, after a moment of soul-searching, I scraped the rest into a napkin and threw it away. I didn't want to make myself sick.

As it is, I'm not expecting many solid bowel movements for a while.